domdavis.com

I’ve been meaning to go to this club since I first heard about it 3+ months ago but I’ve found of hard to get concrete information about when it was on or even if it was still going. Ironically the one night I do get confirmation about (yay facebook) was the last ever one. Anyhoos I toddled over, glowsticks in hand to see what, if anything, I’d been missing out on.

The flyers and website listed the types of music as EBM (good), Industrial (good), bleepy (probably good), goth (hmmm) and WTF? (could be anything) so I figured it would be a fairly safe bet that I’d enjoy it but there was the slight concern that it would be way too much goth and not enough good stuff (I’m looking at you Inferno). 5 hours is a long time to be stuck in a club by yourself with crap music.

The club itself is under the railway arches at London bridge so after a warm welcome to me and my “lovely money” at the door I walked into the first arch which was the bar and a large seating area. The next arch was the dancefloor. There didn’t seem to be any more to the club other than toilets so I grabbed a drink and investigated the dancefloor.

It was pretty obvious that this was a club that people went to be seen at rather than to dance. Still, the music was good, if a little cheesy so I had a bit of a boogie (sans glowsticks) for 15 minutes or so.

At midnight we were told there was a show in the other room. Turns out there was a third arch that had previously been closed off. The show was some bizarre performance art piece that seemed to involve a girl cutting herself out of her clothes until she was rather quote naked. I only caught a few bits of it as I really wasn’t interested and just stuck my head round the corner every now and then.

Meanwhile the goth set started in ernest on the dancefloor. We’re talking real trad goth two steps in, two steps out wavy hands stuff here (with everyone going at different speeds which is always amusing). Not being a huge goth fan I sat it out.

At about 12:30 the show finished and the second dancefloor opened. For 30 minutes there was what was possibly the WTF set. I didn’t know any of the tracks and no one was really on the dancefloor.

By 1am I was getting a bit worried that I was in for a bit of a long night. I’d danced to a few things but it was more bouncing about to New Model Army than waving my arms about like a loon to good stuff. Thankfully the industrial set started in the second room. I’m not one to scoff at some Ministry and NiN so some good old fashioned bouncing about was had (not quite fit enough to bounce like a loon to the whole of Stigmata). After the industrial came the EBM and out came the glowsticks. 2 and a half hours later and I was soaking wet and wishing that this wasn’t the last track.

Other highlights include me being complimented on my tshirt a few times (it was the Damaged Goods one), and a few people doing the whole we’re not worthy thing as I waved various colour of glow about in front of the throng (club wasn’t big enough for it to be a crowd).

Given I’m now a member of Slimelight I’m not sure if I’d go to this club every month but since it’s closing that’s a bit of a moot point. Still, I’m busy tomorrow night so no slimelight so it made for am interesting alternative where I didn’t end up talking to Germans (every time I talk to people at clubs they turn out to be German… or French).