Nightlife

Where London goes out after dark, district by district: the jazz cellars of Soho, the basements of Dalston, Camden's stages, Brixton's sound systems and the railway arches of Vauxhall.

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Brixton

Sound systems, a hall that takes five thousand, and a pub where half of south London's best bands started.

ClubsLive music

Brixton's night runs on two things that do not overlap much. One is the O2 Academy, a 1929 cinema with a raked floor that slopes towards the stage, which is why bands say it is the best room of its size in the country. Electric Brixton across the road was the Fridge, the club that ran the district's nights through the eighties and nineties.

The other is sound-system culture, which came with the Windrush generation and never left: the bass end of what Brixton plays, from reggae through jungle to what Phonox books now, is a direct line back to speaker stacks built in front rooms on Railton Road. The Windmill, on a residential street ten minutes away, is a scruffy pub with the best claim on the last decade of British guitar music.

Where
Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, SW9
Nearest station
Brixton · 4 min walk

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