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The Venue

Coaxing the Venue to High Speed Victory

If you were told anywhere else that a Sunseeker was setting off to pick up a Spinnaker on the Normandy coast you would assume that a holidaymaker had a day's sailing in mind.

But that would be too easy in Jersey where the Sunseeker in question was millionaire Kevin Leech's 38ft powerboat and the mission was to speed to St. Malo, under cover of the night, to collect a Spinnaker laser from Paris- based Spectra Physics agent, Jean-Michel Gache, who had used a more conventional mode of transport for his three hour journey from the French capital. It was the most exciting moment of Dave Hickford's life as the craft carrying the Laser Innovations boss sped au littoraI at the equivalent of 40mph, and the transaction was made at a nearby bar without a single HM Customs and Excise chappie superintending. Could this open the way for laser smuggling on a grand scale - with St. Malo providing a Marseilles or Miami-style contraband corridor? "We were lucky in that we buy our Spinnakers from Paris," revealed Dave Hickford "and that Kevin was able to produce his speed boat."

Thus the opening night crowds at the Venue in Jersey on March 10 were treated to Laser Innovations' remarkable 360° PanScan (now there's a name from the past) - albeit with an argon head. Think what a feast the hardcore dance crowd are in for when it goes seven-colour. It had been the owner's decision to add the laser to Vincent Rice's perfectly logical lighting scheme, no doubt delighted that a Ł25,000-plus package can today buy a system comprising fibre-controlled scanning head, mirrors and Pyramid controller, capable of splitting the beam into two from a single tube and carrying it via fibre optic cables to the scanning head. Of the most basic controller in his four-desk range, Dave Hickford commented: "It will generate good quality cones, flat scans and tunnels hut the important things is we can lock the colour in the fibre. Even with a four-colour animation we can maintain the colour locking." Scanning and blanking are carried out at the top end of the fibre, with colour changing at the bottom and a built-in SMPTE reader enables pre-programmed shows to be locked in sync with audio. PanScan, " which can also be driven by the company's more sophisticated Mirage and Oasis desks, is selling like wildfire - which is a measure of how far the Suffolk-based company have come. It is just one element of an amazing club, whose daytime persona under house lights (a basic black shell) scarcely prepares you for its gestalt change once it's atmo'd-up and rammed with a hardcore dance crowd in frenzied homage to the l40bpm grooves of Carl Cox.

You want a real definition of morphing? The Venue will provide it. Laser aside, the VRD design has many of the effects caped around the perimeter, the spot lighting coming from 24 F70s and 24 PAR 56s, and scanning effects from the Coemar/TAS stable, including three Synchro Digital's, 24 Baby Colours, six Microscans and 24 Versatiles. The rigs are edged with 24- channels of neon, the strident effect that the lighting needed prior to the laser appearing on the spec sheet. The show is run off a Light Processor Integrator - which installers Envo-Tech regard as a very cost- effective, one desk management system for all their lighting - with 27 LP power packs in full view. Disorientation is provided jointly and severally by huge walled mirrors and a JEM four- head 428 Smoke Processor.

The History
The history of the Island's first club is interesting. Originally two retail units (one a Chinese restaurant) it belongs to an age when pork balls was something deployed to defend the island from the invading Huns. Maybe there was just no call for it after l945. Ironically the name 'Lord's' had less to do with the fact that it was owned by Lord Louth, than the fact that the person he happened to sell it to was John Lord.

The new Venue name was arrived at independently by various people involved - which is just as spooky - and hence was applied by consensus. In four months it has already hosted Mark Goodyear, Bad Boys Inc and Carl Cox, who had played there at the insistence of his friend Eric Powell, while de/Construction will be bringing Kylie Minogue to the club shortly. But surely with operators like Carl Cox, and a pre-existing sound system, there's the temptation to blow the cones off their mountings like shellfire - even with a processor-protected system like the Toa dance system? Not after Joe was introduced to Formula Sound's AVC-2 at last year's Light & Sound Show

The Management
Joe is fortunate now to have an able number two in Peter Robinson, who has taken over the day-to-day management of the venue, leaving the former freer to forward plan events. Also in the operations team are DJs Vrioni and Warren Lesueur, the latter a catalyst in the whole dance movement on the island, opening the way nicely for Eric Powell and Carl Cox to exercise their later groovesmanship on the night we visited. Head doorman, Eddie Stuart, also epitomised the perfect demeanour and attitude for a front-of-house steward. Once inside, he handed over to Laurent Perrier, who took care of business thereafter. Envo-Tech's work has again been exemplary, contracting the design out and using their own fixing skills to make it happen in near record time. With bases in St. Helier and Saffron Walden they are becoming as powerful buyers of sound, light and video show technology as they are of CCTV and security equipment - their core business. "Yet the thing that amazes me," says MD, Brian Puckey, "is that we have not seen a single lighting rep in Saffon Walden for five years. No-one ever tries to sell to us. The only people who have, are Owl Video." Now it that's not throwing down the gauntlet ... Jerry Gilbert

The Sound System
The Toa sound system, comprising six mid/tops and two 2 x 15 bass bins, driven by eight of Toa's P1090D amplifiers, digests and regurgitates its high-octane feed with good reference. The club, says general manager, Joe Conneely, has not only regenerated dance on the island, but also his own belief in club culture. "It's become exciting again." he had commented in anticipation of the evening ahead it helped that the day we visited was Jersey's biggest carnival day of the year - the Battle of Flowers procession of floats had brought 40,000 onto the promenades and the town centre had been shut off. Joe had been part of the management team in its previous incarnation, Lord's, an island monument stretching back 30 years.

Painful Memories
It brought back painful memories for Envo- Tech's Brian Puckey, who in l985' slipped while fitting a transformer to a Satel fixture, and ruptured his spleen. He was understandably pleased to see the last piece of ceiling disappear among the 40 tons of rubble that went into the skip. Contrived minimalism or abject spartanism - you take your pick. But the right amount of industrial bleakness has been added by the supporting RSJs and Ł15,000 worth of Lite Structures fabrication, including their pre- wired Live Lite, for the bar and stage.

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