THOMAS GANDEY TOP 3 CLUBS
1. Maya Beach Club Ban Koh Tao, Thailand
“Imagine the hedonism but with no rules, muscle Marys or designer handbags. Clubbing at its rawest, on the beach in paradise, open every night of the year and with the craziest Burmese Fire show dancers you’ve ever seen.”
2. Razzmatazz Barcelona, Spain
“Been a resident here since 2004 in the Loft, a simple-and-effective techno black box of a club open all night with a throbbing soundsystem to highest effect. Always full and a superb party. Also any excuse to get to my favourite city.”
3. Le Tremplin Apres Ski Morzine, France
“This is a party that starts at 4pm and ends at 8pm, up a mountain in Morzine. Started by the Basscamp Festival crew, no pretences at an apres ski party, it’s Jager till the end.
88 87
86
ARMA 17 MOSCOW, RUSSIA CAPACITY: 1200
ARMA17.RU
05
CACAO BEACH CLUB SUNNY BEACH, BULGARIA CAPACITY: 1500
CACAOBEACH.BG
RE ENTRY
SUN, sand and sonics are the order of the day (and night) for the many revellers flocking to Cacao Beach Club each summer. Curating the biggest wigs in the game — Carl Cox, Sven Väth, Sharam — alongside the coolest — Nina Kraviz, Kink, Matthias Tanzmann — Cacao Beach Club, with its orange-tinged sunsets and starlit night skies, is a coveted string to Bulgaria’s increasingly glistening bow.
STEREO MONTREAL, CANADA CAPACITY: 1000
STEREO-NIGHTCLUB.COM RE ENTRY
MONTREAL’S clubbers love an afterhours jaunt. Both its clubs in this poll don’t get going until 2am, either a result of a city-wide insomnia epidemic or a shared appreciation of repetitive night music (we think the latter). Conceived as a reaction against VIP culture, the ethos at Stereo is that everyone is equal. The music policy is fittingly demure, as is the slick, red-laser-strip décor. Preferring more understated forms of house and techno to its local rival Circus Afterhours, Tale Of Us, Anja Schneider, Butch, Rebel Rave (Damian Lazarus, Subb-an, Infinity Ink) and Yousef have all brought some pounding tech house noir to Stereo’s jet-black innards over the past few months.
CONSPICUOUSLY missing from last year’s poll after consecutive appearances, Tresor is back once again like the renegade master it really is. Symbolic of techno in the truest sense of the word, it’s continued to represent the scene it helped kick start over the past 12 months, keeping the purists happy with Jeff Mills, Juan Atkins and Joey Beltram, and injections of house coming from Marshall Jefferson and DJ Deep. Set up under the ruins of Wertheim — once Europe’s biggest department store — in 1991, Tresor emerged from the shadows of the falling Berlin Wall. These days, after moving to an old power station, Kraftwerk Mitte, in 2007, it reigns on as a regular retreat for the city’s most cultured clubbers — a gateway to techno therapy: the wildest there is.
83 84 032
djmag.com
MATRIXX NIJMEGEN, HOLLAND CAPACITY: 2400
MATRIXX.NL
02
LENDING itself to obvious affiliation with that futuristic 90‘s film we all love, Matrixx is a gargantuan space of sci-fi proportions, where big room music is always the order of the day, delivered by universal veterans — Armin van Buuren, Steve Aoki, Diplo, Afrojack and Hardwell to name only a few. Proudly sporting the title of “best club in Holland,” according to Tiësto, this hi-tech club really is a vision of the future.
SET MIAMI, FL, US CAPACITY: 500
SETMIAMI.COM
11
THE Opium Group’s SET is the exact antithesis of the hip dens of iniquity found downtown, geared more towards Miami’s list-and-bottle glitterati than scruffy heads donning Ray-Bans. Kitted with Pucci fabrics, leather couches and a futuristic fire place, it’s more Tony Montana (or Hannah?) than Tony De Vit, built as a palatial throwback to the Tinseltown-era with a host of lascivious VIP areas, one aptly-titled The Trophy Room. The selection of DJs is no less understated, Bob Sinclar, John Dahlbäck and Michael Woods joining in the burlesque carnival action over the past few months, while Sasha and M.A.N.D.Y are about as underground as it gets.
85 RE ENTRY
‘RUSSIANStandard’ might be a slogan for Russia’s vodka, but it can also be applied to its many clubs. Especially where Arma 17 is concerned. No doubt Moscow’s (if not, the nation’s) coolest club, formerly housed in a derelict former gas-holding facility (dated 1865), it now regularly resides at an alternative warehouse in central Moscow after fire ruined the original premises in 2009. Refusing to lay down and die, its name lives on, these days boasting a booming Funktion One in the main room and an exclusive custom-made soundsystem designed by an actual Russian rocket engineer in the Studio. There’s also complex video mapping and the programming reflects only the very finest names in (mostly) techno — Villalobos, Hawtin and Raresh — indicating that, just like a fine vodka, Arma 17 is improving with age.
TRESOR BERLIN, GERMANY CAPACITY: 1500-2000
TRESORBERLIN.COM
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