In the early 90s, Omar Adimora had a curious Saturday night routine. A teetotal aspirant dance producer and devoted fan of US house music whose day job was in computing, he would cycle from his home in Islington to Ministry of Sound. “I would go in my cycling shorts,” he laughs, “and stand on a speaker for nine hours, watching David Morales do a marathon set, thinking: ‘I want some of this.’”
One week, someone mentioned an afterparty on the Old Kent Road that started when London’s most celebrated superclub kicked people out at 9am. “It was a pub, the Frog and Nightgown, but they had blacked out all the windows so it was eternal night. It was full of characters, people with all sorts of elaborate and exotic clothing, just ready to party. The music was US house – Masters at Work, MK, Smack, Roger Sanchez – but the DJs would pitch it up, so if people had been dancing to 125bpm most of the night, these guys were playing it at 130, 132. That became my addiction, it started to take over the thrill of Ministry of Sound. You’d get to Ministry later and later, so you’d have enough energy to last at the Frog and Nightgown.”
