Corsica Studios is to close. Not much has been said around the matter by the club itself, and despite being in the know for a while, I don’t have many details to add beyond saying they’ll be doing nights well into next year. Might even play myself.

It’s had a grand old run - 23 years and change - been at the nexus of some London’s more interesting crossovers, and where you could find Jaded, the party that started at 5am every Sunday morning at an established club. A rarity in London. The two sides of its success have been firstly the quality of the promoters it has worked with over the years, and secondly its commitment to doing the basics well (sound, smoke, security, general gloam). Room 2 has been a particular joy to play. It’s one of the most immersive spaces in London when you find the right spot, and where I wanted to be when we did our last Can You Feel The Sun party there, listening to Sybil before and taking my cues in that room from her. Taking any of this for granted is foolish.

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But we should not take clubs for granted.

- A good club is the result of a few people getting something right for a particular period of time.

- A great club is something which says something larger culturally about a moment in time. It defines something of the zeitgeist rather than just reflecting something of the times.

Beyond these two lofty categories are the spaces which are functional, which allow for potentially great nights. These are the bedrock of this culture and perhaps can outlive the first two. They can function as platforms for promoters to do something that could be defining, but the spaces themselves are canvases.

Corsica was closer to a canvas, thus its closure is sad. But whenever a space goes it’s a useful moment to say where are we at as a city? What kind of clubs are the clubs we have? Are new spaces replacing what’s being lost? Clubs will always close. I’d like to say clubs should close when the moment is right. What we need is for new clubs to be coming through often enough that do those basics well and have something else to say. We need the cycles to be cycling. The climate to be one in which opening a club is a dream we can dream.

This year hasn’t been too bad in London. Off the top of my head we have had the additions of Om and Number 90, both good additions by all accounts - I haven’t yet been. Given the tough ten years we’ve had it would be good to maintain a 2:1 ratio for a few years to redress the balance. Now they get to start anew that cycle, how long should it be? Is a great club celebrating its 25th birthday a good thing? Should these things become institutions that never really change? I’m not convinced of this. They can end up sucking the wind out of change that could be serving us all a bit more richly. They could also be protecting the things they have achieved. So, what’s ideal?

Five years to establish. Five years to burn at peak. Five years to cement and celebrate the thing.

At least that is what I would wish for were it me doing the opening. I would wish to be a place that aimed to be great. To do that you need to have a stunningly clear vision. For that programming and design has to be done in-house. An identity quickly drawn and consistently reinforced. A certain amount of bravado and ego is par for that course, and often the source of weakness over time.

When asked about favourite clubs that I’ve played (please never ask, it’s an impossible question) I sometimes say De School. The club I’ve played the most at (Panorama Bar) has sometimes been there, as have many others, but emotionally I think my truly greatest experiences have been ones in ephemeral spaces. Still, people want to know about the spaces they’ve been to or heard of. DS did all of these things, and its shortcomings were rooted in getting a great deal right and thus being blind to the things it did wrong. They could have stayed open longer but I think, on balance, I’m glad they didn’t. Maybe the best thing they ever did was to close on a high? We have many other places as evidence of who, past a certain point, don’t really stand to add anything to their achievements. From there, the only way is down.

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