Troll

Troll was a Saturday night at the Soundshaft, the small club behind Heaven at Charing Cross, running from 1988 to 1990. It was the defining gay acid house night of its moment in London – described by those who were there and those who have written about it since as the gay equivalent of Shoom or The Trip – and it shaped a generation of British gay DJs and clubbers.

The night was promoted by React (James Horrocks, Thomas Foley, and Steven React) and focused on New York house, Detroit techno, and the harder end of Belgian new beat – music that was reaching London from import record shops and occasional visitors from the American scene, and that the gay dancefloor understood before the mainstream had caught up. DJ writer Bill Brewster has described attending Troll as his "Damascene conversion to house music." Almost every London gay DJ who came to prominence in the 1990s is on record as having started clubbing at Troll.

Its two most important resident DJs were Daz Saund and Luke Slater, both of whom built international careers from the foundation of those Saturday nights. Saund went on to become one of the most respected DJs in British house music; Slater became a central figure in techno, releasing on Mute and other significant labels through the 1990s and 2000s.

Troll was directly inspired by Shoom – Danny Rampling's foundational acid house night, which had launched in a South London gym in 1987 – and its significance in gay London was analogous: a night that arrived before the culture had a name for what it was doing, drew a crowd who understood it instinctively, and made something that couldn't be replicated once it was gone. A revival night bringing Troll and Shoom together was held around 2013–15; it was covered in the Guardian.

See also: Soundshaft, Heaven, Shoom, Trade, Daz Saund, Luke Slater