The Slow Grind Fever Club Night, curated by Richie 1250, happens across Melbourne venues (for the time being, often Bar Open) each Saturday at the end of the month.
Indulging Naarm since 2013, Slow Grind Fever has cultivated a dedicated following with the city’s finest juice heads, grifters, kittens and twinks descending upon the different spaces for an emulsion of slow-burning R&B, sensual soul, exotica and rare groove.
A mainstay broadcaster at PBS radio with his show Stone Love, Richie has propagated a global platform for the slow and sultry devout, with the Slow Grind Fever mix series and compilation on Stag O Lee Records in Germany up to its 11th iteration.
Lavishing the dancers with smoke, sleaze and voluptuous musicks, Slow Grind has become a focal point for slow, sensual kinetics in an otherwise brisk and frenetic world.
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Richie, I thought I would start with this description from Minna, who has been both a DJ and dancer at your events over the years…
“At the SG in Perry Bird Pickets you could see voluminous clouds escaping from the windows and the silhouettes of dancers reminiscent of the faux party scene from Home Alone. The building itself resembled a castle where people would hang out the windows like drunken medieval knaves about to fall into the moat.”
With this in mind, what characteristics are you looking for in a space, considering SG has roamed throughout Naarm?
Haha. Ideally, I love a space that conjures the DIY house party vibe. Perry Bird Picket was the perfect combination. It captured the house party aesthetic without the ciggies and the blabbering, just slow dancing and sultry music. While I love the idea of having the ability to pick a particular space, unfortunately it’s more of finding what is available at certain dates. The important parts for me are ensuring the architecture, management and ethos of the party all point to one thing, slow, sensual dancing. The mainstay is Bar Open now, particularly for the 50 and 60s nights.
It feels like the room above Bar Open really caters to this, the booth being dancefloor adjacent but in no way removed, on the dancer’s level but not infringing upon it, allowing the dancefloor to assume the centre of gravity. Has this been a consistent feature?
Sometimes, depending on the space, the stage is on the only place you can have the DJ but generally I always want to have the DJ level with the people. When I’m DJing I like to cue up the next record and go onto the dancefloor to get a feel for the people and the sound out there, that and the smoke machine of course.
These small adjustments maintain the dialogue of the party, both as a participant and as an organiser. My favourite part of the night comes at the end when everybody who DJs goes track for track, that way each DJ gets to go and dance to their favourite song, it’s a nice dynamic.
Let’s talk about the smoke, it’s ubiquitous.
Shit, you know the first three I actually didn’t have one and then an old housemate left a smoke machine and so the next SG I really got a taste for the smoke, I just wanted more.
This one didn’t have an automatic timer so a lot of the night I was triggering it until I was satisfied with the atmosphere. I think it replaces something that was lost when smoking ciggies was banned indoors. Of course, there was the added health benefit, but on the other hand there was a degree of mystique that was lost. I enjoy things that are not too clear, the same goes for records, I want things that are diffused, warm and soft, not ultra-digital HD.
It really encourages you to feel through yourself, while keeping aware and respectful of all the other dancers trying to do the same.
The crowd has been very well-behaved and the smoke adds to the mystery, you don’t really know what’s going on at the other side of the room so you can gingerly weave through the sound and the smoke and see what emerges.
I love that function of smoke and light. If you are feeling more exhibitionist, you can move near the booth or the stairs where it’s better lit, otherwise if you’re feeling like you just wanna freak out in the dark you can spend your night in a smoky corner.
It’s such a textural and queer experience, have the performative aspects interspersed throughout the night been a fixture of SG?
The 80s nights in particular draw a more queer crowd and I programme more queer performances in accordance with that.
Was SGF borne out of an absence of events like these throughout the clubscape?
It was more just the music I was really into, and I wanted to have a platform to play it. It was particularly focused upon that sultry sound of the 50s and 60s and I thought that centering a night around moving to this sort of sound and tempo would open up a whole new way of looking at records from this era.
My 30th Birthday was a good time to force people to do I what I wanted to do. I hired out a Russian cultural centre and was like ‘I’m having this slow dance party you know, everybody come it’s gonna be dark’. I bought thirty wheels of Aldi brie and pickles and somebody else brought a chocolate cake and we all got down to slow sultry music all night long. Six months after that, somebody asked if I wanted to put a night on and it went from there.
The kinetics at SGF diverge greatly from other club nights, there’s a suppleness and malleability.
It really opens the body up to the theatrical and the playful, particularly in the hips and upper body. I find that a lot of the tracks spun at SGF can have a dramatic air to them, which people tend to absorb and accentuate through their movements. One of the best things about these nights is that it demands less than other, more frenetic veins of music, with the slow grind, you can get down all night long.
You’ve released a slew of SGF compilations on German Label Stag O Lee Records, how did that connection come about?
I started making mixes before each monthly SGF party and put them up on Soundcloud and after the first ten or so the guy from Stag O Lee wrote to me, saying how cool they thought the mixes were and whether I would be interested in putting a compilation together .
It was funny because it forced me to properly research the songs so I could write appropriate liner notes and dig up all the fun facts about each track. It’s great to see videos people put up on Instagram slow dancing to these records from around the world. The SGF mythology has gone global, I just hope they all get to experience it one day in person.
What’s the rest of the SG schedule looking like?
Next will be a classic SGF with lots of cuts from the 50 and 60s with a strict vinyl cut-off at 1972, anything after that and things tend to get a little glossy and disco. In December we are Slow Grinding through the decades, where every hour will be a different decade, starting from the 1920s. The last half will be all the DJs in the booth giving a crazy mash-up of all the eras. This will be a first for SGF so I’m really excited.
The next Slow Grind Fever will be on September 30 at Bar Open. Follow them here.
