Okay, so the queue was really, really long. We had to spend a stupidly long time in the queue.

The creative people of ARCSOC teamed up with perennial promoters Turf to put on yet another silly event in one of Cambridge’s least used spaces last Friday, and the logistics through the evening left a lot to be desired. From bouncers via bathrooms to the unfortunate sight of the room being stripped while the last tracks were still playing, it is obvious that there were failures throughout the planning and execution that made some people’s nights an honest misery.

But that doesn’t discount the night entirely. The important parts of it were still there; still just about functional. Fortunately, most of the surviving parts were the important ones: soundsystem, DJ, crowd. And most strikingly of all, dancefloor. The space itself was a genuinely inspired choice – the Guildhall is ornate and warm, but not ostentatiously so and the entirety of the organ fascia was projection-mapped with vast, highlighter-psych patterns spewed out on its surface.

A room of that size created a dynamic not simply captured by “the back of the room was empty”. With that abundance of space, the attendees had a choice they are not usually afforded – if you wanted a more intense, claustrophobic club experience, you could dive into the middle of the crowd and do your tight-shouldered shuffle. But others, myself included, did not. After the pass through the crowd for the obligatory ‘hey, you look great, see you around!’, I wandered back to a group of friends, to the back of the hall, and danced like I haven’t in weeks. The sound was acceptable and easily loud enough, but the crucial aspect was that space. It allowed a natural sorting – people were, for once, fully in control of their movement, so they ended up where they wanted, with the company they wanted, with the experience they wanted. Cambridge always feels like a cramped town; its clubs even more so. Comparing the experience to the battery farming simulation of most popular nights out, it was a revelation. An added bonus was the substantial reduction in macho, aggressive behaviour when no-one was fighting over the same square inch.

The music choice was absolutely fine, if no more than that – Turf’s residents pumped out slick, enthusiastic disco and house for the first part of the evening, before handing over to Afriquoi, who performed their trademark, raucously fun act. There was a marginal lack of intensity, with the visceral impact sometimes getting lost in the rafters of the venue, but everything came across as well as it needed to for the hyped crowd.

There are some issues to be dealt with. There is no excuse for the kind of threat everyone felt from the venue’s security. There is no excuse for not providing decent bathrooms. Similarly (and really, ARCSOC, learn how to PR on this one) there is no excuse for putting sex dolls in the windows, as good as the joke might have seemed in planning.

I hope they don’t just steamroll the complaints and continue as before. There has been a solid idea at the centre of every ARCSOC night I’ve been to, and this was no different. If they can figure out how to fix the more egregious faults, they’ll be back on form sooner or later.