We Locked Ourselves in With the Hydra for 48 Hours

"Come this way party people!" isn't the usual chirpy greeting you'd expect from a bouncer in East London on a freezing winter night but, then, Studio Spaces is by no means a 'usual' venue. Somewhere in-between a McDonald's, BP garage and Machine Mart a few minutes from Shadwell tube station is one of London's most promising venues. Transformed from a trendy daytime photography studio to a 1,500 capacity underground club most Friday and Saturday evenings this side of winter, it's where we've chosen to spend our next two nights with one of the city's biggest promoters: the Hydra.

The line —filled with lads in bucket hats and sports jackets, girls on the verge of catching a death via their choice of outfit— stretches down the street.

As taxis rush by, crunching over Smirnoff vodka glass bottles, a lone guy starts chatting to us. "It's a long commitment", he points out, nervous that the headline acts aren't on until 4am. So are we. But that's nothing two Pro Plus's and a few (slightly warm) Strongbow's won't sort out.

Getting past some ominous looking red gates, it's a rather unsuspecting club. You wouldn't know it was there. Well, apart from the massive queue and the faint sound of thumping bass, that is. It's also pretty strange to be having a piss in a car park in full view of a queue, main road and a block of flats. This is me. This is who I am. ANYWAY, The sound system —a specially designed Funktion One rig— is all brought in and set up on the day engineers who have assisted with Berghain's system in the past, so, obviously, it's pretty special.

Heading in at nearly 1am it's clear everyone's here for a great time. The night's a sell out, and for good reason – it's Dekmantel's first London showcase. Walking down the industrial stairs to find two rooms full to the brim with people, Vancouver trio Pender Street Steppers are drawing the masses into the smaller Black Studio, with a selection of tracks mixing funk, tribal beats and faint hints of techno getting everyone to dance away the working week.

As we'd predicted, Motor City Drum Ensemble's disco set is so packed that there's a constant queue to get in to the feel good vibes-filled slot. Meanwhile, Palms Trax draws a sizable crowd to the biggest of The Hydra's rooms, the Warehouse. Chatting to the Berlin-based producer after his well-received set, he's in high spirits—despite suffering from jet-lag. "I came from Berlin [where he lives] this evening. I was in Australia on Wednesday though – that's pretty weird," he tails off a little … "but I discovered True Detective, I'd never seen it before and it was on the plane so I raced through the first season. Although its kind of weirded me out because when I got back home I couldn't walk down my hallway in the dark because I thought there was going to be some mask-wearing paedophile at the end of it."

Not sleeping for three days then crashing out of consciousness for 16 hours would mess most people up, and as he admits, "It's made me feel quite weird. I'm not that used to it, like Bicep. They were in Australia with me but they did Singapore as well. They're machines – well, Matt goes to the gym, and also when they go to play they have a coconut water and leave…very professional."

He digresses, detailing a previous encounter with The Hydra's old venue. "I came to see Benji B and Moodyman when The Hydra was somewhere else five years ago. I got thrown out actually; I was given a rather forceful ejection." Tonight, though, everything's different.

The whole night was, in the words of DJ and Dekmantel co-founder Thomas Mortajo, "a proper Amsterdam party. It's a hand-picked self-crated line-up — we try not to go down the obvious route."

But why has it taken so long for a London show to come about? "We thought a long time about whether or not to do something in London. Dekmantel's become very popular in London and there has been a lot of interest for the last two or three years to do something. We pushed it back for the right thing. We've been talking to Dolan and Ajay [who run The Hydra] for the past couple of years now and we've been watching what they've been doing. It kind of felt like a natural way to work with them, if you look at the events they put together and the things they do musically — it felt like the right choice to make," he adds proudly.

Come 7am we're just about ready to call it a day, quite literally, in the knowledge that we've an even longer night ahead of us for the Numbers party later that evening.

By the time we drag ourselves into the queue again, we're knackered. And then Denis Sulta comes to the rescue. He's sending everyone positively loopy with excitement. We've not seen a reaction like the one this up-and-coming Glaswegian gets for a long, long time. A good number of the crowd actually bow down to him by the end of it all, and rightly so. He makes it all seem so effortless, and that's what's marking Denis Sulta out as the name to watch as we head into the New Year.

Koreless, meanwhile, draws a decent crowd who are ready to soak up a whole lot of intense flashing strobes and bass-heavy electronic noise — like a much, much darker Rustie. Then it's over to Mike Servito, an American acid advocator, who pummels the main room into submission with ease for the next couple of hours. So far, so very good.

Jackmaster, playing for a good four hours in total, once again smashes it. From techno to house, disco to funk and even a bit of grime during his B2B with fellow Numbers co-founder Spencer, nobody knows where the Scottish party animal will turn next but, as always, each track —especially Lil Silva's undisputed banger "Seasons" and Hubie Davison's "Sanctified"— hits the spot. It helps how comfortable Jack looks behind the decks as well, and with Skream side of stage indulging in the good times, and Artwork and Benga also on the scene, it's a friendly family affair. No wonder he's ranked fifth place in Resident Advisor's Top 100 DJ's list.

Jackmaster, Spencer and Mike Servito were in Barcelona's Nista club just 24 hours before, but you certainly wouldn't know it. Getting to the final stretch of the weekend, when the lights came up at 6.30am, people are still chanting for 'one more song' and nobody really wants to go home. But heading out onto the street with the sun starting to shine and suffering from jelly legs, we'd actually made it. Reflecting on the last 48 hours, having seen so many of our favourites —Bicep, Prosumer, Palms Trax, Dekmantel Soundsystem, Pender Street Steppers, Denis Sulta, Jackmaster, Spencer and Mike Servito — we also left thinking we might just have found our new favourite club. London's not dead. Not quite yet.

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Answer Code Request (live), Anthony Parasole, Ben Klock, Marcel Dettmann, Nick Hoppner and Steffi (live) feat Virginiaare at The Hydra this Saturday, December 12, for a mammoth 10pm to 10am show for Ostgut Ton Zehn's 10th anniversary celebrations. It'll be huge!