There has been a lot of positive feedback and some negative also so we would like to take this opportunity to comment on some of these points please:
First of all the issue of capacity – this event was not over capacity. Fire nightclub has been running for 10 years and not by flouting their legal capacity! Apart from anything else the venue would not jeopardise their licence by overcrowding, so we had strict guidelines from Fire themselves as to how many people we would be able to allow in and we tailored our ticket allocation accordingly. We had the right number of people in the venue, but unfortunately, the distribution of people across the three rooms of music was uneven. Security were posted on entry points to the rooms to assist flow, but in retrospect and with respect to all involved, we should have opted for stronger programming in The Lightbox (although in fact, the practicalities of that are a little less straightforward - we had everyone we wanted on the line-up already, or artists only wanted to play in rooms 1 or 2 etc.). Room 3 was relatively sparse for large parts of the night; had it been busier it would have helped remove the pressure on rooms 1 and 2 and a better equilibrium of all three rooms found. We have to hold our hands up on this point however – it was the first time we have used the venue on that scale and we simply got that wrong - are truly very sorry about that.
Venue security - this is a matter we take extremely seriously and we shall be speaking to the venue about all the feedback we have received. Obviously nightclub security have a very important job to do, ensuring the safety of their patrons, but that should not come at the expense of courtesy and manners; if the stories we are hearing are accurate then some answers will be required. The venue security are employed by Fire directly however, so if you feel that you were mistreated in any way, please contact them on
info@conceptlondon.net as they will need to handle all enquiries directly.
Thieves – it seems that there are some cases of people having had phones/wallets stolen. There does currently appear to be an epidemic of sorts with professional thieves rife in London’s nightclubs. There is signage around the venue alerting people to this and to be vigilant but it is a big problem at the moment and whilst the screening process on the front door aims to remove this rogue element, it’s a very difficult thing to clock. If you were a victim of this please get in touch with the venue and they will do their best to assist.
This event was a collaborative effort between Basslaced & Exit Records that took months of careful planning with everything, from the whole line-up for the event, to the widespread marketing so as to reach our whole fanbase. It was a celebration of Ten years of the label and we wanted everything to be absolutely perfect. Unfortunately (and with the greatest will in the world) it wasn’t, but any suggestion that this was only about making money shows no appreciation of who we are or what we are about.
Venues are hard to come by in London at the moment and Fire is by no means the finished article but we’re working on it and we shall be looking to address the issues that have been raised here ASAP. It is however a space that was willing to give us the opportunity to take over their whole club so we could put together an event that would do this key milestone justice.
There has been a lot of positive feedback and there are some great videos of the night. A massive thank you to all of the DJs; the high quality level of music and the effort put into preparing and performing their sets was outstanding. But most of all though, we are truly grateful to all the people that came and showed support for the event and the label. Thank you and once again our sincere apologies to all of those whose enjoyment of the night was impaired.
Basslaced & Exit Records.