Whether you are into house music, techno or minimal, if you have spent any time in Paris or are deeply interested in the electronic music scene there then you will be aware of the nightclub Concrete.
Located on the banks of the River Seine aboard the barge “Le Ponton la Rapée” has since 2012 welcomed legions of music lovers to its hallowed decks and is home to some of France’s most forward-thinking artists.
However, over the past few days, it has come to light that the club has been battling the owner of the barge, “Bateau de Paris-Ile-de-France” (BPIF) for the right to continue using the barge as previously agreed until July 31st 2019.
With this sad news coming the same week that Parker Lewis in Mannheim announces that it will be closing and with the successful plight of fabric still fresh in the minds of London clubbers, strong blows are currently being dealt to electronic music and counter culture in Europe in the name of greed and power.
What is even more unsettling about the potential closure of Concrete is that when the CEO of BPIF announced that she would be selling her acquisition back in 2015, the operating company behind Concrete issued an interest to buy the property and emphatically had their offer of purchase refused on December 26th 2018.
According to a recent statement by Concrete “Once the new authorization of occupation of the public domain issued by Ports de Paris Haropa thanks in large part to the Concrete project, the BPIF company began to impose excessive financial conditions on the operating company of Concrete.
In order to preserve the activity of Concrete and all related jobs, a new barge operating agreement, much more stringent than the previous one, was nevertheless concluded until 31 January 2019 with BPIF.”
Then, finally on February 11th 2019 Concrete was mysteriously issued with a notice to vacate the premises within 15 days, this obviously came as a shock and has now sparked worldwide support for Concrete to rightly fight this decision.
Concrete received an outpouring of support from Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo and Frédéric Hocquard, Deputy Mayor of Paris as well as the electronic music community. Sadly, this sort of support is not enough and so a petition has been drawn to aide in the battle against such an unwarranted decision by BPIF and in just over 24 hours the cause has nearly reached its intended 10k signatures.
The club recently hosted the likes of Rhadoo, Margaret Dygas and Jane Fitz. With this weekend’s event on Friday, May 24th being Minibar’s showcase with Zip, Cabanne and John Thomas, it is perfectly understandable why Concrete will remain at the forefront of the minimal scene until the last beat is dropped no matter the outcome.
To sign the #ConcreteParisSupport petition, click here.
Next event:
Concrete X Minibar: ZIP, John Thomas, Cabanne
More info on Concrete
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