CityLife

Club profile: Bohemian Grove

Bohemian Grove

It can be tricky for venues to work their way into the affections of a town’s clubbing populace.

Some take years to build up the sort of rapport needed to be viewed fondly, while others never pull it off – whether because of bad feng shui, agro clientele or a misguided belief that anyone other than the DJ wants to hear whatever sorry microgenre the club has based its nights on.

One place that has, however, managed to buck the trend and garner remarkable affection, remarkably quickly is the Northern Quarter’s Soup Kitchen.

Nestled away on Spear Street just off the boho/derelict Stevenson Square, the venue has come to be seen as a kind of go-to hub for left-of-centre evening activity, with a particular emphasis of late placed on interesting club events, not bad for a bar whose name brings to mind images of bread rolls and blankets being given out to folk less fortunate than the average NQ scenester.

Perhaps the Soup Kitchen’s zeitgeisty popularity is why the promoters behind the brand new club night Bohemian Grove – which launches tomorrow night – have chosen the place as the meeting point for their first rave.

For while guests will be invited to congregate there from 10pm onwards, they will in fact be handed wristbands and directions to another, secret, location elsewhere in the city where full festivities will kick off later in the night.

So who is behind this mysterious new night?

The answer: a group of local likely lads comprising DJs including Johhny Abstract, Rick Nicholls and Damo B, all of whom bonded over a love of all things deep, house and deep house.

Their mission, they say, is to bring us a sound that spans ‘from the outer reaches of Chicago house music and Detroit techno, to the deepest sounds of Berlin and everything in between’, using a combination of live performances and DJ sets to whisk the crowd away to North America and mainland Europe.

For their debut session the promoters have looked to another much-loved local institution for inspiration – Modern Love records, which, like the Soup Kitchen, is viewed with bags of affection by those who encounter its roster of acts.

Top of that list is label boss Andy Stott who, as luck would have it, will be making a rare appearance behind the decks at the Bohemian Grove launch party.

He will be joined by another Modern Love maestro, Claro Intelecto, for whom a Manchester set is also rarer than a raw steak.

The Northern Quarter-based Modern Love was founded in 2002 and has since pumped out tonnes of releases from Stott, Intelecto and many more including DeepChord, Move D, Maetrik and the Pendle Coven, who are actually witches.

They’ve also found the time to launch two imprints, the disparately named Daphne and Hate, as well as form a hook-up with Young Americans.

All of which means the hugely popular Stott and Intelecto will have plenty of pedigree to draw on when they appear alongside the Bohemian Grove residents tomorrow night.

On another note, word reaches CityLife of the difficulty the Soup Kitchen has apparently had in obtaining a late hours licence from the city council.

According to our sources, the venue has had its application knocked back more than once, despite the fact that other nearby bars already hold late
licences.

Could this – and the current situation at Rusholme’s Saki Bar, which in the absence of divine intervention looks set to have its license revoked once and for all at an appeal hearing on September 30 – signal a tougher stance from the city council on clubs with residential areas close by?

It’s something we’ll keep a close eye on in these pages – especially if these rulings continue to affect esoteric, backstreet venues which are the lifeblood of original and innovative clubbing.

The Bohemian Groove pre party kicks off at 10pm at the Soup Kitchen, Spear Street, on September 4, 2010. The location of the rave-up will be revealed there. Wristbands to get in will cost £10.