“You know how people say, 'If these walls could speak...'?": Dance music fans can celebrate 25 years of superclub fabric - with a new £349 book

It’s quite the year for dance music retrospection with multiple new tomes appearing, all timed to celebrate 25 years of club culture’s major detonation into the mainstream.

Now, following sumptuous coffee table books re-telling the story of Manchester’s Haçienda and 25 years of Defected Records, comes a new block of heavy grammage paper and card simply entitled fabric, being a celebration of perhaps London’s toppermost ‘superclub’ of the day.

The creation and rise to power of fabric – alongside similar such dance-music-as-business ventures as Ministry of Sound – perfectly charted the crossover of dance music from dangerous warehouse niche to working grind-relieving weekend decompression necessity. 

The club, perhaps most regarded for its state-of-the-art sound system and dancefloor design, became hugely popular through the 90s, making millions and helping to make dance music a global cultural phenomenon before falling foul of rising drug culture and an inability to sufficiently police its attendees and the activity within its walls.

On 7 September 2016, fabric had its licence revoked following two drugs-related deaths but has since fought back and returned to favour.

The new 300-page book celebrates the good that the club was able to achieve during its time at the top, complete with unseen photographs, old flyers, iconic artwork and testimony from DJs, club staff and key dance music figures of the day.

Published by White Rabbit, and written by Joe Muggs, it features an introduction by Last Night A DJ Saved My Life author and expert Bill Brewster, and a foreword from DJ Annie Mac.

Its creators describe the book as “a story about the misfits and visionaries who made it happen, the curators and resident DJs who have kept it true to its roots, and the experiences of dancers on the dancefloor.”

Author Joe Muggs said: “You know how people say, "If these walls could speak..."? Well, after months of interviews, research and writing, I genuinely did feel like those walls deep under Farringdon were sharing their stories of thousands of nights and millions of dancing bodies passing through. fabric is a living entity with a personality all of its own, a constantly evolving work of art in its own right, a channel for collective consciousness, and getting the chance to immerse so deeply in a quarter of a century of its life was just glorious.”

Three editions of the book will be available: The Standard Edition Hardback comes case-bound in a limited edition run of 4,000 copies for £50.

A Record Store Special Edition Hardback features alternative black cover artwork and endpapers and housed in a bespoke, blind debossed slipcase plus a copy of the long-out-of-circulation fabric 001 mix CD by founding DJ Craig Richards and a reproduction of the first-ever fabric club night flyer. It’s limited to 1000 copies. Yours for £99.

Finally, a Super Deluxe (White Rabbit Edition) has alternative artwork and slipcase plus an exclusive LP, a 25th birthday poster print, four reproduction flyers displaying classic fabric artwork, an exclusive pin badge and slipmat, and a reproduction fabric silver pendant designed by Tom McEwan – originally gifted to just 99 people in 1999 on the opening of the club and never before commercially available. It’s yours for £349, available exclusively from White Rabbit in a limited run of 500 copies.

Cameron Leslie, fabric Co-Founder & Director, said: “Creating this book has been a remarkable journey and a rewarding experience. Seeing that, even after 25 years, our contribution is still impactful in the London scene is humbling and is certainly something that motivates us to keep pushing boundaries as well as supporting the community that surrounds us and has given us so much."

Fans can relive the golden age of dance by pre-ordering their copy here.