Now though, hipsters from Hoxton to Hackney won’t know what’s hit them as the long-awaited Rough Trade East opens its impeccably designed doors. The new shop is bigger and a lot smarter than the Talbot Road original, but the management maintain that it’s just as focused on ‘counter culture’, which effectively means being able to quack on with the staff about records you might like. To make sure you’ve got something to quack about, Rough Trade have promised there will also be listening posts galore. In fact, they showed them to us, or at least the power outlets where they will be.
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There were also concrete spaces where, we are reliably informed, there will be a gallery/reading area, a cosy café and – Zaha Hadid BMW plant-style – the Rough Trade offices, suspended over customers’ heads. However, when we last visited the shop-to-be, Time Out had to use quite a lot of imagination to visualise the finished article, so we can’t guarantee any of this, and there’s a chance that the animatronic smoke-breathing Godzilla bong-slide of our mentally completed version won’t be there either. But what there definitely will be is a stage, which promises to take the in-store gig to the next level. Acts booked to perform in the near future include outstanding Atlanta bastards Black Lips (September 5) and terrifically popular feelgood beatmakers The Go! Team (September 4).
Starting this week, though, Rough Trade has lined up an admirable programme of heavyweight gigs to celebrate their opening and attract excitable customers, starting with New Young Pony Club’s appearance, alongside some ‘special guests and old friends’ (prior to ankle fracture we were betting that meant Klaxons) on Thursday. This is followed by Richard Hawley launching his new single ‘Tonight These Streets Are Ours’ on August 6, a super-exciting showcase from DFA’s premier UK singing Prinzhorn Dance School on August 7 and retro-futurist synth-botherers The Ghost Frequency on August 8.
Most revolutionary of all, August 14 and 16 will see the shop hosting all-night parties, in conjunction with Trouble records and Merok respectively. Both these bashes, starring the cutting-edge likes of underground Canadians Crystal Castles and filthy French types The Teenagers, are to celebrate the launch of Rough Trade’s special ultra-limited edition seven-inch singles, which will be available only from their shops.
And that’s not all. Since we’re such big pals with Rough Trade, we’ve managed to arrange some special treats for Time Out readers, too. Simply take your copy of Time Out into the shop before August 6 and you can win a special pass which guarantees entry to every Rough Trade East show until September! Even the cool ones! Two runners-up will receive the less glamorous but probably more financially valuable prize of a copy of either ‘Rough Trade V Trouble’ or ‘Rough Trade V Merok’ on vinyl. Don’t say we never do anything for you.
