Positive Start for XOYO LONDON?
It's been all over everyone’s timeline – Kirk Allen, director of The Warehouse in Leeds, saved XOYO from closure by buying the club and completely transforming it. We’re going to take a deep dive into the challenges they faced reopening XOYO and what they did to change it round.
Kirk and his team felt the space was “neglected” and “left to rot”, as the decor was outdated and the space wasn’t friendly to the dance floor. The most important aspect of a club will always be your customers – creating a safe space where dancing and having a good time are encouraged. They tweaked the layout by taking out the raised stage and replacing it with interchangeable decking, pushing the stage further back in the room, making the DJ booth symmetrical and more open plan, and redecorating room 2. The idea behind these changes was to increase the flexibility of the space, which will deliver on the expectation to foster an inclusive and welcoming dancefloor.
They’ve also made huge waves with the technology in the building: air conditioners are always a welcome addition to any rave, and they had 7 in XOYO, 3 of which didn’t work and have been replaced. They also bought new fridges to replace the aged ones that had served well up until this point, another small detail which is important to the customers to get right.
However, some of the biggest challenges when it comes to catering for an audience that cares about the quality of the music and the experience of the space are sound and light. For those who are heavily involved in the scene and regular party-goers, the first thing to critique is always the sound, so it’s important to dedicated fans for them to have high quality of sound and make sure it reaches all corners of the room. While XOYO already had a Void system, a very popular and well-respected system to have in a club, Kirk believed he could take it one step further and took them all down in order to tune them to get them as crisp and clear as possible. With ten speakers and seven subs, there won’t be a place in the club the sound can’t reach.
The lighting array is the space’s big talking point. In room 2, they followed a similar pattern to what’s at The Warehouse by getting LED screens all along the roof to stretch along the dancefloor to support visuals, but the basement is the real treat. Wanting to go for something authentic, Kirk came up with the idea of having 6 cubes dotted along the ceiling with 250 metres of pixel tubes running between them, setting him back a good £45,000 but worth every penny from what we can see.
Their opening went well, managing to sell out their pre-sale for their opening night in just 10 minutes.
All quotes and figures from Kirk Allen’s TikTok