LA4

Went to LA4 on sunday night, and it was fairly empty when we got there and it didn't pick up by the time we left. It seems that everywhere in South London was fairly quiet on Sunday night from the sounds of it as people save themselves up for the bank holiday weekend. Or maybe it was just general boredom of the scene by the regular clubbers, hard to tell.

So what to say, I am a big fan of LA3/LA4's music policy, and I would love for the club to succeed. I never really liked it at FIRE and my thoughts about Factory are a bit mixed. On the one hand its a gorgeous venue and it has a lot of potential. On the other, it suffers from the same pitfalls that made LA3 unsuccesful at FIRE in the first place ... the first being that moving the night to Vauxhall just made it another pitstop on the now familiar (to most) path of Beyond / Later / RVT / Horsemeat Disco. By the time you get to the LA there are no fresh new faces to revitailize the night and make it more interesting, just the same queens you've seen all day (weekend) long. Gone is the sense of excitement of taking a cab to Old Street with potential fresh totty waiting at the other end.

The second is that Factory as a venue seems too clinical and clean, where you need something a bit rougher and tougher for a sunday night. The podiums are too high, the lighting in the front room is too red (although the bartender was cute!) and the dj box is also way too high (in both rooms). All the bitching aside, Factory has a lot of potential as a venue, they just need to rethink the space and adjust accordingly. Make the front room a bit darker, give it a cosier feel and lower everything (podium, dj boxes, etc). Too bad the punters didn't get there, Sugarbear played a really great set in the main room as did the other djs that I caught. So I will go back to LA4 a few more times in the hopes that it will recapture the magic that was LA3 last summer ... people say you can't catch lightening in a bottle twice, I choose not to believe that.