I remember going to one, really enjoying it and never going again for reasons I can’t remember. Possibly just because it was South (West) London and I was in North (East) at the time and it was a school night.
The night I went a “band” called DCI Burnside played who did acappella versions of stuff like Adventures On The Wheels Of Steel and Song 2.
Sledgin
Crows Nest at the Paradise Factory (i.e. the top floor of LuvDup’s “Jolly Roger” night) was ace.
Can we also have an honourable mention for McCready when he’d be playing all sorts of loveliness downstairs in the Gay Traitor at the Hac while the usual suspects were housing it up all night long.
Yes!! He needs to get his finger out and do some more of those. And show his face around here. I bet he’d have some great tales to share…
Absolutely
Yes … at the Tea Rooms? Next you’ll be reminding me of Fungus Mungus
Happy days 
Amazing. Very hazy memories of that place…
Totally agree with your choices here mate. We also spent every single Saturday night on the top floor (chill out room) when Basics was at The Music Factory listening to the regulars like Cziz, Boggy, Moonboots, Jo Hall, Jake Purdy, Jam MCs, Chris Congas etc, (even remember Jose Padilla RIP making an appearance). I used to ring the Basics head office every Saturday afternoon asking who was playing the top floor that night, eventually I think Dave Beer got fed up of me ringing so asked who I wanted to be on, I asked him to get Moonboots back on and a couple of weeks later he was back behind the decks! Also remember a brilliant chill out set by Simon Mu and Glen Gunner at one of the first nights after the move to the Pleasure Rooms that sticks in my mind. The Crows Nest at the Paradise Factory, Manchester was also excellent with McCready and Moonboots (think that was a Thursday night but I may be wrong). Finally going back a year or two before Basics, the first hour or two at Legends Warrington with the excellent Richard Garvin playing some top quality downtempo stuff.
Snap…almost all my basics experiences involved heading straight for the top floor and staying there all night. Staring at the flamingoes on the projector screen. You forgot Alan King who did quite a few of the early nights in that room - mobile disco DJ who just played disco, funk etc all night.
Wondering if any of those sets are available online anywhere? I’ll have a dig…
That does ring a bell, was it not Alan Kent ? I remember him playing a few times up there in the early days. It’s a long time ago so the memories are a bit hazy so I maybe wrong. Also remember a crew from Liverpool came to play the top floor one night, think it was The Smile crew (Paul Myers) who were pretty impressive but none of the “special guests” ever lived up to the regulars on the top floor in my opinion.
I’ve never managed to find any mixes online from the top floor of Basics, but if you manage to find any please do let me know 
I’ve managed to track down and buy a lot of the tunes played since then, although it’s taken me nearly 30 years!
Never seen any mixes from the top floor either - I’m guessing it wasn’t recorded
Excellent, had a few trippy nights there listening to Jerry Dammers 
My first proper chillout room experience was at a Alpha rave at The Academy (Plymouth) in 90. It would have been one of the very early ones, possibly the second, it was incredible, I felt like I had walked into heaven (the place where god lives not the Club). I’ve no idea who was playing but I remember banging on about how good it was to my friends all night .
In another Chill Out story related to the same night Alpha: its now latter in 90 or maybe early 91, I had made some Acid tracks that were doing the rounds locally, I had passed a tape of these tracks Id made to a friend, it just so happened that on the other side of the tape was KLF / Space. As I say this tape was doing the rounds and got into the hands of the prompter of the Alpha rave, who tracked me down not because he liked my Acid tracks but the mix ‘I’ had done of the other side of the tape, he thought I had made KLF / Space. Anyways he offered me so cash to make some other ambient/chillout tapes that he could play in side rooms that didn’t have DJ.s I cant remember if I owned up to Space not being by me but I did make him a mix filling both sides of a C90 and got some cash for it.
Im not sure how often the promotor used this tape at events but I was at one at The Warehouse (Plymouth) were they had the tape playing in a foyer, the vibe wasn’t really right for a chillout area but I still felt kind of cool that my mix was playing and I still remember the annoyance when I saw a some random raver go over to the tape deck take the tape of my mix out and put something else on, the fucker!
I would love it if the chill out room would come back- Im too young for the 90s chill out room so just ended up in the cold outside smoking area if i needed a break from the dance. be lush to hear that music on decent speakers with lots of other people.
Here’s a flyer for the first Chill Out room I played, I had the whole night to fill which I did with the help of my mate Stuart, hes not mentioned on the flyer (it just says Chill DJ Parker) but Stuart did help me out all night.
Our room was upstairs, the downstairs was like the wild west, a really rough volatile crowd, mainly ravers but with enough dealers/taxes/casuals to cause mayhem. So while all that madness was going on downstairs we were upstairs playing all kinds of oddities, mixing stuff like Pink Floyd/Alan Parsons Project (that we got of my friends hippy brother that I referenced in the Worst Gig thread), we bought a tape player that could play tapes backwards so we had all kinds of stuff recorded to tape for the night and had some New Age tapes that I got from the local Alternative Bookstore, and also playing current release stuff that would have Ambient (or at least beat-less mixes). It was a cool night, though must of the people who came up from downstairs looked at us like ‘what the hell are these guys doing’ as they just expected another Dance room.
