This Is The End
Derek Walmsley
I'm pretty melancholy to see The End nightclub is to
close. Unusually for this kind of news, it's not a financially
dictated decision – the management just feel that after 15
years they want to move on.
For those who don't know The End, it's down a dead end alley in
central London. Once you're in and down the main staircase, there's
a bar on one side and the main room on the other. But the main room
isn't a large open space – it's divided by a central partition into
two long tunnels, and with the lights from the DJ end rather dim at
the far end of the room, you can feel completely lost in the gloom
down there. You're never submerged into a large crowd because of
the way the room is divided up, you just feel scattered amongst
small groups of ravers. At the back of the room is a second set of
speakers, so even if you can't see the DJ, you get a full, primal
blast of whatever he's playing. So you're both physically
disconnected and totally plugged into the music.
For me the effect of being in a rave has always had a kind of fight
or flight psychology; you face the DJ, because you feel a bit
exposed if you don't, and you feel totally switched on, attuned to
the space. The End was great because the space felt so complex and
fluid, it didn't feel like you were just in a crowd. Every space in
the crowd felt particular. If there was a subtle sense
of chaos there, but the music was always fiercely strong. I
remember DJ Krust playing "Warhead" down there, and the bass felt
like the roof was going to lift off. In later years, dubstep and
Grime events have been pretty terrific, too.
It's strange to reminisce about The End and compare these thoughts
to a recent Resident Advisor list of The Top
100 Clubs In The World. Although I appreciated the sentiment of
the list, to have somewhere so impersonal and physically
intimidating as Fabric at number two just seemed to miss what's
special about the dance music experience, ie the subjective,
personal space that can be created in a nightclub.
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