Review – Studio338, Greenwich

A venue which has been hailed by many as an ‘Ibiza-style’ club in London, it was actually destroyed by fire around two years ago, and reopened in the summer of 2017 (in which seeing the Phoenix mural on the way in made total sense), I’ve been following the many big-name electronic/dance music acts that have performed there, as well as it’s massive terrace area, I was really looking forward to stepping foot in there for the first time, which I did last Friday for a Halloween-themed Drum ‘n’ Bass/Jungle night.

Entry was quick, not waiting longer than 15/20mins to get in, the usual ID/ticket/frisk search was over and done within 5 mins and we were inside.

You enter to the Main Room and it was huge – entering on a landing, with the steps below leading to the main dancefloor, which could hold around 500-1,000 people I reckon, with lights/speakers all around. There are raised sections all around and makes good use of the space with lots of tucked-away spaces in the corners and even on the landings, it never felt rammed too much (even at the peaktime 2/3am there was 100s of people, but enough room for everyone to dance/jam) We went in the middle of the dancefloor at one point and it felt great, especially as the DJ booth and soundmen/MCs next to it, weren’t too high up, it had a great intimate vibe, and easy to find friends and move from one space to another.

The adjoining room next to it – kind of a weird sub-room, as it had an empty DJ booth – was an empty space with a Bar on the far side and the main space broken out with pillars. It had good speakers all over this room – given it was a late Friday night, myself and my friends decided to stay here most of the night to get away from the hustle of the main room (we were over 30, after all!) – but it had the exact same levels of sound and bass in the main room, coupled with other groups of people who had the same idea and decided to mingle with us most of the night
too, we never felt like we were missing out in the experience and, even directly under the speakers, never lost any of the bass and treble, it certainly was a comfortable spot!

We were next to the Bar – which offered no-frills selections of Beer, Vodka/Mixer and Red Bull – but annoyingly had a minimum £20 spend policy for Card transactions, so not a big fan of that. Otherwise it was no real trouble to get served at all, so all in all was OK.

We ventured to the Upstairs area – ‘The Blast’ – which was generally a lot smaller than downstairs and had a ‘boiler room’ type of atmosphere – it was relatively darker and had more people crammed together – but having a high-energy set from a legendary Drum ‘n’ Bass DJ Die and, coupled with the MC getting everyone involved, it was really different to the main room and enjoyed it a lot. The speakers were in all corners in this room so you could feel all the bass and was a great vibe.

As we were leaving around 4am, we went to the Outside Terrace and it is massive – full of space, people, food stalls and Bars, decked out with colourful lighting and lots of seating – it really was cool to check out and, not being too far from the main room, you could still get the vibes from the dancefloor even if you needed a respite in this area. This part of Studio338 is lauded and for good reason, I can only imagine how good it can be during the Summer months, plus with it being open all day/night makes it a firm attraction and differentiates itself from other venues.

Overall, I would certainly recommend this to venue to everyone – it has enough variety in the venue to suit anyone’s tastes and with it being reasonably cheap and a great soundsystem (being under the speakers most of the night, and leaving without that annoying ringing in the ears as I get in most places, is definitely a plus!) it’s a really great place. Looking back, given the whole night I went to was primarily DnB – which, after 3/4 hours can be quite tiring/tedious – I had a bit of a tainted view of the place, but I would certainly go there again if there was a more diverse line-up. Pretty handy too is that North Greenwich tube station is 24-hours on Fridays/Saturdays, it’s a massive plus, so getting to/from there is little issue at all.