The week before I went into labour I thought I’d get the blessed child initiated into the fine art of conducting interviews and engaging in fashion industry chat over heaving sound systems. I went from a Raf Simons fashion show-slash-rave party at Printworks in Surrey Quays to a Prada perfume launch held at Outernet, the music venue at the heart of a billion-pound ‘immersive entertainment district’ that has sprung up into a gold-and black post-Crossrail colossus next to Centre Point. It was a contrast of London’s evolving machinations, tied up in commerce, culture and community. Printworks will go out with a bang next year owing to Southwark Council’s redevelopment plans, after six years of raving in this former newspaper printing factory. You can feel the patina of well-worn, sweat-drenched, hedonistic good times reverberating inside this electronic music cathedral.
Outernet, on the other hand is so new and fresh, I could almost lick the floor, it was so clean. Okay, maybe I’ll let my newborn child go lick the floor (it’s all good germs, right?) when the time comes. That’s after he’s exposed to a mammoth dose of screen time, seeing as you enter Outernet through a square video-screen tunnel that PR spiel has dubbed a ‘brandscape’. It reminded me of that bit in Minority Report when Tom Cruise’s character walks through a shopping mall and his newly implanted stolen eyes are pounded with targeted shop ads. Apparently, one of the green rooms servicing the main HERE concert venue buried in the underground layers of Outernet has a shower that can accommodate up to 40 people. I don’t even want to know what artist would make actual use of a 40-person shower. And the venue itself? It’s all interior-led metal and glass, ambient screensaver projections and a bar that is so tastefully lit, you can’t even see the sweat on revellers’ faces.
