After all the drama surrounding fabric recently, London’s woefully low number of good quality clubs was highlighted yet again and now we have news that Plastic People, undoubtedly one of the capital’s best small venues, is to close its doors. In fact, the club will throw its final public event tonight. Sad times for London town right now and the latest in a long line of world-class club spaces to bite the dust.
News came through just a day before the club’s final night, with the club’s manager, Charlotte Kepel, telling Resident Advisor: “We will not open again in 2015. Plastic People had great runs both on Oxford Street and Curtain Road.” She added: “A fabulous time was had and it felt right to move on.”
Besides being a brilliant club space, with a fantastic sound system (which is crucial in our opinion), Plastic People is also famous for being the spot where >>FWD came into its own and dubstep truly flourished. We often feature the club’s Thursday nights in our Party Tips, thanks to Huntley + Palmers excellent bookings and we’re sure they’ll be throwing quite a party there tonight.
As mentioned above, the closure really highlights just how scant the number of good quality, consistent clubs there are in London which is an absolute travesty. London’s scene often gets a bad rap because of this – despite the huge number of influential artists who’ve come from here or been based here, the genres that have been born here and the actual size of the city itself. As a global epicentre for so many cultural movements and industries it’s insane to think that we have an ever-decreasing number of spaces where people can enjoy the music.
I wrote a piece for Mixmag on the state of the London club scene a few years ago and it seems as though things have got worse since then. That’s not to say we have a bad scene as such, but it is steadily losing the ability to compete on a global scale in a market that has grown massively over the last few years, and which has encouraged the growth of the nightlife industry in several capital cities around the world, like New York for instance.
So, another space closes its doors and Plastic People joins Cable, The End and many others in the London clubs hall of fame… let’s hope that list doesn’t continue to grow any bigger.
Big up all the Plastic People team. Thanks for all the good times and all your hard work!
