This 350yearold London Landmark Just Hosted Its First Techno Night
CNN London -
At 6pm on Wednesday, St Paul's Cathedral, an iconic part of the London landscape for hundreds of years, ended its usual choral services. An hour later, the nearly 350-year-old English church was ready to host its first techno music night.
The historical place was the scene of many important events. Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 1897, the funerals of Admiral Lord Nelson in 1806 and Winston Churchill in 1965, and the weddings of King Charles III and Diana in 1981. But this week, as part of a partnership between the Corporation of London and the City of London, a nightclub called Fabric hosted a performance by Australian techno-rock artist Ray Cummings, known under his pseudonym. Accompanied by the Ry X London Modern Orchestra.
"We wanted to bring people back to the city," Fabric's creative director Jorge Nieto said hours before the event. The area around St. Paul has lost many office buildings and restaurants, Nieto said. "It's about reconnecting young audiences with the city and reimagining space."
The reaction of the public to the incident was great. According to Fabric, 95% of the church's 2,000-seat capacity sold out within three hours thanks to pre-registration (and the rest within minutes of going public), with a waiting list of more than 4,000 people.
That evening, the young crowd was visibly moved by the sounds of electric guitars, drum machines and synthesizers that filled the 17th-century domes. In addition to the marshals, the lay leaders of the church, who usually presided over services such as the Eucharist, Mass and Holy Communion, also attended in their religious attire. Unlike a typical techno concert, there was no bar. The scene, despite the presence of the spectacle, seemed almost insignificant; Rather, it was the blue, red and orange light bouncing off the gold leaf murals or the whimsy of the stained glass windows that caught the eye when the music played.
For Ry Et Saint Paul, it's a simple matter, he says. "There's not much you can give up," he said in an interview with CNN before his speech. "If you already have a place that has respect and beauty and grandeur, people are already converted when they walk in. Then half the work is done."
Organizing a rock concert in a sheltered venue is certainly full of pitfalls. The cathedral's unique architecture and abundance of negative space posed a particular challenge for Rhee. "I don't think there's ever been a synthesizer in this building before," he said. "So I thought: what does this look like?" Are you going to do something acoustic? » They also have high frequencies: each sound creates a chain reaction of echoes that reverberate through space for 11 seconds; If you play too fast, you risk auditory shock. "I'm going to play like I'll never play," he said. A place in this room. "I almost make music that's specifically for me (from San Pablo)."
With the cathedral opening an hour before the show, Ra and Nieto's teams only did one sound check the night before to make sure everything was perfect. "We just guessed," Nieto said. "We stayed here until two in the morning and turned the volume down to a T."
Maybe it was the majestic iconography of the cathedral or just the power of the live music, but there was a certain passion during the performance. When Ray ordered the audience to stand during his finale, we did, and we screamed louder than a regular gathering. Guests left their seats to get closer to the stage, some even climbed up on their chairs. "Who says you can't play techno in church?" » Ray shouted to the audience to thunderous applause.
