Best Clubs and Clubnights in the UK right now?

i've been a bit bewildered like u by the praise given to plastic people for the same reasons.

i lived in london 2010-2013, and now i've been back since october 2014. during 2010-13, sad as it sounds, WU (when it was at the loughborough junction venue - haven't been since) was the only night i was unreservedly recommending to everyone i knew, mainly for the vibe/cheerful people and music.

from 2010-2013 it felt to me like people i met were going out for big lineups and no one was looking for good vibes, good sound, consistent club to go to etc. i've had plenty of convos with rudewhy and other people about the lack of loyalty to particular nights and the lack of focus on getting the basics right instead of just churning out 500 pre-paid tickets on resident advisor. some ppl i've spoken to put it down to too much choice & competition in ldn, rudewhy said something about groups of students fresh to clubbing going out with their own groups of mates and not mixing. maybe both got some validity.

it's a massive letdown i think. except from bussey i wouldn't wholly recommend any single club. i would only recommend individual nights with some caveats. compared to somewhere like berlin, i could recommend maybe 4 clubs to anyone wanting to go out there and be fairly sure they weren't going to be disappointed.

rundown of my experience of a variety of clubs... fabric u get treated like cattle, some of the crowd are obviously fine, but it's more than likely ur gunna see ppl in there looking like owls frm the amount of mandy they're on (altho we all been there), being aggy in big groups of mans, or leering at/groping girls. i like their techno lineups on some saturdays, so best to go on a saturday night after 3am when the tourists have (hopefully) left. corsica is inconsistent, sometimes very posey, sometimes too packed, sometimes ok, never amazing, staff often grumpy. ministry & xoyo are way too touristy, v v weird mix of ppl and not a good vibe. laundry is new to me, recently went to a night that is cringingly called Trust and is built on some wanky overstated principles of togetherness. everyone was just crowded around the speakers all night. quite a bit of dancing but people were clearly not into it enough from the way they gathered together. studio spaces is another venue for those big lineup nights of the broken & uneven ilk that flit between venues all the time. can't say either way what i think of it yet cuz i've only been for a hyperdub footwork/juke night. that was dry as fuck to me, ppl literally standing stock STILL all thru the front-to-middle of the crowd. went to the troxy for dollop on NYD and i enjoyed that a lot, thought the sound was good, i don't mind those kinda theatre-venues (like the coronet) and ppl were generally up for it. i have been to a few good things in little sweatbox venues in dalston and im sure there is some night-loyalty operating there, buuut those venues have the tendency to end at like 3, 4 or god forbid 2am, wud consider them somewhere between bars & clubs tbh.

if someone asked me for a solid club the only thing i would definitely recommend wud be bussey building, but would advise to check what was going on there cuz it can be seriously hit and miss. i've been to a night called Warm there that i rate just cuz its a fiver in all night and i like the crowd the club tends to draw, but warm's music policy is not always up my street. i have had some good nights at techno things in autumn street studios too so that's worth a look

as for specific nights, it seems to me that the big ones with the very expensive looking lineups (dollop, broken & uneven/electric minds, found etc) flit between venues each time and the crowds can sometimes be cool, sometimes posey and don't dance. the most fun i've had recently has been at the nights people have been recommending on the shuffling thread. frequency at warehouse in tottenham was a massive highlight and that is a good club other than the pretty full-on search. i love to see everyone in a venue dancing wherever they are and fully into it. got high hopes for house of silk and the next house nights i reach. but if the house music's really not ur bag ur not going to be spoilt for choice in ldn right now.

i reckon i've been to a shitload of clubs & nights in ldn, but as a disclaimer i know that as a student i saw a very very studenty side to it. have little knowledge of vauxhall's venues (other than a few nights at lightbox when found, butterz have been there) for example.

edit: that seems a bit harsh about ministry, audio rehab was good there when the groups of tourists cleared off towards the end of the night

studio spaces security are friendly to the point of eeriness

not in a fabric hands down your trousers way

just just incredibly affable

its a good venue though. agree about the crowd at teklife/hyperdub, was a bit better at the ninjatune one.

IdleRich said:

I suppose I should say that now I'm a bit older I'm less and less interested in big room type sounds and my ideal thing is about 200 people with some off the wall music. I feel like that has been something that London has often done well and I've been to some great one-off parties of that kind over the years but I feel that these should be something that should be an addition to the clubscene rather than a replacement for it which is how it feels at the moment (or maybe I'm just out of the loop).

Click to expand...

to sum up & add a bit...

to my mind London's only "clubscene" is deep/tech in the form of the massive nights where all the DJs from the other thread are playing (@ coronet, scala, great suffolk st, warehouse) + some small regular nights/afterparties i see advertised in vauxhall. so if ur looking for the clubscene to verify it's still out there somewhere, give one of them a try.

the nights like the hyperdub/teklife or big label showcases look and feel akin to what i imagine going to see a band is like (never really been to see bands)

the techno & house nights like Trust, broken & uneven, dollop etc are like simulacra of clubscenes. if u like the djs u'll have a good time but there's not a whole lot of vibe there and no one's coming back on the regular. people i've talked to at the house nights often big up the night itself and know where they're going next - whether that's an afterparty or the next big night 3 weeks down the line. think that illustrates a genuine difference in attitudes

Patrick Swayze said:

studio spaces security are friendly to the point of eeriness

not in a fabric hands down your trousers way

just just incredibly affable

Click to expand...

haha altho they did whip my friend's dizzle out her bra

Good thread. I mentioned this before in one of the DJing threads. We don't see clubs/nights breaking their own sound as before. FWD>>, Metalheadz, Sidewinder and so on. Those days when people had week in week out and opportunity to nurture a crowd and distinctive sound. I think things are changing again now though, the shuffling thing is at least an example where DJs found space to carve out something again over time.

The property situation in London, and it's many spin offs, wouldn't fill me with confidence about clubs keeping a toehold, though people having to get more and more creative to deliver the good vibes, good sound and consistency mentioned above could be no bad thing.

if it's not house it's probably fragmented

Sectionfive said:

people having to get more and more creative to deliver the good vibes, good sound and consistency mentioned above could be no bad thing.

Click to expand...

Its done nothing for the club scene clearly otherwise this thread would be rammed out with loads of different nights.

Studio Spaces have been given a 24h license

http://www.factmag.com/2015/01/09/londons-studio-spaces-granted-24-hour-permits-for-2015/

IdleRich said:

I'm really interested in nights that kinda make their own scene rather than which are part of the scene

Click to expand...

one clubnight does not a scene make

i wouldn't have said for example WU created their own scene, they just know how to put on a really good night.

the deep tech nights have definitely made their own scene, the scene being a selection of clubnights and after parties with the same DJs on rotation and familiar crowds that know the tunes.

i fully appreciate it not being some people's sound, but if u really are interested in seeing where London clubbing is at right now, put the tastes aside for a sec and dive into some ethnographic research.

gimme a different example of night>scenehood in london (plz no one mention FWD - think there's a whole loada ppl who think a scene is formed by a group of producers/DJs standing in a room together) so i can get a measure of what ur talking about.

Elijah said:

Its done nothing for the club scene clearly otherwise this thread would be rammed out with loads of different nights.

Click to expand...

that said, the squat and illegal scene seems pretty healthy right now if u know where to look on facebook.

i got a mate who has squatted for years and years in london who seems to know about massive parties goin on every weekend. granted they sound incredibly unreliable, full of teenagers who can't go out yet cuza ID, and occasionally some real nastiness, but it's happenin a lot as an alternative to clubs. wonder if it's got bigger in the last few years or whether i've only just clocked it.

they are usually a total mixup of sounds from dubstep to "ragga-tek" to dnb, but i posted about that house one with jack n danny + x5 dubs (altho i don't think he played cuz he couldn't find the location) so the house thing got the potential to spill into illegal raves too. other than that the music's not my bag at all, gotta be said to be a pretty live scene in some ways tho.

Unfortunately I keep banging on about this cos I've not reached a rave since but Frequency at Warehouse was the best London thing I've been to since DMZ/FWD in its peak years, HEAD AND SHOULDERS ABOVE THE REST. Vibes, music, everything.

Corpsey said:

Unfortunately I keep banging on about this cos I've not reached a rave since but Frequency at Warehouse was the best London thing I've been to since DMZ/FWD in its peak years, HEAD AND SHOULDERS ABOVE THE REST. Vibes, music, everything.

Click to expand...

Ditto Lance Morgan's Frequency Bday party last month. Really liked the space as well, obviously a total myth to get to, but I guess you've got to go that far out to throw a proper party in London these days...

Fudge, held under these railway arches in East London (won't bait them out by giving the actual location) is wicked too! When I went it was pretty quiet in terms of crowd numbers, but it's an amazing space. Semi legal cause you need a ticket/your name to be on the door to get in so they can claim to be a 'private members club', but once you're in you can blaze inside, they were shotting balloons behind the bar at 3 for £5 and it's open non stop from Friday - Sunday evening.

list of "club spaces" and ur writing stuff like "For those who lack the attention span or talent for pool, the ping pong table is a welcoming alternative"..

"Studio Spaces is the closest we have to a European-minded dance floor" i guess this person is trying to say "a good club".

i like the TRC actually but i spoke to the guy who runs it as a venue and he's not having the best time of it, probably explains why there's never much going on there.

search continues eh. i'll have to hit up datwun for that location for fudge at some point