- The most frequent complaint I hear these days in London isn't that there's a lack of venues—it's that there aren't any venues people truly love. Dance Tunnel, which closed for good this past Sunday, didn't quite remedy this feeling, but it came much closer than most others in the city. There were a number of factors behind its appeal, and the one I liked the most was its simplicity: Dance Tunnel was a small, rectangular basement with a great soundsystem. Its size also made it easy to get a party going. Sure, FWD>> on a Thursday was occasionally half full, but the low ceiling and low lighting meant people could lose themselves all the same.
The club's routinely excellent bookings also helped. Dance Tunnel was great at elevating relatively smaller names to headline status, and although many people will remember it as a house club, its lineups frequently included techno, bass music and disco. It had a prime location, on Kingsland High Street in Dalston, one of East London's busiest party spots, but ultimately that's what led to its demise. "Sadly the licensing climate in Hackney has made it impossible for us to get the hours we need to make Dance Tunnel sustainable in the long term," the club said upon announcing its closure.
"It's been like that since eight o'clock," said a man selling the Big Issue on Sunday night, gesturing across Kingsland High Street at an enormous queue of people. For the closing, Dance Tunnel decided to get started early, not charge entry and have friends and family play the music. The club was already one-in, one-out when I arrived close to 10 PM. Opening the door of the basement was like a small-scale version of reaching the top of Berghain's stairs, the heat and atmosphere slapping you across the face. The room was spectacularly hot, but it had a nice, slightly sloppy, end-of-the-weekend feeling.
This wasn't a night for critiquing individual DJ performances, but I can tell you that Miles Simpson, who runs the party Thunder, Matt Hesselworth from Tief and Dance Tunnel owner Dan Beaumont played the final three sets. The party, as you might expect, was an orgy of anthems. There were Prince tunes—"Erotic City," "1999" and, I think, "Controversy." Herbert's remix of "Sing It Back," Pete Heller's "Big Love" and Taylor Dayne's "Tell It To My Heart" did damage, and the new KiNK track, "Valentine's Groove," sounded great. Dan Beaumont actually began his closing hour with slightly more low-key house selections, but by that point we'd heard Genius Of Time's edit of "Love Thang," Kerri Chandler's "Bar A Thym," Josh One's "Contemplation" (the King Britt remix, of course), Andrés's "New For U," New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle" and Womack & Womack's "Teardrops" among many, many other bangers.
As 2 AM approached, everyone inched towards the booth. How would the night be brought to a close? Beaumont had long since gone big, and everyone outside the direct line of the air conditioners was drenched in sweat. He dropped Electronic's "Getting Away With It"—"I'm an original sinner, but when I'm with you I couldn't care less," sang Neil Tennant.
On "Love Me Tonight," Fern Kinney sang: "I miss you so much since you ran away." "My nights are lone and dark are my days." It was easy to bend the lyrics to the situation. Then, the familiar bassline of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams," the final track of the night. After an extended applause, a few half-hearted cries of "one more tune" went up, but everyone knew deep down that the night, and Dance Tunnel, was over.