In 1994, Moving Shadow started to branch out into the events space - the result: Voodoo Magic. Under the management of Rob Playford and assisted by Andrew Lyall and twin Steve Lyall from our Record Shop (“Section 5”, located in London’s exclusive King’s Road, Chelsea), a string of legendary nights were born. Tickets sold out instantly and anyone that attended was extremely lucky as the events presented the cream of Drum & Bass DJ sets, ranging from Godfathers Fabio & Grooverider through to a very young Andy C. Ticket pricing was notably restricted (a mere £10-£12 in comparison to similar events at the time being over £20) and an early sign of the pricing model for the Moving Shadow Sampler Series releases to come a few years later (just 99p and stacked high next to the checkout of every record shop in the country!).
There were many memorable occasions, such as PA’s by Foul Play, Deep Blue and Dead Dred, the odd crazy 4 A.M. start (thru to 12 Midday!), the Christmas (limitless) VIP Bar, and countless encounters with Drum & Bass royalty at every turn, but Rob Playford recalls a very special moment from Voodoo Magic 1:
… the queues around the venue had finally made their way into the club and everything was going nicely after our 10 P.M. start - the sound system was ‘OK’, but personally I would have liked it maybe 20% louder - it didn’t need much - the venue was, after all, a ’nice’ nightclub rather than a warehouse and it seemed a little inappropriate to abuse the place!
At 1 A.M., just as L.T.J. Bukem had started playing the intro to his last track (the first time we got to hear his iconic “Horizons”, by the way!), something amazing happened. Just as the baseline kicked in (some 3 minutes into the track!), the whole place erupted!
What I didn’t know was that the sound system had actually been on half power due to the location of the world famous Empire Leicester Square movie theatre - directly above the venue. Once the theatre had closed for the night, the club was free to turn things up.
To this day, I’ve never seen such a reaction - the combination of the volume increase and the bass kicking in was absolutely amazing and truly a memorable moment in my life. Still gives me goose bumps when I think about it today.
Thank you Danny Bukem and whoever was in charge of the sound! It became a staple of all Voodoo Magic events after that. We even did it on the ones that started at 4 A.M., leaving it on half power until at least 5 A.M. when it would be packed - even though we didn’t need to!
“Many styles make the style one”,
🎤 MC Five O (Voodoo Magic)
