Dear Trilogy,
It’s over.
I guess the lack of promotional texts,
un-replied emails and the quietly announced press release told me as much, but
it still took a while to realize that you and I (and about 2000 people every
weekend, you whore) are over.
I’ve been through this clubbing heartache
before with iBO and Alpha, so I know what to expect. You all gave us a weekly
alternative, but you went one better as you were smack bang in the heart of Dubai’s commercial hub, Madinat Jumeirah. You
gave us hope that big clubs with cool line ups could not only survive but grow,
you gave us a reason to get excited on a Thursday night (thanks iLL
Communications on the roof!) and every Friday when Deep were the biggest fish
in the ocean.
You might have been relatively restrained
compared to other Middle East clubs (no sparklers, no Superman music, just those rather garish cages above the floor), but you brought out DJs like Sven Vath,
Todd Terje and Chase & Status, when no one else dared. You gave us names
like Erick Morillo (back when he was good), Pete Tong and 2ManyDJs on a regular
basis, forcing queues back out into the sweaty night, packing the club out week in, year out. You were all about the music, and for that I (we) salute you.
You gave local DJs a platform to shine, with warm ups and main slots across all 3 rooms.
The hidden and hugely under-promoted 3rd room became an exploration
in sound, hosting some of the first dubstep nights in the city.
Your DJ console in the main room was like commanding the Enterprise (although
shorter DJs had to do so standing on a box), and your Funktion 1 monitors in
the booth were the best party place in the club. And when you did do
commercial, you did it as well as anyone as DJ Bliss and Shef Codes held it
down on the rooftop.
You weren’t perfect. Why did you have a 20m high dome in the middle of the club, it certainly wasn’t
for the sound it caused. And why, after you re-opened for the nth time, had no
one done anything to the cigarette stained furniture? And sometimes, just
sometimes, your programming was a little too ahead of the curve, meaning that
your dancefloor would be more a morgue come 2am.
But over the years (how many years were we
together now, 7, maybe more – time flies when you’re ordering Dhs50 shots),
you’ve been there, our dependably forward-thinking bastion of music amongst the
pop and (c)rap that dominates other clubs. I'm forever in debt to the recent manager (Buff) and resident (Ejaz) for making me a resident at the best club in town. And let's salute the hundreds of DJs who've played to thousands of clubbers, to those who worked the door, rung the tills, cleaned the toilets and escorted drunk clubbers out of your doors, you've all flown the electronic flag loud and proud. One last closing party would have been epic, but sometimes it's easier to slink off quietly into the night, so I understand.
I'll miss the long, lonely, post-clubbing nights punctuated by tinnitus, the snaking taxi queue at 3am and the hastily arranged
after-parties with newly made friends. But you’ll be missed most for your
music, for keeping your head (and musical morals) high and maintaining your love of back-to-basics clubbing when all around venues were succumbing to commercialitis.
Thanks for the memories, Trilogy.
Thanks for the memories, Trilogy.
