Talking Pints: Acupuncture Relights Lantern!

Just two months after the closure of The House, Acupuncture Records have today announced they will revive their original club, Lantern, in a new basement location behind Xuxian Lou restaurant at Gongti West Gate. The opening weekend will be August 26-27, with the Acupuncture crew DJing, plus guests including Ou Yang, Eddie Lv, QQ, Eric Lee, Patrick Yu and others filling out the lineup.

A press release just put out by Acupuncture tells us the new venue will be 700sqm in area, with a capacity of 700 (so that's 1sqm of dancing space per person, if my maths has not yet failed me). The new club will be open from Wednesday through to Saturday each week, which sounds wiser than The House's attempt to pack in the crowds seven nights a week. It also sounds as if Acupuncture are attempting to create a flexible layout that can accommodate large weekend crowds yet achieve a more intimate, loungey vibe for less hectic weeknights. Says the press release: "On Wednesday and Thursday, the DJ booth faces the lounge section, where tatami, comfy couches and glassy booths are thoughtfully placed. On the weekend however, the DJ booth faces the huge dancefloor." Bridging the gap between the kinds of crowds who are up for late-night dancing on a Friday and the generally lower appetite for hedonism on a Wednesday or Thursday is one of the biggest challenges for any underground venue, so it's good to see this being acknowledged as something the new Lantern will have to deal with from day one and a strategy being put in place to face the challenge.

Acupuncture also promise us a high-tech sound system, excellent visuals from local talents, and tell us they plan for Lantern 2.0 to be "a hub for all creative cultures." Which sounds great, but for now let's look forward to welcoming back a much-missed friend and seeing what shape Acupuncture's third club outing will take. See you there!