Carnevil: Cannon Place Warehouse Launch Event

Brighton’s search for a superclub to rival the nightlife attractions of student cities across the nation came to fruition on Saturday as the opening of the hotly anticipated Cannon Place opened its doors for business. The inaugural event, dubbed The Halloween Carnevil, ran as a daytime rave that had tickets for sale prior to a lineup even being released, at a fairly high price, three months before it was set to take place. Over the coming weeks the lineup was slowly but surely released, with names such as Sub Focus, Congo Natty, The Heatwave and more set to grace one of three stages. Grime and UK figureheads such as Sir Spyro and Yungen were added to the mainstage lineup, and just days before the show was set to take place the final stage was revealed with a host of unknown house DJs taking the reins; the lineup had some promise, although admittedly no huge attractions if you have ever been to a festival or club night before.

The day of reckoning came, with myself departing for the venue at around 2pm. Leaving your house that early for any kind of music event is somewhat frustrating, having to get drinks in early in order to not spend all of your student loan inside the club and committing an entire day to the function that you might end up wishing you had stayed home and binged Netflix instead of. Upon arrival, I was told that the last entry for my ticket was 3pm as I had bought an early bird and would have to enter a different queue to pay an extra £5 for the same wristband as I was late, to which I left and came back to the woman with wristbands who had forgot who I was and gave me one. We then entered the building and at first glance I could not help but think this was set up extremely similarly to an illegal rave you would find in a middle-of-nowhere area of London; the carpet was covered with masking tape, there was minuscule light with no windows and two sets of toilets (one of which was locked off halfway through the event) and a set of portable toilets in the middle of the building in which the only solution to complete darkness was to shine a torch from your phone. The stages were split in three parallel rooms and increased my speculation that the promoters were squatting in the property as well as holding an event. The proposal that this club was set to rival Fabric, Printworks or The Warehouse Project is a farce. The insane theory that you could decorate and design such a huge space in a way that makes it look like it has been broken into and hijacked, whilst believe this is going to knock the UK’s superclubs off their perch, is absolutely ludicrous and was the first sign of the complete abomination of a venue that is Cannon Place.

For all that I hated about the layout, organisation and lies I had been sold, there was one aspect that still had the ability to be a saving grace of what was becoming a monstrosity of a club night, or even club day; the music. Any kind of sign as to who was supposed to be playing was indiscernible, with the only information as to what stage you were at being a faintly written ‘Supercharged’ behind the DJ at the aforementioned named platform. After some detective work to determine what I was actually seeing, I noticed the set times for Carnevil were only published half an hour before the show was set to start, found through the Facebook story of Cannon Place; the question of who on Earth uses Facebook stories being a totally separate matter. Having worked out that Sir Spyro, one of the few acts I actually wanted to see due to his storming set at Bestival 2017, was due to play imminently, I easily made my way to the front and center of an unpacked main stage. Standing at the front, it became incredibly aware that I could converse over the music without needing to raise my voice. Walking to the bar on the side of the stage increased the volume in my ears and it became apparent that only the side speakers were turned on, rendering the entire front line of sound completely useless; either someone had forgotten to turn all of them on or they were just there for as a form of placebo to make the crowd think they could actually hear what the DJ they had paid so much money to see was actually spinning. The music itself quickly also turned out to be a shambles, as the inadequacy of the performers truly reminded myself how much I had paid to see them; The Heatwave ran their trademark routine of shouting nonsense over bashment beats, Nathan Hector seemed unsure if he was actually supposed to be playing or if someone else was meant to take over and Congo Natty’s mix of reggae and drum ‘n’ bass was so uninspiring and generic I packed my bags and left in time to be on the sofa for Match of the Day. The opening night of the biggest club in Brighton should have some X Factor, a talent that makes you unaware you are completely wasting your day to stand in a dark room surrounded by people in fancy dress, chewing their lips off for an extortionate price, yet each artist was lacklustre and insipid, making their greatest arguments as to why Brighton does not have the attraction to draw in the biggest talents similar to its British counterparts. The attempt to ease the pain by drinking it away quickly became apparent that it was not a viable option as each drink was a minimum of £5; the brains behind Cannon Place did not feel to subsidise the daylight robbery of the ticket price for students barely able to afford it, which seems odd as they would have had plenty of profit to invest in more than just the one card machine on show.

The long-awaited, eagerly anticipated Cannon Place is possibly the worst club I have ever been to. It seems far fetched to me that the owners and promoters of this catastrophic rave had any experience in hosting an event this size, as each and every staff member appeared completely and utterly out of their depth and unable to work with a crowd size that was not even at full capacity. At the time of writing, the venue have no upcoming events or plans for the future as the clear verdict of a failed event was summarised by a single, measly one star review on its Facebook page. It is possible that the club can turn this around, becoming a fast-growing space for the best DJs in the country to showcase their skills and justify the entry price, but the current strategy of daytime raves in the freezing cold, decor that would make a squatter proud and bland sets from dreary performers mean that there is a lot of work to do to keep the club alive.