Electric Brixton

The Fridge that returned with a new name

When The Fridge turned off the lights on March 17, 2010, the Edwardian cinema attached to the Brixton Town Hall did not dissolve into apartments: it reopened in September 2011 as Electric Brixton, following a million-pound renovation that stripped back the neoclassical plaster and bathed it in gold. Dominic Madden conceived it as a mid-sized venue—a capacity of about 1,700 compared to the 5,000 of the Academy, a few minutes up the street—to fill the gap left by the Astoria in the center.

A century of stalls before being called Electric

Gilbert W. Booth opened the Palladium Picture Playhouse on March 20, 1913: an auditorium wider than it was deep, with stalls, a circle, and a theater proscenium. The building was the Palladium, the Regal, and the ABC, and in the seventies and eighties The Ace, where The Clash and The Smiths played; David Bowie also passed through his concert and roller-disco phase there. In 1985, Andrew Czezowski and Susan Carrington, the couple from the punk Roxy, signed The Fridge: ramshackle fridges on the facade and an interior painted black that hid the baroque style.

The dancefloor that rehearsed the rave look

The Fridge was one of the first London clubs with video screens and a chill-out zone. Soul II Soul held a residency there between 1988 and 1993, Love Muscle occupied the gay Saturdays for almost a decade, and Daisy Chain, Escape From Samsara, and Return To The Source all passed through. Czezowski maintained that the visual aesthetic of that box ended up being copied in the rave scene. That memory of the dancefloor—not of a specific party brand—is what Electric Brixton inherits every time it opens for DJs.

Touring and electronic music in the same box

Operated by Electric Group, born in 2013 from this reopening, the venue mixes concerts and nightlife. In 2019, it scheduled 178 live and club dates and gathered more than 200,000 attendees, with Liam Gallagher, Jorja Smith, Sam Fender, MGMT, or Fall Out Boy. In electronic music, it has hosted house, drum and bass, and high-profile sessions: on January 6, 2023, Four Tet, Fred again.., and Skrillex performed a four-hour B2B2B that put the old Fridge back on the global map. The group also maintains a line of nights with explicit support for the LGTBIQ+ community.

Gold, blue, and mezzanine over Brixton Hill

The main room remains a theatrical box: standing dancefloor, wide stage, and mezzanine gallery that cuts the volume to make it more intimate. The plaster is now read in blue and gold, with bars on both sides, a VIP area, two cloakrooms, and a smoking patio. In 2019, the wall of the second room was demolished and the facade was dressed in LED. Lambeth has protected it as an asset of community value: the same site remains a cinema, Ace, Fridge, and Electric.