Kings Cross has lived at the centre of London’s dance music history for a long time. Speaking of the club scene of the 90s, Toni Tambourine, once a bouncer at The Cross, the famous nightclub in the goods yard off York Way in King’s Cross, once said: “The Hanover Grand was glam, Turnmills was innovative, The End was cutting edge, Ministry was entertaining, but The Cross was all of these things, with added style.”
This Saturday we see music return to Kings Cross, long after the clubs housed in those goods yards have closed their doors. Granary Square, which stands in front of Central St Martins’ incredible new headquarters, will host the last leg of the Africa Express tour, a trip which sees Damon Albarn’s experiment in African and Western music chuff across the UK in a train carrying 80 musicians from England, Scotland and Wales featuring scheduled concerts in Middlesbrough, Glasgow, Manchester, Cardiff, Bristol and London.
The concert will feature Damon Albarn, Carl Barât, Toumani Diabate, Fatoumate Diawara, Nicholas Jaar, Kano, John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin, Noisettes, Temper Trap, Rizzle Kicks, Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The square itself is an 8,000-metre area, bordered by the Regent’s Canal, and fronted by the Victorian grain repository which now houses the Saint Martins centre.
The history of the Bagleys, The Cross and The Key clubs, which closed at the start of 2008, came from a rags-to-riches story. Billy Reilly, a road-haulage operator based in Kings Cross, used to watch the ravers queue up in their glad rags for another warehouse party at Bagleys: “I saw all these club kids queueing up and I thought: Yeah, I’ll have some of that, that looks like fun”, he remembered, to legendary photographer and nightlife chronicler David Swindells. Soon he owned the Cross and the Key nightclubs, and went on to buy up Bagleys and rename it Canvas. “You’ve got to remember, one Saturday I had a garage and no one wanted to talk to me, the following week I had a club and everybody wanted to be my friend. You could make a film about it: from oily fingers and overalls, suddenly it was Patrick Cox and furry trousers.”
At the Cross, there was a Balearic glamour that would tempt the glittering crowds of London to its doors; with nights like Milk ‘n’ 2 Sugars and Cheeky People. A little later, things changed slightly. The edginess of Kings Cross was legendary; Brian Belle-Fortune in his book about drum & bass All Crews writes about spotting the kids with record bags, changing trains on the Northern line at Kings Cross, in the hour before the rave on a Friday night – Bagleys was well known for the intensity and rawness, when the mood of dance music it played there turned darker.
The area has now lost its dangerous vibe, and is part of the biggest, most exciting urban development in Europe. The developer, Kings Cross Central Limited Partnership (KCCLP) is successfully turning an area dogged by petty crime and industrial land into a new cultural hub. Their vision is to create a new piece of the city, populated by interesting people doing interesting things. Africa Express is an example of this. What some people don’t realize is that the development is now open, led by the old grain store of St Martins Art and Design school, which will look onto Damon Albarn and his Express crew as they rock the masses this Saturday.
M3nsa, the Ghanaian hip hop artist who is a big part of Africa Express, told Clash: “There couldn’t be a more suitable venue than the budding Granary Square right in front of the London University of Arts.
Full steam ahead on the Africa Express Train to our final destination for the grand finale. The London show is going to be something really special.”
The show is set to be a huge event, with a mix of New York indie with the Yeah Yeah Yeah, Led Zep, Carl Barât, and Kano – a crazily wide selection which makes this less of a concert and more of a festival.
Words by Miguel Cullen
Africa Express hits Granary Square at King’s Cross on September 8th.
