Crobar: Music When The Light Go Out

The Crobar project began as a delve into the #SaveOurVenues and #LetTheMusicPlay campaigns, as owners reached out for help that wasn’t coming from the government - causing charities such as the Music Venue Trust to step in and help. This led us to bar keeper Richard Thomas - whose venue The Crobar had been an institution for London’s rock scene for just under twenty years - now another victim of the pandemic as banks and landlords all stood by and watched the business meet its demise.

A sealed bar is a very difficult thing to breathe life into, but for an audience to care it is vital to establish an emotional connection. Our solution was to project found footage filmed by patrons of the Crobar onto the walls of the venue which we would then film, thereby animating the inanimate and giving a feeling of ghosts and memories that are imprinted into the building itself.

We filmed in Soho over two nights. The first was spent around Denmark Street to capture the guitar shops and to place the many lost venues like the Borderline, 12 Bar Club and Tin Pan Alley - which were all in the process of redevelopment and gentrification. The former site of the Astoria in particular had a very skeletal quality to it, projecting a powerful feeling of lifelessness.

On its release the film generated a fair amount of buzz being covered by such notable music news outlets as Kerrang, Metal Hammer/Louder, Time Out and even ITV News interviewing myself and Lucy about it. The crowd fund has since grown by and extra £10,000, and most importantly it has helped to remind ourselves and others of the musical heritage of Britain and how important it is to protect and preserve parts of our culture which may otherwise be lost to an increasingly homogenised and globalised world.