From the Royal Albert Hall to abandoned docklands: Organisers behind London's biggest events talk architectures impact on live music

We caught up with electronic music promoters LWE to talk about the role structures play in staging London's biggest events

Howling perform at the Royal Albert Hall during the Innervisions showcase last month (Luke Dyson)

The Royal Albert Hall has maintained a reputation as London’s premier concert venue for over a century, and with good reason. Having hosted the biggest names in classical music since its opening in 1871, the 5,500 capacity venue is known primarily as the home of the BBC Proms and the Royal Choral Society.

Beyond this the stalls have witnessed some of the biggest names in popular culture: Frank Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Coldplay and more recently the Arctic Monkeys. The selectiveness of the halls directors have ensured that being chosen to play at the Albert Hall comes at the very height of an artist’s influence and success. A landmark achievement in any musician’s career.

So it’s with a cheeky grin, that the usual throngs of keen music goers entered the hall on a rainy evening in September, greatly appreciating the irony that they were about to attend the historic halls first ever rave.

The event is a showcase by Innervisions, a Berlin-based record label, featuring sets from artists such as Dixon, Âme, Henrik Schwarz, Howling and more.

Who is responsible for bringing the techno heavyweights to Alby’ Hall? None other than London’s biggest underground event organisers LWE.

Though their repertoire is versatile ranging from corporate events to 10,000+ attendance shows, LWE’s true hallmark is their canny ability to unearth architecturally stunning locations that other organisers would perhaps too nervous to approach.

“We’ve done everything in London in some shape or form” comments Paul Jack, one of LWE’s founders: “but it’s an amazing thing to take what’s historically not a venue for electronic music and put a leading electronic label and artists into it.”

Paul admits he looks for venues from a “ravers” perspective. Having attended so many underground parties in his youth he professes that he got into event management due to the lacklustre nature of the damp, claustrophobic clubs that electronic music has traditionally been consigned to.

“I got into it because dancing was always in dark, sweaty rooms and I wanted to see it elevated to the next level, the music is good deserves these concert venues.”

“When you see it evolve onto such a world famous stage it’s so exciting, it’s so exciting to be part of it.”

Along with fellow founders Will Harold and Alice Favre, LWE was established six years ago, with its first event being a warehouse party in Ewer Street Car Park featuring Detroit legend Carl Craig, and have since become the driving force behind many large-scale electronic music events in the capital.

Throwing parties in well-established clubs such as Ministry of Sound, Fabric and Village Underground, they’ve also lent a helping hand to bring massive artists to infant venues such as The Fold and E1 (formerly Studio Spaces).

In recent years though, their attentions have been focused on the jewels in their crown: their signature venue Tobacco Dock – a Grade I listed abandoned warehouse located in the East End, and since 2016 their very own festival, Junction 2, a techno extravaganza held in Boston Manor Park.

Junction 2, held beneath the M4, has been dubbed an “industrial utopia” and has attracted talent such as Carl Cox and Adam Beyer to play on its emblematic bridge stage “it’s one of the only sites in London where you feel like you’re in London” comments Paul “creating an environment that people can get lost in and get dirty is really the essence of what we’re trying to do”.

The Boston Manor Park venue combines both the industrial aspects of motorway bridges and pillars with the natural woodland and landscaped gardens. “The location has given the festival its identity. The line-up, the sound systems and all of that, I think that’s an added bonus for most people. They all come because they want to rave under the bridge.”

For LWE the understanding that location makes a party is both a blessing and a curse: “Oh we can be too ambitious definitely” laughs Will Harold “we find these places, I mean our key role essentially is finding these amazing locations and then finding a way to throw a party there… sometimes it’s impossible and we have to bow out, we’ve come across these incredible venues and it’s been hard to let them go.”

“But when you have the potential of thousands of people in a space you can’t just be thinking about how amazing it would be, crowds change the dynamic, you have to think practically.”

“It’s no longer about ‘well we could fit some strobes over there’ it’s like ‘well where are we going to make people queue for the toilet? How are we going to get electricity in? Where’s the nearest tube station? Is this going to cause noise complaints from the neighbours?’ you know, this stuff is actually the make or break.”

One such ambitious location is Tobacco Dock. The former warehouse located on London’s Docklands was discovered by the team by mistake, after wandering into it on their way home from the office. “We used to be based right around the corner, and we’d constantly passed this big black gate outside and one day we thought, let’s go and have a look.”

What greeted them was a beautifully preserved Grade I listed Victorian warehouse, complete with intricate steelwork and balconies, skylights – even a central courtyard complete with a Great Exhibition-esque iron-latticed bandstand. “Our first thought was like, how are we going to through a party in there then?” Similarly to Junction 2 on Boston Manor Park, the draw for LWE was the juxtaposition between the industrial car park outside of Tobacco Dock and the beautiful Victorian stone work on the inside.

The team lucked out, managing to discover the warehouse as it was changing ownership. “We just happened to approach the new people as they were taking on the lease for it. We suggested we could do music events and then a few months later the first event that took place there was an LWE show.”

Though an ideal location, LWE quickly ran into the kind of problems associated with operating a monument such as Tobacco Dock. The building wasn’t designed specifically for events and it meant the team had to deal with industrial building managers and explain the nuances of operating shows.

“A lot of it is based on the space of the room and its capacity” Paul explains “It’s a big challenge when you’re booking a big event, you have to look at the programming and make sure the headliners aren’t all in one room – we have three large rooms yeah, but if you have your whole audience trying to get into one it can be trouble.”

The property is protected by its listed status requiring LWE to limit the impact they have on the structure, which Paul explains is both advantageous in creating a unique experience for guests, but also difficult at a production level “You can’t fix anything to the building. Everything has to be supported away from the walls and our build times are longer and we have higher maintenance costs.”

A space that comes with little beyond a roof means the promoters are forced to build the entire event from scratch before every event, bringing with them toilets, stages, lighting, flooring and erecting a functional show in a short space of time.

“If you damage anything, it’s quite expensive to put back. There are challenges in that the doorways are narrows so we have to think about crowd flow to make sure everything is safe. But that is also what makes the events.”

“If you were going to, say, the Excel Centre and you just do want you wanted with it, you wouldn’t create such an amazing experience, and that’s the beauty of operating somewhere like this. It requires you to get creative.”

You can check out Tobacco Dock next at Drumcode Halloween and the Junction 2 launch parties