The thing I immediately noticed at the return of Gardener’s Club this past weekend was the crowd. “They all look the same,” I told my Best Judy as we approached the doorway towards a queue of black wife-beaters and dark grey stonewashed jeans. Turns out — I was being a Judge Judy. Because inside the low-ceiling warehouse of Apollo AV in Paarden-my-Eiland was a whole cast of characters that were anything but copy-pasted.
The DIY techno event, which started during COVID as an intimate party between friends, returned after a two-year hiatus. It began, the organisers tell me, with “just a hundred and fifty people on a grassy patch by a river out past the Huguenot Tunnel,” before growing into warehouse parties of increasing size. The two-year break came after the loss of The Factory, the Paarden Eiland warehouse that had become Gardener’s Club’s home, and a venue that Cape Town’s underground is still feeling kak from losing. Rather than downsize or compromise the experience, they decided to wait. “We didn’t want to move somewhere smaller and undersell what Gardener’s is, so we waited.”
Eventually, they landed on Apollo AV — a smaller space, but one that they felt could still accommodate the Gardener’s Club experience. “It ended up being one of our favourite events we’ve ever thrown,” they tell me. “So intimate, the crowd was so present.” It certainly packed out the warehouse, attracting a fevered following of fashionable 20-somethings and new-gen rave kids who seemed to arrive with one agenda in mind: dance. I’ll confess — this was my first time at Gardener’s Club. I’ve known about the series for a while, but never made the trek to the Eiland for one of their parties. Apollo can be a complicated venue to navigate, with most of its square metres consumed by the dance-floor and little room left over for chilling or hanging out. Not that much of the latter was needed for this lot.
Aside from background noise pockets of TikTokers making sure the night was lived vicariously through their phone screens, this was a dance-floor committed to squeaking takkie. Contrary to my initial impression, it was also welcomely diverse — colours, genders and all different expressions of human beings found a space without feeling out of place. Now that is a vibe, my guy.
“Our events have always been a bit more lush than your normal raw techno night, because for us it’s never just about the music,” the organisers explain. A sense of immersion is central to what Gardener’s Club is trying to create, and the team point to the work of Angelo (MVP!), lighting designer and Apollo AV technician, who has been with the party since its inception Their lighting and sound run off the same board, they explain, meaning “it’s all just one thing.” The intention is to create those moments “where you’re so present you don’t even want to take out your phone. You just want to be there.” Gardener’s Club makes a convincing argument for the dance-floor as a total sensory experience, and I found myself absorbed by the world they had built from light and smoke whenever I rooted myself in the thick of it.
The sound prioritises contemporary techno, and much of what was being spun wouldn’t have sounded out of place at any given Berlin venue on a Saturday night. Most of the lineup I managed to catch segued into each other seamlessly, although this sometimes came at the expense of a more dynamic arc for the ravenous ravers who clamoured in the sweet spot front-right of the booth (set up, of course, under a tin-roof shed) for most of the night. Though they didn’t seem particularly bothered. They were too occupied losing themselves under the truly impressive lightscape Gardener’s Club had set up above our heads.
Intelligently placed lasers shot beams from two corners of Apollo towards the windows on the opposite side of the room, reflecting back to create an interlocked matrix of light that shifted from acid green to cherry red, with moments of white strobe and that tried-and-true Pano Bar trick of lighting the entire space at strategic moments during sets. It gave the dance floor a vivid, visceral sense of movement that could otherwise have felt one-dimensional. For a party whose identity is so closely tied to its production, this felt like the real payoff: the room itself became part of the performance.
Deylin Universe, who opened the party, lit a decent fire under everyone’s ass, and things stayed moving into the following set from duo and Gardener’s Club residents, Locked Illusions. Gardener’s Club organiser Vøltage, who went b2b with Big Red, drew the already enthusiastic crowd even closer with a properly high-wattage set. By the time Terminus came on, this girl was partied-out. The joys of being in your 30s, I guess. Though I have no doubt both the Joburg DJ/producer and young stalwart Justyn Nell, who closed the night off, had no issues holding this crowd’s attention.
The seed planted by the team behind this party nearly six years ago has germinated into a whole community of avid gardeners. There is a lot of love here, and an ambition to really create something special. Gardener’s Club already has an audience — and, judging by the sweat-drenched bodies packed onto Apollo’s dance floor, they seem more than ready to help sow that sapling into a whole forest. “Apollo’s a great winter home,” Gardener’s Club tells me. “For summer we’re still on the hunt, so if you’ve got a space, come find us.” I have no doubt someone will.
All photography by Daniel Louis, courtesy of Gardener’s Club.
