Clubland is in a downward spiral, but such disruption often leads to bold new beginnings

It’s hard to ignore the fact that clubland is going through one of its periodic bouts of head-scratching and belly-fluff examination.

Last week, there was a lot of hand-wringing across the Irish Sea as the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers published figures showing that the number of clubs in the UK had halved in a decade.

There may be plenty of clubs you’ve never heard of included in the drop-off from 3,144 in 2005 to 1,733 today, but there were also seismic, influential clubs in the mix, venues such as The End, Plastic People and Turnmills.

It’s not just the UK either, with Dublin’s Twisted Pepper shutting up shop last weekend after a colourful seven-year run. And the closures are not over yet: Bristol’s Syndicate announced on Tuesday that it was turning the lights off after nine years and 3.5 million people coming through the doors.

Many reasons have been put forward for this slump, though some explanations don’t quite stack up. For instance, one finding has it that millennials are no longer going to clubs and dance-music events.

Yet how do you explain that thousands are still flocking to see superstar DJs of various stripes? Calvin Harris, Avicii or David Guetta can pack the biggest rooms with ease – and most of those there would be millennials or Generation Z-ers.

One reason which can’t be disputed has to do with property values. Clubs have been an ideal way to make use of vacant city-centre spaces. But now that unreality and insanity are returning to the property market, those areas are again prime pickings for speculators and developers.

Buildings which once housed clubs are now home to apartments (see the legendary Hacienda in Manchester where you can rent an one- bedroom apartment for £850 a month) or shops (come on down McGonagles in Dublin) because there’s more money to be made. Also, many clubbers have found shrinking disposable income putting a stop to their gallop on a Friday or Saturday night.

Yet it’s difficult to see this current slump as permanent. History teaches us that there are always new, younger, entrepreneurial whippersnappers who will come along and do things their own way.

There are many examples in the past of new club runners and crews kickstarting scenes and igniting new movements. Many might believe that we’ll never see cultural uprisings like punk or rave again, but people were probably saying that before either of those two came along as well.

It will be interesting to see where these new scenes will come from. Will it involve a return to the merry club-in-a- pub night? Will it be powered by some new musical leap forward which will move rapidly from tiny underground rooms to the mainstream? Regardless, anyone who thinks that we’re witnessing the end of days here may well have to revisit their opinion in a few years’ time.

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Say hello to TNT Records, a new Dublin-based label specialising in seven-inch vinyl singles. The first release is Hiding In Plain Sight from Sao Paulo-based Irish producer T-woc, with vocals from Irish/Mayalasian singer Aminah Dastan, who has also featured on tracks by French producer iZem. See soundcloud.com/tnt-records-3 for more.