103 Gaunt Street,
London,
SE1 6DP
0871 971 3821
The ViewLondon Review
Bringing a touch of carnival fever to grimy Elephant and Castle, the Bacardi B-Bar is a new monthly residency at Ministry of Sound.
If you’ve been out and about over the summer – Homelands, maybe, or T in the Park – you’ll be familiar with the mobile B-Bar. It’s heavily branded, but forgivably so when the dedicated bar staff mix rum cocktails with such panache, and their partnership with a range of musical talent brings genuine benefits to clubbers.
The B-Bar is about funky house with a carnival vibe, and who better to launch it than Norman Jay. Gareth Somerville and Mark Knight have also played, and Kenny Hawkes, Luke Soloman and Marc Hughes are also on the books. Live percussion ups the tempo and works well in this space, as opposed to the Box, where one of London’s best sound systems would be well and truly wasted by the addition of bongos.
The days of the superclub are well and truly gone, and some would say that Ministry of Sound has been slow to adapt. Reluctant to abandon its mantra as ‘not just a club – a way of life’, Ministry continued to push its brand long past the point at which punters were willing to sustain it, and lost market share when the DJ bar scene exploded.
But recent initiatives, including the Bacardi B-Bar, show the old dog finally learning new tricks and moving to embrace a clientele who are after a more intimate, music-centred experience, rather than a full-on rave.
Ministry is still a great space with the clout to attract good DJ talent, though it’s undeniably lost out to Fabric, The End, Egg et al in terms of credibility. The seemingly underage, slightly overdressed character of much of the crowd doesn’t help, and nobody’s calling Bacardi Breezers the world’s most sophisticated alcopop, but on the other hand promotional partnerships like this are the way the world’s going, and so long as we all get something out of it, who are we to complain?
The Bacardi brand is working hard to earn its stripes as “The party spirit”, and their canny partnership with MoS can only further that aim.
Bacardi B-Bar @ Ministry of Sound has been reviewed by 1 users