The rebirth
Published: MEA
Trilogy nightclub at Souk Madinat Jumeirah has re-opened with the same looks but a new sound system that is attracting interest from top international DJs as James Ling discovers
Dubai’s Trilogy nightclub had earned itself a bit of a reputation. Prior to its three-year closedown, the club was known for its great atmosphere and the top DJs it attracted, but also for problem acoustics and a sound system that did not get the best out of the room.
So when it came to re-opening the club, a new sound system was top of the priority list. ‘It was an easy decision, the investment was there, and for this club to re-open it was a priority. In fact, it was the first thing on the list when it came to investment,’ explains Trilogy’s Marc Wise. ‘Trilogy is an amazing club, and when it was open before it didn’t have the sound system it deserved,’ he continues. ‘And within the three years of the club being shut Funktion One has in my opinion come to the fore for electronic music as the best sound system you can put in a nightclub.’
This is high praise indeed for the manufacturer, and an opinion Mr Wise believes is shared by a number of international DJs. ‘As soon as you tell your international guest DJs that you’ve just installed a brand new Funktion One, it’s like giving them the keys to a Rolls Royce. In three weeks I’ve had Mark Ronson, James Zabiela, Sidney Samson, and The Crystal Method from America, everyone so far has just gone wow!’ says Mr Wise.
There is also a strong business principle behind the addition of the system. With a high-quality system to add to the club’s good reputation, more top DJs will be attracted to play which will help to generate revenue. ‘If you give the DJs a Rolls Royce to play around with, they want to come back. And any new internationals we haven’t had here before, now they know we’ve got a Funktion One system, they want to come and play. It’s a great club, the crowd’s great here, and the system is amazing – they remember that,’ explains Mr Wise. ‘We’ve got a good reputation anyway, the three years the club was open we had everyone. It’s just the icing on the cake, you’ve just sprinkled a bit of gold dust onto the club and gone, you loved it before and it wasn’t a great sound system, now we’ve got you the Rolls Royce.’
While the system itself is one that the DJs are enjoying playing with, it has also improved the sound in the room. ‘We’re always going to have a reverb problem in the club because there are so many false walls. Also, being a high ceiling, those dynamics are always going to be a problem, whatever sound system you put in,’ says Mr Wise. ‘But Funktion One has eliminated most of the reverberation. We directed the sound to hit you on the dance floor, the energy is on the dance floor but the Funktion One speakers around the club give it a warmer feeling. Being in the back room or on the dance floor, you’ll still get the energy of a club night. We’ve positioned certain sized speakers – the further you go away from the dance floor, the smaller the speakers are.’
The new system at Trilogy, which was installed by local partner AMB, consists of a DS210 mid-high dance stack section with two DS15 mid-bass. A pair of these systems are hung either side of the DJ booth firing at the dance floor. This is complemented by FM118 subs ground stacked and concealed on opposite sides of the floor to provide the low end. For the DJ, the club has also installed a pair of RM12P monitor speakers. Finally, around the club Nine F88 speakers have been installed to provide coverage to the upper levels.
It was a rapid project for AMB to install the new equipment: ‘We already had some of it in, but it took a week around the clock,’ says Mr Wise. ‘We’ve now installed the biggest Funktion One system in Dubai in a club. We’ve gone full-belt with it, and straight away walking on the dance floor you know you’ve got yourself a jet engine there. But it’s a jet engine that hits you in the stomach, not in the ears.’
The next stage for Trilogy is fine-tuning the system to make it sound the best it can. ‘We are flying over Funktion One’s Tony Andrews, because as much as we have installed it, he is the master with the key and we want him to tune it his way. He’s going to tweak it to get it exactly how it should be.’
Opening night
‘Trilogy has a history in Dubai like no other venue,’ says Mr Wise. ‘There wasn’t a major nightclub when Trilogy first opened to be honest, there were little ones but they were more select. Trilogy had the history and the loyalty, so the re-opening was going to be big anyway. We also decided that the one thing we couldn’t do is re-open and put the same international DJs on that are constantly brought to Dubai on a regular basis.’
To tick every box for the launch party the club wanted a special performer who had never been to Dubai before. Further to this Trilogy also wanted somebody who is a little bit different to the norm, the natural choice for Mr Wise was UK-based DJ and producer Mark Ronson. ‘First, he’s a pop star, second, he was a DJ before he was a pop star and he still is a DJ, and his music is so eclectic that he plays it across the board,’ he reasons. ‘We knew that it was quite a statement to say Trilogy’s back, here’s the launch party – for the first time ever in Dubai, here’s Mark Ronson.’
So keen was the club to open with the artist that it delayed the opening by a week to ensure he could play. ‘It was very fortunate, he is in the middle of his tour, he had just finished America and was just about to start his UK tour three days after he came to play with us,’ explains Mr Wise. ‘We originally were going to open the club on the 16th and he was still doing the tour. So we actually pulled our launch back by a week to make sure we got him because we could only get him on the 23rd – on the 25th he started his UK tour. Timing wise, everything came together.’
To play his eclectic set list on opening night, Mark Ronson used a Rane Sixty Eight club mixer with Serato built in, two Technics SL1200 turntables, and four Pioneer CDJs supplied by NMK.
As for the rest of the venue, the club’s management was looking to maintain the original design. ‘We just gave it a lick of paint and new covers on the furniture. The simple fact is we did not want to change it because if you re-open the door and it was a complete different design, probably most people would react with the comment “this isn’t Trilogy”,’ says Mr Wise. ‘We wanted it to be how they left it and how they remembered it - just a nicer sound and light.’
Mr Wise is clearly very proud of the club’s new system and the acts it is helping to attract. ‘It’s amazing how when you do a contract with anyone or you’re emailing the DJs agent or manager, or the DJ themselves, you don’t bring up what you’re doing, but for some reason you have to point out – “by the way we’ve got the brand new Funktion One in” – you brag. There are not many times you say that.’