LWE's SidexSide at Tobacco Dock April 16th

This Easter weekend was rammed with exciting events all over the country. We chose to focus on the capital as London Warehouse Events (LWE) brought SidexSide hosted by Jamie Jones back to its commonly used event space Tobacco Dock.

Venue :

Once used to receive and store tobacco from overseas this unique, industrial playground has now become the venue of choice for LWE events who hold exclusive rights to the space for 6 music events per year. Comprising of 3 main areas : The Great Gallery, hosted this time round by Jamie Jones, The Car Park held by Guy Gerber and finally The Little Gallery looked after by Leon Vynehall. Aside from these and certainly worth mentioning was the rooftop which was an area that held space to sit, eat and even use a reverse bungee whilst offering views of London's most iconic sky scrapers, nice touch LWE.



Staff - Top marks for staff here, always helpful and friendly and most importantly well organised. We arrived at 2pm and entry took under 5 minutes. Plenty of staff to cover the bars meaning it never took longer than a couple of minutes to be served and even with a smile on their face, something some venues find hard to achieve!


Drinks - LWE run a token system at their events which work out at £2 a token. 2.5 tokens will get you a standard alcoholic drink/mixer (£5) and 1.5 tokens will get you a water (£3), definitely reasonable from our point of you, plus the tokens look kind of cool. There was also food available from The Market Grill who had a good selection of burgers, albeit £5 a go.



Heat - Unfortunately one of the downsides from the day, The Great Gallery wasn't well controlled in terms of temperature, far too hot at times and the only fans visible where two giant ones at each of the exit doors which just blew your hat off when near them but provided minimal temperature control for the room itself.


Crowd - A good overall crowd, the odd idiot barging his way past everyone else with his fake Moncler jacket but its hard to avoid it these days. The majority kept the vibes going and there was no major issues.

Production & Sound :

Production - The various pillars and beams located within The Great Gallery make it an ideal space for different lighting options. A fair share of lasers and strobes combined with some colourful visuals on the backdrop behind the decks made the experience all the more enjoyable. This was also the case in the Car Park which was our personal favourite room of the night. The industrial feel of the space really does bring both the sound and production to life whilst giving that 90s illegal rave edge.



Sound - No complaints where the sound quality was concerned. All rooms provided a large floor space but still managed to create a dense and intimate scene which compliments the big bassy drops perfectly.

DJ Sets :

The Great Gallery - This was the main room for the event as always and saw Jamie Jones as the main man. A big day for each of the room hosts however they all held their own throughout and keep the belters rolling. Lots of big moments from the outset starting Jamie Jones going b2b with one of his long standing Paradise residents Richy Ahmed. This monster of a set was then followed by Cassy who equally held her own and kept the room flying finished off with the unique and edgy sounds of Nicole Moudaber that simply never disappoint.




The Car Park - Guy Gerber was joined by Matthew Dear, Dubfire and Art Department and as said earlier this was our favourite room of the night with big punchy tracks all day long. Set of the night goes to Guy Gerber b2b Dubfire who absolutely smashed it with Dubfire proving why he is still fully cemented in the top tier of electronic artists as he continues to evolve his sound.



The Little Gallery - In this smaller, intimate space held Leon Vynehall who brought Josey Rebelle, Ryan Elloit and Saoirse to keep the room pumping throughout the day. Some great sounds coming out of this smaller room and we thoroughly enjoyed the time spent here.

Overall :

3.5/5, A good overall day by one of our favourite event promoters. Some big highlights in the Car Park and a well utilised event space which just needing cooling down a bit! (and less Moncler jackets).