Clubs

Look up ‘Cable Street’ on Google, and you’re likely to read about the famous Battle of Cable Street, when thousands of anti-fascists rallied in east London to stop the march of Oswald Mosley’s blackshirt brigades in 1936. Nowadays, Cable Street is famous for very different kinds of riotous behaviour, but like those anti-fascists it is equally welcoming of diversity. Cable Street Studios, at the eastern end of the road, has become the go-to place for all kinds of after-hours naughtiness. Just around the corner from Limehouse DLR you can find round-the-clock clubs and raves, a fetish dungeon-cum-club (The Whipping House), an indie-band and spoken-word venue (Jamboree), anything-goes transgender parties (Stunners) and carry-on capers that may move from club to club for as long as the people are willing to keep going.
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Unit 7, where Neon Noise Project returns on June 21 (with Australia’s anarchic and brilliant Bang Gang Deejays, plus DJ sets by fellow Modular signings Bumblebeez, JBAG and electrobass titans Hannah Holland, Mikki Most and Ian Robinson from Trailer Trash) is the largest of these factory-and-warehouse-spaces-turned-nightclubs. Steve Burkes and Italian DJ-producer Cristiano Serioli have run the 650-capacity, three-room club for two-and-a-half years. When they hosted the first of many Mulletover parties there, it was an extremely basic, beaten-up sort of space, but they’ve ploughed all their money into the venue and steadily improved it with clever styling, lighting and a great sound system, so it’s now one of the best underground dance venues in London. They launch a new monthly electronic dance night for music producers to showcase their material, Alive & Kicking, on Friday June 27. At the first Neon Noise Project party in April the presence of MSTRKRFT, The Autokratz and Bloggers Delight drew a sell-out crowd whose dance moves only raised the temperature. Burkes assures us that the rainforest-style micro-climate which enveloped the main room that night should be alleviated by the installation of more fans and extraction motors last week. ‘I hate freezing air-conditioning,’ he adds, ‘so it may still be warm, but not hot.’

Unit 7 was granted a full licence in January, as were Club Red (on the Butcher Row side of the Studios) and The Whipping House up on the penthouse floor. Lady K, a dominatrix who has run The Whipping House for over four years (‘It started off as my dungeon. I still use it for my private work during the day’) and is a partner in Red, has been refurbishing both venues ever since by way of celebrating their legal status. Red has a capacity of 450 and has hosted parties run by www.tillate.com, the Burlington Project and plenty of post-Retox I Love Mondays after-parties. ‘Red is the posh one out of all of them,’ chuckles Lady K.

‘One of the beauties of the Studios is that these venues are all totally different,’ she says, ‘yet they complement each other, and there’s
a lot of co-operation between us. We know that if we’re in trouble we’ve got support and vice versa.’ It’s a far cry from when she arrived early in 2004. ‘When I moved in, most of the people here were squatters and most of the windows were broken. It was dark, it was dingy, it was dangerous. There were robberies all the time. I wasn’t scared, though; I quite liked exploring the place…’

Explore now, and you’ll find 200 studios in all, most of which are occupied by visual artists and musicians of all kinds, from screen-printers to 3D sculptors and from bands to internet radio stations. A two-storey art gallery should open off the main courtyard soon, while Café 566 opens seven days a week. ‘Now that the café is open,’ says Burkes, ‘and once new studios like our new smaller one, C4, are operating regularly, you could in theory enter Cable Street on Friday night and not come out till Monday lunchtime.’

Neon Noise Project is at Unit 7 on June 21. Alive & Kicking is at Unit 7 on June 27. See also www.unitseven.co.uk, www.ladyk.co.uk and www.stunners.tv.