Mixmag has started the Cost of Living series exploring how the current economic crisis is impacting dance music. "Surging electricity bills, spiraling travel costs, increases in the price of goods and services and a dramatic change in crowd habits have hit an industry still reeling from lockdown to near-breaking point" - Mixmag underlines the environment clubs and promoters are having to deal with. Interesting phenomena is occurring with festivals: "A number of club-focused promoters appear to have turned their attention to putting on festival-like 'day parties' since the end of lockdown... As disposable incomes become tighter than ever, the 'day festival' gives attendees the chance to attend a festival — but without having to add on extra costs such as transport and accommodation, and the chance to pre-drink and pop off home without the Monday morning dread knowing they have to pull a shift in a few hours, or inadvertently spend hundreds at the bar".

Producer, DJ and songwriter Laura Bettinson wants, well, basically, her life back: "The best nightclubs provide safe spaces for people from all walks of life. Nights out are when lifelong memories are made (or lost) and bonds formed with friends and strangers alike. The transference of energy on a packed, sweaty dancefloor is unlike anything else. On the best nights, everyone in the crowd is under the DJ’s command, their song selections determining a communal journey. This is why the concept of a socially distanced club night, which removes such spontaneity and physicality, just doesn’t work".

An amusing article in the Quietus about 'Nick Cave's Bar', a new book by Aug Stone about a bar in Berlin in the 1980s which was a "home from home" for many creative people - musicians, filmmakers, painters, poets, and punks. Risiko stood at 48 Yorckstraße in West Berlin, on the border between the Kreuzberg and Wilmersdorf-Schöneberg sections of the city. It wasn't really Nick Cave's bar (although some in Europe did call it that back then), but Blixa Bargeld bartended at Risiko during Einstürzende Neubauten’s early years, and Cave would come to visit it with the rest of The Birthday Party.

Guardian made a nice little survey among artists and its writers about descriptions of night-clubs in art. Róisín Murphy chose the party scene in Paolo Sorrentino’s 'The Great Beauty', as well as Elaine Constantine's 'Northern Soul' which turned out well because the director taught the teenagers in the movie how to dance. The G's film critic Peter Bradshaw chose the sex/nightclub scene from 'Mektoub, My Love' by Abdellatif Kechiche. Music critic Alexis Petridis thinks that the one is the description of "the feeling of chemically enhanced, musically driven transcendence" from 'The Sparsholt Affair' novel by Alan Hollinghurst.

DJ Mag describes what have the UK night clubs been up to in lockdown. Sneaky Petes, Edinburgh - reopened as a pizza bar; Printworks, London - hosted production projects and live-streams; Studio 338, London - transformed into a food bank; Invisible Wind Factory, Liverpool - used as a COVID-19 testing centre; Fabric, London - has been reflecting and “identified lots of little details and some larger improvements"...

Quick coronavirus testing could enable nightclubs and theatres to reopen, British premier Boris Johnson said, according to Daily Mail. The PM said "rapid" lateral flow tests "in combination with vaccination, will probably be the route forward", could be used by "those parts of the economy we couldn't get open last year". Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said the government would rely on rapid testing and "making people access their own personal vaccination records" on the NHS app, rather than issuing vaccine passports.

“The gigging lifestyle - where musicians are freelancing from one independent job to another - I don’t know if that’s going to be around in New York after this. You’ll probably see some 'Mad Max' scenario where the young guys claw their way to survival” - Spike Wilner, the owner of two New York jazz clubs Mezzrow and Smalls, says in a Curbed interview. “Every jazz club that presents music is part of a chain, like a food chain, supplying life force to this community”, Wilner said, adding - “when the environment dries up, less and less animals are allowed to live”.

Berghain has found a way to throw its doors back open, luring visitors with an unusual sound exhibition called 'Eleven songs'. Just 50 people are let in at a time to allow for physical distancing. Inside, visitors are enveloped by an eery, almost surreal soundscape of rhythmic throbbing, soft city noises, murmurings and even the whirling of helicopter blades. Visitors, wearing face masks, have already been queueing to get in, France Presse reports. DJ Tech Tools reports on how five Eastern European countries – Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, Serbia, and Croatia – are handling the process of re-opening amidst COVID-19. Belarus is more or less closed, clubs in Georgia are opened, but the country is closed for foreigners, Serbia closed its clubs, in Ukraine the clubs are closed as well, whereas Croatia is open for (most) foreigners, and clubs there are also mostly open.

Concert venues and music businesses in Nashville are beginning to rebuild after being hit by several tornadoes Tuesday morning, Billboard reports, While popular concert venue the Basement East saw major damage, many other East Nashville-based music companies are also grappling with the aftermath of the destruction. Collective Artist Management (whose clients include Clint Black, Sara Evans and Edwin McCain) and Dualtone Records (the label home to the Lumineers, the Lone Bellow, Shovels & Rope and Amos Lee) both witnessed extreme loss. Craig Dunn, vp Collective Artist Management shared news on Facebook: “I was overwhelmed when I saw the devastation and damage to this beloved neighborhood in our great city. My sadness and dismay were quickly replaced by hope and optimism as hordes of volunteers showed up with snacks, water, and two hands willing to help clear debris. I DEFINITELY Believe in Nashville”.

"It’s only a matter of time when going to a party will mean just putting on Virtual Reality (V.R.) goggles and headphones at home and you’ll be at the event with people from all over the world, chatting in real-time with someone who could be present in their natural looks, retouched, as a cartoon, avatar… the possibilities are endless" - DJ UMEK told Attack magazine about what he thinks DJing will look like in ten years. DJ Heather has a philosophical perspective: "We are living in the future past present. The next ten years will be straddling the world of the analogue and digital. Reflecting a desire f the deejay, producer, club-goer, raver to connect on a tactile level while being able to maintain the convenience of having world access in the palm of their hand".

A series of deadly tornados destroyed the popular Nashville music venue Basement East Monday night. Basement East’s co-owner, Mike Grimes told the Rolling Stone a tornado struck Basement East at approximately 1:15 a.m. local time, shortly after a Bernie Sanders benefit concert had concluded, so nobody was hurt. Grimes says the "venue is pretty much a total loss”. The Basement East opened in 2015 and had welcomed artists including Best Coast, Archers of Loaf, Lucy Dacus, Pinegrove, and The Lemon Twigs. The venue’s upcoming calendar promised shows from Delta Spirit, Hamilton Leithauser, Torres, Frances Quinlan, and The Airborne Toxic Event.

Alexis Petridis reports from Berlin where developers are kicking out nightclubs to make place for offices and flats. The last one to be kicked out is Griessmuehle, which closed down with a continuous 56 hours party. It was a worthy farewell - "dressed-down kids in hoodies alongside guys in drag; girls in standard-issue techno black dancing with men in their underpants. At one point, a gay couple in their 70s sweep past. They’re conservatively dressed for dinner at the Savoy in the 1920s – one of them is walking with a silver-topped cane. The atmosphere is simultaneously friendly, excited and licentious: a friend who goes there regularly calls it 'benign freedom'". An estimate says that one-third of Berlin clubs have been lost in the last 10 years, and at least 40 more clubs are currently under threat. Ironically, Berlin housing crisis has something to do with Berlin’s club scene - job adverts for engineers and IT specialists basically say "Come to work in Berlin, because it’s the greatest cultural clubbing city in the world".

Many DJ are acutely aware of the mental and physical risks of the typical "DJ lifestyle", Mix Magazine says in an interesting article about a change in nightclubs post-Avicii. With a new and welcome transparency around artists’ mental health and addiction, DJs feel more at ease to make a big change. The other big thing is that much of the club scene has changed, in many cases becoming less a place of expression than of consumption: a circuit for DJs and artists, where the emphasis on ever-grander spectacle and production can alienate not only the crowd but the DJs from the music, eating away at the idea of the club as a place of subculture and resistance.

German clubs are fighting to be classified as cultural institutions - last week a bipartisan group argued in front of a national parliament committee to reclassify clubs and live music venues. Nightclubs are currently classified as entertainment venues, equating them with brothels and casinos, the status change would make them legally equivalent to concert halls, operas and theaters. About 100 clubs have closed in the past 10 years, and a further 25 are under threat. So serious has the problem become that it has its own word: clubsterben, or club death. The Clubcommission collective told the Bundestag’s committee for building, living and urban development that music clubs were “the pulse of the city”, adding that an estimated 3 million tourists come to Berlin annually to visit its clubs, contributing €1.5bn to the local economy last year.

URSSS.com is an online platform with videos of concerts held at the arty Milan club Macao. The latest addition is Italian American band Love Trap, prior to it they uploaded videos of modern composer Caterina Barbieri, Slovenian avant-garde folk trio Širom, and dozens of others.

One of London's most famous music venues, Koko in Camden has been badly damaged in an overnight blaze - the dome on the roof has been destroyed by fire. The venue which began life as the Camden Theatre in 1900 has hosted stars including The Rolling Stones, The Clash, Madonna, Coldplay, Prince, and Ed Sheeran. […]

The 100 Club in London is very well known for its punk rock history, but the 6Ts Rhythm and Soul Society nights are celebrating their 40th anniversary, thus making it the longest-running club night in London and the longest-running northern soul night in the world. Guardian tells the 6Ts' story.