Slimelight
Coordinates: 51°31′57″N 0°6′19″W / 51.53250°N 0.10528°W Slimelight (sometimes referred to as Slimes) is a London club night. It is the longest running alternative-dark scene club event in the world, and has been at its present location, Electrowerkz, since 1987.[1]
The club takes place every Saturday night from 11 pm until 7:30 am. The venue has 3 levels with 2 stages, and 5 distinct areas—usually Slimelight has 2 or 3 dance floors open. Most of the ground floor exists in its current state due to a pop up restaurant from Carsten Höller which co-existed with the club for several months.[2]
A variety of music genres are played, pre-eminently: electronic body music (EBM), futurepop, electro-industrial/aggrotech, darkwave, goth rock/deathrock, batcave, old-school synthpop, coldwave/new wave, old-school EBM, industrial/post-industrial and crossover electronic music including minimal tech, dark techno and dark trance – spread over 2 or 3 dance floors.
Slimelight was initially a private members only night club with a bring your own drink policy, and any new members would be required to be nominated by a minimum of two existing members. This changed in the late 90s when it became a licensed premises. During the club nights in the early nineties the club would often show art-house and alternative horror movies to entertain club goers when not dancing on the one dance floor playing a cross section of alternative music before the second dance floor concentrating on goth music opened in 1991 leaving the existing floor to concentrate on industrial. The nights were frequented by people who wanted to express themselves freely by their sense of fashion with the majority of the club members in the mid nineties would be either new wave hippies, goths, industrial fans, or part of the fetish scene.
Pre Slimelight concerts take place on a regular basis which normally include free entry to the club, and from time to time live acts appear as part of actual club night. Artists who have appeared at Slimelight over the years include VNV Nation, The Crüxshadows, Assemblage 23, Velvet Acid Christ and Nitzer Ebb.
The club night started out in the 1980s as a squat in Ladbroke Grove, London. At that time it had the name the Kitkat Club at the Pleasure Dive.
The club's facilities were rather basic when it was first started. The name comes from the fact that for a brief period in the summer of 1987 the club was held in a disused church on High Holborn, and "The Slimelight" is a parody of The Limelight, another famous club of that era which was also located in a church in London's Shaftesbury Avenue. Over the years the club has been renovated and upgraded to feature all the mod cons of a proper nightclub, however it retains much of its decaying, abandoned feeling, due partly to the architecture and the state of disrepair of some facilities.
References
- ↑ Yardley, Miranda (29 November 2010). "Slimelight, London". terrorizer.com. Retrieved 30 June 2013.
- ↑ "The Double Club / About". Archived from the original on 20 March 2012.