House. Sky-sent music of pure dancefloor uplift. The soundtrack to late-night elevations. Can be good clean fun, can also be the instigator of entire lost weekends of boundless hedonism. House music: so good they turned an entire Balearic island into a shrine to it.
The music of Frankie Knuckles, Larry Levan, Carl Cox, The Paradise Garage. The sound of minority black and queer resistance in draconian America and of cherished weekly escape from the drudgery of life the world over. A music that can be deep, French, prog or Scouse. The sound of Thatcherite moral panics and street riots that defined an acid era. Proletarian music that sounds like luxury bliss. A 4-4 kick, a wailing vocalist, some stabbing bass and chords that sound like the hold music to heaven. House: a faith, a family, and most of all, a feeling.
As we can see, house music means many different things to many different people. It’s malleable and easy like that: a sound with a few basic principles (a steady four to the floor beat, a vocal sample, a vaguely uplifting vibe) that has somehow unfurled itself into a rich folklore of heroes, lifestyles, hangovers, redemption stories, poignant arthouse films that people watch on Mubi, and Kevin & Perry Go Large across the span of almost 40 years.
House may go away for a while. For a year or two, it may become the sole preserve of ‘grown and sexy’ adult ravers who long to revel in the amniotic glow of their youths, to recreate the magic moments in which they first met. But like Formula 1 cars and January, house music always comes back around, luring in another generation of teenage partygoers with the warmth of its sound and the persuasiveness of its shuffling rhythms.
Over the span of its existence so far, house has been found wide-eyed and wayward in the fields of furious English farmers, jacking like a madman in drag clubs on Chicago’s Southside, spacious and saxophone-sozzled on Iberian beaches, and jubilant at the top of the pop charts. It’s led a rich and storied life, working its way into more stories than could ever be told, and it has done so for the same reasons that people ingratiate themselves to each other: because it’s infectiously upbeat, warm, open, fun and good to have around.
Ministry of Sound was the first permanent night club in London to give house music a home. Our founders started Ministry of Sound after returning from a pivotal visit to the Paradise Garage in New York determined to bring a taste of that to the UK. Over the next ten years, the biggest names on the international house DJ scene – Larry Levan, Roger Sanchez, Todd Terry, David Morales – flew in to play the club, adding layers of lore and house love to the building with each and every triumphant DJ set.
At the same time, the UK’s nascent house scene was incubated at Ministry of Sound, bold new blood destined to become future legend. DJs who today are household names – the likes of Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling – once spread their wings supporting the resident founder DJs at Ministry of Sound. Yet the club’s true impact goes far beyond this. It wasn’t just house music that found its home at our club. It’s where the whole of UK club culture was first mapped out, by both the DJs and the dancers who came through our doors.
Today, that legacy lives on in our events listings pages. Every month, we’re sure to be bringing house icons like Moodymann and Kerri Chandler to our main room The Box, while London’s hottest up-and-coming house DJs – big names from recent years like SG Lewis and labels like Defected – are ushered into the spotlight for wide audiences of house-hungry clubbers.
If you want to hear house music in the room where it all began in this city, come to London’s most iconic night club – Ministry of Sound is the club that house built, a global institution raised on a feeling, and the best place bar none for house events running long into the night.
