Dipusat Kota London baru saja dibuka sebuah club baru berkapasitas 2600 clubbers yang masih satu management dengan Fabric Club. Berikut liputan yang dibuat oleh Dave Swindells
It?s high time London had a new venue to get excited about. All the recent news has been about the closures of clubs and live arenas, from the Hammersmith Palais and The Spitz to the finale parties of The Cross, The Key and Canvas on New Year?s Eve. At Easter Turnmills shut its doors for the last time, and now we have the impending demise of the Astoria.
But Matter, the 2,600-capacity venue being built under the dome of the O2 Arena by the team which runs Fabric, promises to be the best of its size in the world. It?s due to open on September 18, but Time Out has an exclusive sneak view and exploration of why the Fabric team is launching a new location further east.
?It?s an amazing building. It?s iconic,? Fabric managing director, Cameron Leslie, said as he showed me around Matter. Controversially, he was talking about the dome itself, whose reputation he sees as having been tainted by the Millennium Exhibition . He?s a champion of the venue, although initially the Fabric team declined the advances of AEG, the US sports and leisure conglomerate which owns the 02. ?All we knew about the Dome at that point was the failed casino bid.? Feature continues
When Leslie and Fabric?s founder Keith Reilly subsequently visited the site in 2006, what really enticed them was the chance to design and purpose build a venue which would have none of the problems associated with converting an existing location. Unlike their Clerkenwell club, which was created in arches previously used as a three-floor Victorian cold-store for the adjacent meat market, Matter will not require a massive renovation project before it is adapted for use. Leslie emphasises that none of the myriad expansion proposals which have been offered to Fabric since it opened nine years ago have presented them with an opportunity as good as this.
He also emphasises tha tMatter will not be ?Son of Fabric?. Whereas Fabric is a 1,500-capacity nightclub which occasionally hosts different events, ?matter? has been designed by architect William Russell of Pentagram to operate as a live venue, a club, a performing arts space or a VIP club, with its own separate entrance ? possibly fulfilling all of those functions within the same night. Its principal appeal is likely to be its 2,000-capacity auditorium with unique audio and visual features. There are two balconies overlooking the huge stage in addition to a dancefloor which should ensure very good sightlines ? and also that no one in the main auditorium is more than 15m from the stage. If you?re already familiar with Fabric?s ?bodysonic? dancefloor ? which is designed to vibrate to the frequencies of the bass speakers built in directly below it ? then wait till you feel the ?bodykinetic? dancefloor at Matter. And plans for the 3D mapped visuals and interlocking screens a tMatter sound like something from a sci-fi novel. ?This is exactly the same question that you would have asked us in 1999,? laughs Leslie, as we discuss the location. ? ?What?s going to make people go to somewhere like Smithfield and Farringdon; it?s not even on the map, is it?? ' Fabric soon proved naysayers wrong in EC1, where it maintains a reputation as one of the world?s finest underground music venues. Leslie is sure that they?ll repeat the feat at ?matter?. So there?s a precedent for making a success of going east.
?We?re piggybacking all the hard work they?ve done,? says Leslie of the O2 Arena, which celebrates its first birthday this month. ?I wouldn?t say that we have to educate people about this site, because by the time we open there will probably be 4.5 million people that will have gone to the Arena who know that it?s in Zone 2, it?s on the best tube line and it?s a lot easier to get to than Wembley.?
The phenomenal success of the O2 Arena can?t mask the fact that its interior feels like a shopping mall. Visitors to Matter, though, will use a separate entrance to a venue where the attention to detail and customer care promises to be as good as the music ? there?ll be 2,000 secure parking spaces and women will have access to 60 toilet cubicles for example. Talk of toilets may seem superfluous at this point, but try telling that to girls who miss their favourite band or DJ because they spend half the night in queues.
Matter will be served by the Thames Clipper boat services which are due to operate every half hour throughout the night. The prospect of taking an Oyster card-compatible half-hour express catamaran ride back to Waterloo Pier (it?s 15 minutes to Tower Bridge) may attract some people to Matter just for the fun of the ride home.