Take five: Clubland needs to bring back chill-out rooms

Once upon a time, many clubs came equipped with magical break-out zones. After an hour too many in the heat of the dancefloor you could retreat to a quiet corner of the club and recuperate in a space specifically designed for that purpose. Soft furnishings, mood lighting – strangely, you’d often find a malfunctioning games console in the corner and almost certainly a cheeky spliff getting passed around – these places were sanctuaries from the madness of the dancefloor where you could get lost in conversation with a stranger, make a best friend for the night or in some cases, a best friend for life.

Ask anyone who went clubbing in the 90s and early 2000s and they’ll instantly reminisce about the halcyon days of the garden at The Cross, Whirl-Y-Gig’s infamous spot, the upstairs room at Bristol’s Lakota, Sterns in Worthing with its tea tent, and so on. But somewhere along the line chill-out rooms all but disappeared. In 2017, the majority of clubs in the UK are bereft of this type of sanctuary, and it’s a crying shame. Of course, things change and evolve, but the part that chill-out rooms played in the communal aspect of a party cannot be denied.

So, why did chill-out rooms fade away? Firstly, the smoking ban in 2007 saw promoters focus their efforts on creating outdoor, covered smoking areas. Then, the chill-out room arguably fell foul to the increase in demand for space and higher DJ fees. As the property market ripped the heart out of clubland, putting on events became more and more costly – so party promoters and club owners had to make as much money as possible from the spaces they used. Having an extra room where people just lounge around chatting breeze to each other stopped being financially viable. Squeezing a few hundred more people into that space with more music and an extra bar is far more lucrative, and common, today.

“It’s increasingly difficult to embrace any real sense of adventure in London because it’s so competitive that anything that deviates too much from the norm often receives short shrift,” explains Ajay Jayaram, one of the team behind London night The Hydra. “Using an additional room in a club for anything other than to consolidate what is already on offer is likely to add risk an already precarious undertaking... In short, sadly a chill-out room would be an indulgence too far.”

However, there are some green shoots for the chill-out room’s revival. Since reopening earlier this year Fabric has been using Room 3 as a chill-out area, while further afield, we all know about Berghain’s various nooks and crannies. The Block in Tel Aviv has a sofa-laden room playing ambient and folk oddities, too.

And aside from just making for a richer clubbing experience, there’s an argument to be made that chill-out rooms are beneficial in the fight for harm reduction. “Chill spaces are something I advise all clubs and festivals to consider having, as they’re often much better than welfare areas which have more of an association with having a difficult time,” explains Katy MacLeod, director of harm reduction outreach group Chill Welfare. “In my experience, having these kind of areas can help prevent a lot of harm.”

So be prepared to soon reacquaint yourself with the Morcheeba back catalogue, the creepy ‘free back rubs’ guy, cuddle puddles of fizzing friendship groups and now, new to chill-out rooms in 2017, intense conversations about a new Chicken Ramen vape flavor, selfies looking like a fire in a waxwork factory and people opting to sit cross-legged on cold stone floor instead of catching the Carl Cox set they paid £25 to experience only an hour earlier.

But will the chill-out room really make a comeback? With space at a premium for promoters, plus club culture still under the authorities’ microscope, the return of liberal chill-out rooms en mass seems unlikely. However, with punters’ health and safety at the forefront of everyone’s minds, perhaps supervised chill-out zones could be a worthwhile compromise.

This feature is taken from the November issue of Mixmag

Marcus Barnes is Mixmag's Techno Editor and a freelance journalist, follow him on Twitter

Calum Heath is a freelance illustrator