January 15, 2024

Outra Cena (12/01/24)

The last time my alarm didn’t go off (or I slept through it — the mystery remains) the stakes were much higher. But it still didn’t feel too good to wake up early on Saturday morning and realise I’d overslept my intended nap-time by approximately four hours. The nap had started around 9pm and my plan was to get up at midnight to go to the Rádio Quântica benefit at Planeta Manas — both to support the project (which was home to my Flamingo show for many years) and to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I was then going to skip to Outra Cena, the cool new club in town, to hear Nick Craddock shutting down one of the two rooms from 4am. The best laid plans…

I was in the middle of a wonderfully detailed dream about playing keyboards at Lakuti and Tama Sumo’s house when I woke up with a jolt and felt that sinking feeling. It was still dark outside, so I figured it wasn’t morning yet, but I somehow knew it was also not midnight any more. Sure enough, when I got up and looked at my phone it was 4am — the time I had originally intended to be at Outra Cena. I think the single most important factor in what happened next was the fact I had plugged my phone in to charge on the other side of the room, and therefore had to get out of bed to look at it. This must be the #1 hack for DJs or anyone else who regularly has to get up at inconvenient hours of the night. It’s much more likely you will take the vital next steps on the way out of the house — washing, dressing, eating, whatever you need to do — if you are already out of the bed itself.

The other factor driving me to follow through on my original plan was knowing how good it would be to see Nick closing at the OC (yes I am calling it this). For any readers who haven’t been yet — which must be many of you, since it only opened a few months ago — the OC is a real kick up the ass for the clubbing scene in Lisbon. Planeta Manas was the original big kick up the ass when it opened in November 2021: the city’s first queer-run DIY club with an industrial vibe, an adventurous programme and a genuinely open, mixed crowd. I enjoy going there whenever I’m in town — Honcho, Club CCC and Object Blue were 2023 highlights — and they are continuing strong into 2024 with an upcoming programme featuring Stella Zekri, Jensen Interceptor, Jossy Mitsu and Sam PV. (I wrote about PM in greater detail a couple of summers ago, here.)

Based on the handful of times I’ve been to the OC so far, including the one time I played back in October, the place shares several features with PM, but also differs in important ways. Outra Cena is not an explicitly queer venue like PM, but they have amazing queer people working on the door who set the expectation that you are not entering a typical straight club. This does wonders for the vibe inside: on Saturday morning there were lots of women and gays dancing down the front, and while I did see a couple of groups of straight dudes standing around on the dancefloor looking at their phones, it was not the overbearing experience of being there.

The music programme, which also transmits a much less normative image than many other big clubs in Lisbon, clearly contributes to this vibe. There is overlap with PM, as the OC also leans into heavier and faster bass and techno in one room while usually providing a slower and lighter contrast in the other room. For example, you might have Toma Kami on This Side and Stella Zekri on That Side, or Chima Isaaro on That Side and Darwin on This Side, or Noite Príncipe on This Side and SPRKLBB on That Side. (In fact, the musical identity of the two rooms — This Side and That Side — is one of the curious things about this club that I’m hoping will shift over time. They seem to be developing their own moods, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they should remain fixed that way.)

Given this musical overlap with PM, you might reasonably ask whether Lisbon can support two clubs offering this kind of music, especially when broken music of any kind has traditionally fallen flat with (white) Portuguese crowds. So far, thankfully, it seems the answer is yes, it can. Broader trends in the international scene over the past 10-15 years do seem to have slowly filtered through to the city, and there are of course many more foreigners living here now than before. Perhaps festivals like Waking Life or last year’s Sónar Lisboa have played a role in converting more locals to these kinds of sounds. Then there are younger generations of Portuguese ravers who are generally more open minded and actively looking for music with an angle. While smaller DIY spaces like Damas and Arroz Estúdios have provided a home to these kinds of sounds since before covid, they suffer from limitations on size, noise and running hours. That’s why Planeta Manas was really groundbreaking — a genuine club space dedicated to community liberation through raving and guided by avowedly anti-establishment principles.

This brings us on, then, to the most glaring difference between PM and the OC: money. I’m sure the first thing most people think when they go to Outra Cena is “wow, this must have cost a lot”. I thought it the first time I walked through the reassuringly hefty entrance door: it just feels expensive, and once you’re inside you’re met with a club that looks more like the Globuses or Blitzes of this world than what we’re used to in Lisbon. The chunky concrete stairwell, the grand central atrium, the show-stopping lighting. Every time I walk into the bar with its criss-cross grid of lasers, I think of this scene from The Cube. It isn’t just show, either: they have heavily invested in the two sound systems, achieving a punch and clarity that are striking for rooms that are both essentially long concrete boxes. And naturally they’ve been fine tuning them over the weeks. (I don’t want to do PM a disservice here, because they squeeze a lot out of the limited resources they have to work with, and the vibe of the place remains unparalleled. But they simply don’t have the means that would allow them to put in a sound system like the OC’s.)

So on Saturday morning, when I was standing in my pyjamas caught between my bed (warm, horizontal) and the club (hopefully warm, but only after a significant interval of cold, and very much vertical), what really pushed me towards the club was the knowledge that I’m not Lisbon that often, and when I am I should really make the most of it. I also knew that seeing Nick Craddock at Outra Cena would be the definition of that — and so it proved to be. I got dressed and called a cab, and by 4.30am I was in the imposing This Side room, gazing up through the fog at the stunning circular light feature (to my eyes, designed to echo the large windows of the building’s façade), listening and dancing to Nick do his thing in the caged booth at around 140bpm. I didn’t know any of the tracks but I liked them all, which is why I always enjoy hearing Nick play. Techno, bass, electro, fresh oddball club music with playful drums and scattershot percussion — all mixed with craft and energy.

There was one memorable moment when I returned from the bar and, on walking into the room, found it completely dark save for the circular disc above the booth, very faintly lit in grey. Unmistakably, it was the full moon shining through misty clouds, matching the dramatic track Nick was playing at that moment. Of the few suggestions I have for the club, making more creative use of the lighting systems is a main one: there were many moments during Nick’s set where it felt the lights could be changing, not necessarily as a kind of spectacle, but subtly and sufficiently enough to complement the evolving music. I’m sure this, like the sound, will be something they work on over time.

Some other issues with the club are less easy to address, especially the question of numbers and circulation. That vast central atrium is both a blessing and a curse: a spectacular piece of architecture for people to marvel at as they move between the rooms; but also acting as an oversized chillout area that traps many people into sitting and chatting rather than dancing. Earlier in the night this has the effect of making it difficult to fill the dancefloors, and neither dancefloor feels particularly welcoming when sparsely occupied. Then, towards the end of the night — on Saturday morning, this happened from about 5.15am onwards — it can lead to overcrowding, as all those chatters and sitters suddenly realise they should probably dance a bit before closing time and flood onto the dancefloor. On That Side, circulation is less of a problem since the entrance and exit are both in the back half of the room. But circulation on This Side runs all the way down the side of the room and past the booth, leading to traffic and bottlenecks through an already narrow dancefloor. I have yet to identify the sweet spot in this room that combines good sound and space to dance without getting jostled too much.

Admittedly I had the benefit of still being fresh from my extended nap, but when Nick finished on the dot at 6am, it felt like we could have continued on a few more hours. I don’t know if this is part of the OC’s future plans, but occasionally being able to continue a bit longer into the late morning would be another unique draw for an already highly distinctive club. I’m not sure this will be possible, though, since it is part of a much bigger development in the same complex featuring shops, cafes and galleries. Indeed, this is all part of a temporary ‘revitalisation’ project that will ultimately see the building turned into residential properties.

That knowledge adds a bittersweet tang to proceedings, but I look at Outra Cena — the careful thought, good taste and sheer force of will that have gone into it, as well as all that investment — and I think to myself, if there was going to be a new club as part of yet another gentrification project in Lisbon, I’m glad it’s this one.

You can catch me playing at Outra Cena from 00h-03h next Saturday 20 January, warming up for livwutang.

You can support Planeta Manas and their in-house internet radio station Rádio Quântica via this new fundraising comp and by paying them a visit.