An almost endless roll call of greats made music there: Lionel Bart, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, George Michael, The Libertines, Adele, Ed Sheeran. The young David Bowie, desperate to be on the road where it happened, camped there in a converted ambulance. The Sex Pistols started their career in a flat on Denmark Street. Just across Charing Cross Road, in Soho, was the London Astoria, a venue big enough for 2,000 people. Several hundreds of millions of pounds worth of construction later, there’s still a street of musical instrument shops, as well as new spaces and production facilities, as well as a “radically new technology-led marketing, entertainment and information service housed in a highly flexible, digitally enabled streetscape”. , as well as many more. There will be ‘busking points’ and clubs. The Astoria is gone, but a new 600-seat theater called @sohoplace is on the way, on a site next to where it used to be. For £456 a night and up, you can stay like a rock star in ‘conference rooms’ pre-vandalized with curated graffiti On paper, then, the combination of its uses resembles that of the past, but in spirit it has completely changed. It is built on the apparent paradox that a culture fueled by rebellion and chaos must now be channeled through the processes of big property owners. Anarchy in the UK is not. Or, rather, it’s a new kind of escalating anarchy, where the boys making all the noise are big business. The catalyst for this extravagance is the Elizabeth line, the £18.9 billion super-fast, super-fast underground railway that opened last May, whose Tottenham Court Road station can offload 200,000 passengers a day. Its construction required the demolition of the Astoria and other buildings, clearing the site for new development. It brings crowds of potential players to the doorstep of areas of new venues, which will power Outernet London, a multi-billion pound ‘immersive entertainment district’, ‘where music, film, art, games and retail experiences come to life in exciting new ways ». This “area” is actually a single project, although it incorporates some historic pieces, owned by one company, Consolidated Developments. Its most obvious feature is the Now Building, a large oblong block that greets you as you emerge from the tube: a giant table-like frame clad in black stone, within which multi-storey gold-coloured shutters can be folded back to reveal an atrium with lining 23,000 square feet of floor-to-ceiling high-definition LED screens; Other areas of the complex also surround visitors with screens. It will welcome you with a storm of digital light and movement in what Consolidated says will be “London’s Times Square.” The Now Building’s golden shutters fold back to reveal a space lined with giant floor-to-ceiling LED screens. External network Beneath the Now Building is a new 2,000-capacity venue, Here at Outernet, opening in September. Behind it is Chateau Denmark, a hotel “inspired by the rare hustle and bustle of Denmark Street”, where, from £456 a night and upwards, you can stay like a rock star in “conference rooms” decked out in mahogany and burgundy velvet and “antique ». brass’ and ‘industrial concrete’, pre-vandalized with curated graffiti. And on the south side of the same block is Denmark Street itself, where the old guitar shops – thanks in part to some encouragement from Camden Council – have been invited to continue their business in its refurbished buildings, as well as a ‘music venue’ base”. which formed at the old 12 Bar Club. Omnivorous eclecticism – an all-you-can-eat buffet of looks and amenities – is the spirit of the whole endeavor Outernet CEO Philip O’Ferrall calls his project “the world’s largest, most advanced content atrium … a disruptive, personalized brand engagement platform,” by which he means companies will pay handsomely to place brands them on the big videos and hold spectacular events in the screened halls. The idea is to attract the public and then make them stay, with the images on the screens, with the music, with bars and restaurants, so that they can be exposed to more sales. “If you spend an extra 30 seconds on my site, I can offer you more advertising,” he says. The proceeds, O’Ferrall also explains, will help finance the less profitable music businesses on the other side of the block. The architecture, by long-standing practice Orms, which previously converted Camden council offices into the stylish Standard Hotel, is by turns extreme and careful. There’s the big, blocky gold and black hardware, a little art deco in inspiration. There are preserved historic facades, soft decorative brickwork and stucco and stonework. Inside the block is a version of traditional London courtyard construction, a jumble of glazed brickwork and industrial-looking windows. The wider context, outside the site’s boundaries, plays even more sounds: the zig-zag concrete of the 1960s Center Point skyscraper, a pink and black flower-patterned building now nearing completion in what was once Foyle’s bookstore. “Heavy touches of punk rock,” according to the PR spiel for Chateau Denmark, a hotel inspired by the “rare hustle and bustle of Denmark’s high street.” External network It doesn’t take much effort to tie it all together. You take your small-scale Victorian ornament and your domestic Georgian spoils, and then enjoy the full blast of the 21st century high-tech marketing-entertainment complex. This omnivorous eclecticism – an all-you-can-eat buffet of all looks, styles and amenities – is the spirit of the entire Outernet endeavor, from hotel bedrooms to big screens to preserved stores. You feel it from the moment you step out of the tube station, at the junction of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, and encounter a digital installation that changes from cloudscapes intended to achieve an “immersive experience of attention and relaxation” to something for Unicef ​​to a roar of music by the Clash, a dizzying ride from calm to consciousness in Combat Rock. To say the least: great. Is it not fundamental to a city like London, and especially Soho and its environs, that it is a place of contrasts, a rich palimpsest of ambition and creation manifested in its built fabric? And isn’t it also great that the neighborhood’s musical heritage has found new and clearly well-funded form? That hundreds of thousands of people will have a good time here and that artists will have the opportunity to make and perform music? Outernet London wall art. Photo: Tim Soar Surely it’s better to have all of that here, and keep the guitar shops, than to drag everything out of a giant office block. If it’s brash, then so were the Victorian musicals and 1930s cinemas that are now much-loved heirlooms. (And, actually, if you overdo it, you could have a little more fun than the black frames provide.) But no one should be under any illusions that this is anything like the Tin Pan Alley of old. Because what was once diverse and spontaneous is now under the control of Unified Ownership and the Outernet. The thing called a “neighborhood” is an owner’s real estate proposal. Now what would happen to a Bowie if he tried to get into his ambulance? Or a spray-on Johnny Rotten? Or someone who wants to bang in an unsanctioned way? The project is accompanied by virtuoso PR gobbledegook that strips the sentences of their basic meaning. The hotel, apparently, “combines creative expression and exquisite architectural details to present something wild.” Its rooms feature “strong punk rock touches” and “a revolutionary statement piece”. But how “revolutionary” can anything on this site be when it chooses to sell cars and software and fashion? The result is not Tin Pan Alley, but something akin to what it would look like if reconstructed by alien archaeologists, aided by some crude artificial intelligence. Maybe this is the way the world is – and modern methods or music production mean that places like Denmark Street can never be what they used to be – and we should gratefully accept what we’re given. But that’s not what cities or music are really about.