Not if you were the last club on earth: Matter, London
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Back at the turn of the millennium, The Dome was the UK government’s vision of the future. Housing the Millennium Experience, it cost nearly £800m to build and remained open for a full year before it shut its doors and spent the next six lying idle. Hardly the future that the heads in the Houses of Parliament had in mind.
These days The Dome is called The O2 and the experience is, for the most part, a musical one. Just around the corner from the main arena, cinemas and pizzerias lies Matter, the latest superclub to open its doors to London’s hipsters. It’s a 2,600 capacity club from the brains behind the hugely successful Fabric.
High tech door policy
I visited the club on the second weekend after opening so I’m hoping the hour-long queue outside was just part of the teething problems. Once inside though it was easy to see just why this place took almost 3 years to get off the ground. This particular night the Ed Banger crew were in town, it was a ticket only event and it was all very high tech. No rubber stamps here, or any big burly doormen to administer them (they were all out manning the metal detector at the entrance, hence the long arse queue). Instead, you hold the picture message you received from the club when you booked your ticket over a scanner, beep, and your in.
XXL DJ Boxes
There’s 2 rooms and about 10-12 quality acts playing on any given night. Even the smaller room is big enough to rival any other main club in the city, absolutely ram packed and a nice warm sound from the system. In the main room it’s a completely different ball game. The main dancefloor consists of 2 different levels on the ground floor. Then there’s a stairs up to 2 more mezzanine levels, each with their own bar and if this wasn’t enough, there’s also the ‘VIP Bridge’ crossing the dancefloor some thirty feet up. The music’s delivered from the biggest DJ box I’ve ever seen via 200 speakers and accompanied by some state of the art visuals.
Head out to the smoking area and you’re in for a bit of a shock. It’s really just a guarded off area around the back of the dome in between some massive generators. Kind of reminiscent of an industrial estate and not in line with the décor inside at all.
Talent: Could’ve just been the fact that it was an Ed Banger night when I was there but lots of woolly-haired hipsters in skinny jeans, canvas shoes and leather jackets. In typical London style, spend more time worrying about their own appearance than checking anyone else’s out.
Sounds: Past and future names to grace the decks include 2manyDjs, Modeselektor, Carl Cox, DJ Marky, Jamie Lidell, Louie Vega, DFA and so on.
Toilets: Unisex and HUGE, on more than one occasion I heard the words “Got a probrem bruv?” uttered.
Goodies: If you’re crafty enough to get past the strip search at the door, you’d be well advised to keep them to yourself as punter to security ratio is about 10:1
Icebreaker: “Those trainers are heavy mate”
Jawbreaker: “Who’s playing tonight?”
From Shortie
The Collection: Not if you were the last club on Earth:
[Sankeys - Manchester] (http://www.bodytonicmusic.com/words/2008/oct/17/not-if-you-were-last-club-earth-sankeys-manchester/)
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