In pictures: London’s lost goes out with a bang

“Yo, man, I need to get inside that club, can you, like, call the manager or something?” pleads a faint acquaintance. It’s Saturday, and I am about to enter the Soho nightclub lost on its final night. For the first time in its brief eight-month lifespan, the mysterious Odeon cinema complex-turned-rave has sold advance tickets, which promptly sold out in seconds. Now, within 15 minutes of opening at 10pm, people are being turned away in droves at the front door. There’s nothing I can do, I tell the punter. I barely managed to get in myself.

The excitement on the street is palpable, and also totally unsurprising. Since opening in October of last year, lost has garnered a near-mythical reputation in London for its patently different approach to nightlife: phones are locked in magnetic pouches and forbidden throughout the venue; its lineups, which have variously featured Skepta, Lancey Foux and Sophia Stel, are only announced on a chalkboard inside the club on the night; and the space itself cloaks what is, at heart, a commercial club in the guise of an anarchic squat party, featuring two functioning cinema screens, a live music stage, and one-and-a-half dancefloors (the second is basically a broom closet with a capacity of ten people) throughout its sprawling corridors. 

All of this has led lost to command a level of excitement not felt in London in at least a decade – and, crucially, at a time when nightlife feels particularly dire. It felt so promising, in fact, that, in its early months, rumours abounded of how drugs and cigarettes were allowed inside the venue (not, in fact, true, as a security guard kindly reminded me mid-cig last year). Be it down to space, timing, or its judicial marshalling of phone use, people certainly felt freer in lost than any other UK club I’ve ever seen. 

Inside the venue on its closing night, there is a heavy sense of anticipation. Attendees flock to the chalkboard at the heart of the complex to find that, in addition to standout bookings from The Dare and Jawnino and Deer Park, one slot has been mysteriously labelled “finale”. Whispers circulate that Charli xcx and Dean Blunt will close out the night (neither of which proved true) and, in the first hour, clubbers seem content to congregate in the two cinema rooms, loading up on drinks and popcorn and reserving their energy for the inevitable surprise

I’m struck by the sheer range of tribes that have converged on the venue. Slender guys in indie sleaze-style suits, gym bros in string vests, techno troopers in all-black, and girls in tiaras on what appears to be a misguided hen do alike can be found wandering through the venue’s labyrinthine corridors. It seems to me more confused than utopian, as if, lured in by lost’s intentionally vague – but by no means ineffective – online marketing, they are all convinced that the club stands for something different. 

“They’ve really put people’s experience first,” one punter gushes to me, before cursing out lost’s £20 martinis with his next breath. Another wide-eyed, jaw-swinging raver splutters in my ear: “Race doesn’t exist here, we can build a new society from this room.” He was white. But, at least strangers are talking to each other, right?

Slender guys in indie sleaze-style suits, gym bros in string vests, techno troopers in all-black, and girls in tiaras on what appears to be a misguided hen do alike can be found wandering through the venue’s labyrinthine corridors

It was with indie sleaze golden child The Dare’s headline set at midnight, however, that things truly started to kick off. In true lost fashion, the club area reaches capacity ten minutes before he even steps on stage, causing revellers to clog the corridors and tempers to flare. Still, by all accounts, The Dare crushes it, catering to this cross-London delegation with an electric mix of EDM, garage, and a particularly explosive drop of Two Shell’s funky dance cut “The Nightmare”.

The euphoria is only bolstered when, as prophesied, Charli xcx and George Daniel are spotted wading through the crowd, soon followed by Olivia Rodrigo. At one point, I find myself stuck behind an impossible bar queue on the club floor, only to realise that it was caused by Charli herself attempting to get a drink. She is promptly surrounded by fans who, devoid of their phones, aren’t quite sure how to act. Moments later, Charli glides past me with a water jug full of champagne, and I buy a £7 half-pint of beer (their cheapest on offer). 

And that’s when things get a little weird. As The Dare closes out his set, the crowd break into a chant: “Charli! Charli! Charli!” Instead, they are met with a seven-piece Georgian choir, freezing all but those whose jaws are swinging too fast to stay still. After ten minutes of utter confusion, a man in a paint-stained suit takes the microphone. 

He introduces himself as the founder of lost. Applause. “Don’t you feel freer without your phones?” he goads. More applause, this time hesitant. Then, the man dives into a speech about the perils of AI and “autistic technocrats”, and how his confiscation of phones poses a solution. Confused chatter begins to bubble up throughout the crowd. “Can you all just shut the fuck up for a second?” says the club owner, immediately regretting his words. A gasp ricochets off the cinema walls, and someone breaks the silence: “Why don’t you shut the fuck up and play some music?” Boos erupt across the room, no one quite sure of whether they are deriding the heckler or the club owner, who, cowed by the mutiny, retreats to clumsily play “All Along the Watch Towers” by Jimi Hendrix off a USB. I leave for air.

Upstairs in The Loft chillout area, it occurs to me that, strictly speaking, there was nothing too objectionable about Mr. lost’s speech. So, why did the mood turn? On some level, the speech seemed to mark a Scooby Doo-esque unmasking moment for everyone in the room. Over the past eight months, lost has increasingly invited punters to project their own desires onto the space: queer utopianism, squat rave anarchy, drug leniency, indie rock revivalism, the first true Gen Z nightlife movement; the list goes on. Instead, in its final moments, lost was marked by the uncomfortable realisation that it was probably never any of those things – it was just one man’s crusade against AI.

Now, of course, this doesn’t invalidate the many great nights that I and many others have had at lost – indeed, platitudes to the effect of “best club in London” persist after the fateful speech until the venue closes for good at 3am, while others continue to wonder deeper into the corridors asking for ‘The Music’ even after security begins to sweep everyone out. If nothing else, lost’s willingness to do things differently has been something to get excited about.