Jumping and Thumping at The Arches! Yay!!

WOW MAN!!!

Just got back from Glasgow's renowned megaclub The Arches. All I can say is WOW. I've been jumping to thumping techno bass, funky progressive house and quirky electro all night, running between three areas inside the hot and humid club, smiling all the time like a maniac ^__^ Slam, Ricardo Villalobos, Damian Lazarus, Loco Dice and Wighnomy Brothers were in charge, don't know any of them, but a big hand to them for a great night out anyway! :D The main act and the only one I knew beforehand was Josh Wink, a legendary techno/electro/house DJ/artist (yes, DJ's are artists - not the ones playing some commercial shit at skanky nightclubs but the more professional ones). You might have heard Josh Wink's classic minimalistic techno hit 'Higher State of Consciousness', dunno when he made it, anyway a classic in the field of electronic music.


Josh Wink in charge!

Btw, those who are not familiar with electronic stuff (or those who don't know the different genres and subgenres and think it's only some annoying and pointless THUMM-THUMM-THUMM all the time), you may wish to educate yourself and check out this funny site: Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music. Follow the link on that page and it'll take you to the guide. It's worthwhile and I bet you'll find some familiar songs there. Ishkur makes his opinion known and says loud and clear if he dislikes or likes some genre. So the website makes a hilarious read at least :)

Gosh, I'm being a teacher again! Willing to expand people's minds into unknown fields! :D God knows what will become of my future students under my influence...

Ok, enough off-topic. The Arches is soooo worth checking out if you're in Glasgow. They have different kinds of club nights to suit every taste - tomorrow there's R'n'B and hip hop I think, so disliking the THUMM-THUMM-THUMM is not an excuse for not visiting the place. They even have cheap student nights (I paid £20 for tonight, but only because there were big names playing).


One of the rooms, 'The Front Arches'.


Yay! The lights were decent as well - I missed some lasers though.

The club wasn't as huge as the Fabric in London (one of my fave clubs in the world), for example, but still bigger than any venue in Helsinki (except for the Cable Factory, but it doesn't host regular club nights). The place consisted of three different rooms or areas, whatever you wanna call them, plus two or three bars (I lost count). You were literally under the arches, like in the Cavern Club in Liverpool. The sound system was also good enough (although the floor wasn't a giant speaker like in Fabric ;)


I was there too!


One of the bars. £1.60 for a bottle of water, but free water after the bars were closed, so good all in all.


The last song was obviously 'Higher State of Consciousness' - as you can see, it brought people to a higher state of excitement as well!

Besides the awesome club and DJ sets I experienced Glasgow City Centre by Night. Believe it or not, I haven't made it to the city centre all spring. Just partied in someone's kitchens and at the QMU. Well, it's never too late. Especially the night bus turned out to be a funny and different experience from that in Helsinki. All the Glaswegians were so jovial and friendly, talking to each other and making funny jokes. I didn't understand any of them though, because a) I was still wearing my Double Ear Plug System (tm) - thanks to that, my ears are not ringing like hell now; and b) the working-class accent is still completely undecipherable. Anyway, no fighting or anything in the nightbus, but only happy (drunken) faces, nobody was sullen and silent like people always are in Helsinki. Absolutely Lovely! :) Now I know what they are talking about when they say Glaswegians are like one big family. The people were friendly also at The Arches. Lots of people struck up a conversation with me, asked me how I'm doing, where I'm from, and uttered in amazement, 'Wow, you're alone here?!'.


Crowds getting out of the club.

Again I took lots of cool videos to feed to you guys but unfortunately, thanks to Blogger's restrictions, I cannot add them here. I hope the pics here can convey at least half of the great atmosphere inside the club.