Stealth

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There's something special about the opening of a brand new club, expectations are high and rumour runs rife, especially with clubs as talked about as Stealth.

Finally the cards are down and the Stealth promoters are flaunting quite a hand with quality lineups across a wide range of genres in the coming months. Thursdays are the NME's first club night, with punk funk, electro and disco pogo on offer alongside regular live band action. Fridays are a rotation of excellent nights already established in Nottingham such as Spectrum, Manuva Manuva, Detonate and Soundsystem (a collaboration between DiY, Leftfoot and Percussion). Saturday residencies include Bugged Out, Tyrant, The Boutique, and the clubs own night Stealth - which is to feature visits from Haywire and the Rotters Golf Club alongside some well respected residents. Er.. Blimey!

The club itself cruises in as a slick, well designed and well managed affair, sporting all the mod cons and creature comforts. The technical minded will be blown away by a state of the art Funktion One Soundsystem in each room, they have really gone to town on kit - the upstairs DJ box has more boxes full of bright lights and lcd screens than mission control at Houston.

The enigmatic man behind it all is James Bailliee, to whom you can also attribute other successes such as 'the bomb', 'the social' and `Venus'. James felt the Nottingham and Midlands club scene was getting a bit stagnant, so driven by a desire for fresh and exciting music he has put Stealth together with Daybrook House Promotions - the people who own the respected Rock City and Rescue Rooms. In fact, they're all interconnecting so Stealth can expand capacity, tardis like, whenever the need arises - a winning formula. While we are on the topic of the talented Mr Bailliee; Rizla ran a location bid competition for a national festival which James has bagged for Nottingham! so watch out for a whopper of a weekend towards the end of the summer, featuring music, film and allsorts of cool stuff.

We headed down to the first night at Stealth to catch Keep it Unreal. Once inside the shiny new club a selection of sassy, soulful, sizzlers were being served up by Mr Scruff in the main room. Shame it's only a two hour set? Oh no, Mr Scruff doesn't go in for that, it's a six hour set for the man or he's not coming. So, right from the start the real ale drinking northern legend was laying down a blend of soul, jazz, funk and phat beats before gearing the crowd up for bigger numbers. There was no let up, the appreciative crowd would have danced right through the bank holiday weekend if Scruff kept it going.

Downstairs, the place was equally busy to the sound of Qool DJ Marv and Treva Whateva whose mix of genres was going down a treat with the crowd as well as some cool VJ animation. Going through into the Rescue Rooms there was some excellent turntablism and freestyle MC action courtesy of the P Brothers & Cappo (right), Broken English, Kenny Ken & DJ Woody. And if it all got too much there was always respite in the Red Room with an opportunity to buy Mr Scruff's range of tea and merchandise, the proceeds of which he uses to help a whale and dolphin charity - Scruff, truly a friend of all the fish in sea! 

www.stealthattack.co.uk