Vent Lets it All Out

Every story needs a location, a place you experience with future nostalgia of its own importance; where your moments become part of what is bound to be a tiny thread in a historic tapestry. At the beginning of the year, I put in my optimistic two cents on the volcanic music scene that has slowly and surly cultivated its self as of late. The problem was that it was missing one factor that defines any epic sub-cultural boom, and that was an epicentre. The comparison of course is superfluous, but, for the Bohemians it was Warhol’s Factory, for Ravers it was the Hacienda. For the creative Egyptian, the last of a dying breed, who procreate knowledge outside the bubble of our incestuous and banal social circles, who willingly go against the dogmatic grain, that place is Vent. It's ironic, sad and very promising that a venue so reflective our times is also a venue that makes you feel like you're not in Cairo.

Call it westernisation or elitism or racism, but that's usually my first test when I walk into a venue in Cairo. Am I in Cairo? And the fact is, when I walked into Vent for the first time on their opening night last Thursday, I wasn't. With Ahmed Samy in his own universe of dark minimal beats and what I imagined were Nightmare Before Christmas characters swirling around his head, the walls slathered in thick matte black, cement pillars with tongue in cheek ‘house rules ‘graffited on, chalk board menus and chained light bulbs accenting the industrial, grungy, interiors it was much more reminiscent of an underground club in, say, Berlin or London. It's as if the five young Egyptians involved in the curation of this hipster Mecca got drunk on every euphoric image of a night out they'd ever had and urinated it over 6, Kasr el Nil St, in a moment of awesome public dissonance.

And for the record, getting drunk at the alternative downtown space is pretty cheap ,with a beer costing you only 23 LE; just as it should. For the time being, the service is a bit slow and uncommunicative, but it is understandable for a venue which has just stared. Unfortunetly there was an issue with one of the mixer's channels during the Wetrobots <3 Bosaina performance that left the vocals somewhat inaudible but was redeemed by the explosive showmanship and the sound, coming out of Funktion 1 speakers was rectified promptly in time for DJ Rags from the UK.