North London has a new club and it’s actually good

Sometimes I look around London’s nightlife and think: how hard can it be?

Not literally, obviously. When I'm not writing this newsletter in my spare evenings, I work in publishing and admire music from afar, which means I know just enough to see how little I know about the business of opening a venue.

I get the basics. I understand that opening a nightclub is not quite the same as opening a coffee shop, itself not an easy feat. There are licences, planning applications, neighbours, fire regulations, soundproofing, insurance, and an absolutely terrifying number of things that can go wrong. But there are thousands of people in this city who love music, understand nightlife, know what makes a good room and spend every weekend trying to find one and bemoaning the venues that don't match up. The illegal party scene is full of them and there are hordes of promoters out there putting on excellent event after excellent event.

So why doesn't everyone just open a good nightclub? It feels like there should be more of them.

London is full of people who could probably put on a better night than half the people currently doing it. DJs know what sounds good. Promoters know what makes a room work. Every raver has opinions about sound systems, door policies, ticket prices, toilets, smoking areas, lighting, bar prices and whether the person standing directly in front of the booth is ruining the entire fucking night

And yet, somehow, opening a nightclub remains an extraordinarily difficult thing to do.

Partly, I suppose, because nightclubs are a fundamentally weird business. You spend an enormous amount of money building a space that is effectively designed to be used for a few hours, a few nights a week. You need a building that can withstand hundreds of people dancing, drinking and occasionally making terrible decisions at 5AM. You need to convince a landlord, a council, the police, your neighbours and probably several different insurers that what you're proposing is a sensible use of a building.

Then you need to somehow make money from it, and that does seem to be where the romantic idea of opening a club starts to fall apart.

If you're lucky, you might have £500,000 or someone willing to lend you it. You might find an amazing basement. You might install an incredible sound system. You might book the best DJs in the city. You might create the kind of room you've always wanted to dance in.

And then you discover that you need to sell an absolutely enormous number of £20 tickets and £8 cans of lager just to keep the lights on.

Which is probably why so many of London's best clubs feel like minor miracles. I thought this sat outside while visiting Radial this weekend, a new club in Tottenham Hale; I'll write more about below.

But I've had this thought before, often while visiting new and exciting venues for the first time, wondering how long they'll be able to stay open.

This is because every time a genuinely good room opens, it feels like somebody has somehow managed to solve a puzzle that should be impossible. They've found the building. They've got the licence. They've survived the refurbishment. They've convinced enough people to come. They've paid everyone. They've kept the neighbours happy. They've built a dancefloor that actually feels like a dancefloor. After all of that, then they have to hope they've made enough money to open up again next weekend.

Thinking about it today, mostly because Radial really is a wonderful little spot, I've realised that the question isn't really why doesn't everyone open a good nightclub. It's why, given how much money, effort and bullshit it takes to do it, does anyone open one at all?

It's making me appreciate the good one a little more, and has reminded me I really should spend more in the places I truly enjoy.

A couple of weeks back I played a set at my friend Phil's houseparty, and I was pretty happy with it, so i'm going to link it here. Thanks for tolerating the indulgence.

Earlier in the year, I was practising a lot and working hard on trying to get proficient enough to play out. I played out a few times, but in honesty I'm just not sure I enjoy playing gigs all that much. What I've found instead is that I quite enjoy playing at house parties, where I'm less stressed about everything being perfect (a ridiculous goal) and more interested in playing music for my friends.

For this one I had to play housy and spent a week listening to tracks to try and find something I vibed with, but I was really happy with the end result. It's here on SoundCloud if you're reading the newsletter via email.

North London has long needed a new venue. Sure, there’s Drumsheds and Rowans, but there’s currently nothing between London’s premier superclub and Drumsheds. You can go absolutely massive, or you can go properly grassroots, but there hasn’t been much in between.

Then Radial arrived in Tottenham.

You never quite know what you’ll get when you walk into a venue for the first time, but I wasn't expecting to vibe with Radial as much as I did when I went on Sunday.

I probably should have had some idea after I went through the world’s nicest security checkpoint, where security let us keep our cameras on the honour system despite it being a no-camera venue, and even offered to store our water bottles for us because we had water they’d decided was fancy.

Inside, there was a courtyard serving Ghanaian food, a quiet bar and music thumping from somewhere within. The food was good, although £18 for a platter was eye-watering, and the bar was reasonably priced with a decent selection.

But the thing I noticed most about Radial was how friendly the staff were. Alongside the security being lovely, the bar staff that served me seemed attentive and interested, with one member of staff asking if it was my first time and seeming genuinely enthusiastic that we were checking the place out. Later, another member of staff stopped by to get a lighter, bantering for a minute in a way that you would never see at several of the cities other clubs.

That's not to say that this is particularly revolutionary. Staff being friendly should be the bare minimum for any venue, but I've spent enough time in different venues around London to know that that isn't always the case and, well, Radial should be given a bit of credit for making an effort.

But the staff being relaxed helped to create a looseness to Radial that I wasn't expecting. Mid-afternoon on a Sunday had the same relaxed feel as when everyone's been at Fold a little too long and the smoking terrace has a few disparate groups of people chatting away.

This was the Sunday of a launch weekend, so obviously I’m reluctant to make any grand claims about the atmosphere. A Sunday is going to feel different to a pounding Saturday night a year from now, when the venue has settled into its identity and everyone knows exactly what they’re coming for.

But first impressions count. And Radial’s first impression was that it was somewhere that actually wanted you to have a good time.

Then you get onto the dancefloor.

Radial is a 250-capacity space and, aesthetically, it is not exactly trying to compete with the big boys. The room feels a little like a shipping container with some benches inside. There’s nothing particularly glamorous about it, and I mean that as a compliment. Because it doesn’t need to be glamorous. The important thing is that it sounds good.

The room has clearly been designed around what comes out of the speakers rather than what looks impressive. Dancing away to Klose One and Karlie Marx -the latter of which I've wanted to see since stumbling upon the unhinged KARLIE MARXISM VOL.1 last year- I moved from the back of the room to right in front of the decks and found the whole space sounded pretty damn solid.

I'm not technically minded when it comes to sound systems, but it's clear there's some real weight here without turning everything into an indistinguishable wall of bass.

Ultimately, A club is somewhere you go to listen to music loudly with other people. Everything else is basically decoration and this is where Radial starts to make sense. It’s small. But that is probably its biggest strength.

There is something about a 250-capacity room that you simply cannot recreate when you’re standing in a venue designed to hold thousands. You can see the DJ. You can recognise people. You can move around without feeling like you need to plan your route across the dancefloor. You can leave the room, get some air, come back and still feel like you’re part of the same night. That small size means that it'll be easy to keep control of the atmosphere in the future, too.

London has some extraordinary clubs, but the economics of nightlife increasingly encourage scale. If you’re going to pay London rent, book artists and somehow make the numbers work, there's always going to be a temptation to pack as many people through the door as possible.

Radial is at the other end of the scale, a tiny room that's going to need sharp booking and a bit of community support to survive. But I've seen enough here to have some faith, and I hope that we're soon going to start seeing serious DJs and promoters bringing big events to the space.

And there’s something particularly satisfying about that happening in Tottenham. Because Radial isn’t simply a random club that has been dropped into North London. It comes out of the existing musical community around Ten87 Studios, which has spent years providing space for artists, producers and musicians and boasts of producers like Mount Kimble, SBTRKT, DJ Boring amongst its members.

That gives it a different starting point from a venue that opens because someone has identified a promising location on a property spreadsheet. There is already a reason for people making music to be there.

Now there is another reason for people listening to it to come along. That matters because scenes don’t really emerge from nowhere. They need rooms.

I feel like I beat the "small clubs are important for the ecosystem" drum quite a lot, but increasingly it feels like there needs to be somewhere for DJs that have cut their teeth on the open decks or places like Faded Community events need their next big step.

The massive clubs are important, obviously. London wouldn’t be London without them, but you can't build a musical community entirely from the top down. You build it in small rooms where people can hear someone they've never heard before and decide they like it.

Radial feels like it could be that sort of room, and that makes it immediately exciting. It also helps that the venue seems comfortable with being a little bit different. There’s the courtyard, the food, the bar and the different ways the space can be used beyond simply turning the lights off and putting a DJ on.

London has enough places trying to be enormous, what it needs are more places that know exactly how big they want to be.

Radial is 250 people in a room in Tottenham, listening to a DJ through a good sound system while someone outside is eating Ghanaian food and the security team are being suspiciously nice about your expensive water.

If that doesn't excite you, you probably haven't tried it out yet. In fact, it might be exactly what North London has been missing.

There’s definitely a temptation whenever a new club opens to immediately ask whether it is going to become important. Whether it will become an institution, whether people will still be talking about it in ten years, whether it will produce some mythical night that everyone who was there will spend the rest of their lives telling everyone else about.

It’s far too early to know any of that about Radial.

But after one Sunday, I’m optimistic. Because the ingredients are there.

I've been taking a bit of a break recently, so I'm giving Waterworks a miss this year, but dear me, this lineup is something else. It could be that Waterworks turning into a 36-hour-long festival at The Cause is the best thing that could have happened.

Saturday has Eris Drew, Dr Banana, Sonja Moonear, Sofia Kourtesis and many more. Sunday has Special Request, Skee Mask and Dr Banana (UKG edition).

If you're not there or you need a warm-up, Hoxton Cabal is celebrating its first birthday on Friday with Grace Sands headlining. There are some other events too; take a look.

Friday

• Hoxton Cabal: Grace Sands, Benebe b2b DJ Cash in Hand, Phil James, Fari Mond (Vinyl Only) Hoxton Cabal
• XTD - 012 - Barac Fold
• Expert Death x Untitled 909: Azu Tiwaline, ophélie, basic chanel + Sarjan Ormside Projects

Saturday

• Waterworks Extended 2026 The Cause
• Palais: JakoJako, AMORAL & Tasha Palais
• Exquisite Corpse 05 Dalston Den

Sunday

• Waterworks Extended 2026 The Cause

• Anyma's Istanbul show has been cancelled over concerns that his show contained satanic imagery. The show was due to take place on September 12. Anyma has denied the accusations, describing his show as a science fiction event. Which explains all of the giant robot ladies.
• DJ Nobu halted a recent set in Geneva because the crowd was grabbing hold of him and his USBs and grabbing him for photos. Maybe don't grab hold of the DJ, or anyone, without their consent eh?
• Colour Factory is turning five, announcing the lineup for the party with this cool PlayStation-aesthetic video.