Taipei is reaching for the skies, first with the world's tallest office building and now with one of the largest purpose-built dance clubs in the world, certainly the biggest in Asia.
The US$10 million Ministry of Sound (MoS) in Neihu has an entrance big enough for a car to drive through, eight bars, two dance floors, three DJ booths, a VIP Macallan sky bar, a sunken lounge, 10 private rooms and enough room in the main arena to swing a trapeze artist.
There will be luminous floors, an earth-shattering sound system and en-suite bathrooms in the private booths. The club will be to dance music what the Taipei 101 is to skyscrapers and if all goes as planned it should take clubbing out of the shadows and into the mainstream -- just another musical diversion for the young masses to dance in sanitized splendor and not an insidious attempt to corrupt youth with drugs through electronic sounds.
This conversion from dance music as an illegal activity to merely being cool and the acceptable face of a night out on the town has happened elsewhere before and the owners of MoS in Taiwan are betting the time is right here, right now. The club is slated to open next month.
The MoS story starts with James Palumbo -- the son of a hereditary peer and property developer in the UK -- who managed the trick of turning underground sounds into a profitable business model in London in 1991, when he converted a failing club in the relatively unfashionable south of the city into a global leader of the dance-music industry.
At the time, electronic music was becoming the new beat after the demise of rock 'n' roll and hundreds of thousands of youngsters were spending their weekends going to outdoor parties or raves (that were often free) to dance until the early morning. Newspapers at the time were scandalized and said the nation's youth was at risk.
The entry of the son of a lord and the application of professional management skills to the dance music market gave the whole scene a veneer of respectability. There was even more respect when it turned out that 3,000 people a night would pay US$40 and more just to get in. Laws to prevent outdoor parties without a license and MoS helped turn the youth movement of rave into a section of the entertainment business and part of the establishment.
Today MoS has an annual turnover approaching US$188 million and has expanded its business interests to become the biggest independent record label in the world, as well as having interests in merchandizing, promoting, licensing, radio stations and the Internet (ministryofsound.com is said to be the biggest dance music portal in the world).
Taipei's MoS on Lequn Third Road (樂群三路) measures itself by superlatives. At 1,200 pings (nearly 4,000㎡) it's the largest purpose-built dance club in Asia, dwarfing Velfarre in Tokyo and Zouk in Singapore. An army of nearly 100 staff will service it on a weekend and there are plans to hold conventions, new-car unveilings (hence the car-sized entrance), and live performances from rock, pop and hip-hop artists.
With a capacity of 2,500 people it could fill a hole for a variety of mid-sized events held in the city. It can also function as a smaller bar in the week by shutting off the main arena. On the ground floor there are shops and a fusion restaurant.
The exterior of the building has an upmarket warehouse look, in muted gray, while the interior was modeled by Neil Morton, of GMP, who has come up with a lavishly appointed and shiny image, heavily featuring glass: There are levitating window/walls to the main arena, a smoked-glass chill room, glass private booths and a glass VIP room that overlooks both the main arena and second disco area, "The stars? They wanna be seen," said MoS Project Director Peter Bowden.
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