Max HeyraudA no-frills, purpose-built dance space, FRAME is hitting Liffey Street with smoke, podiums, and a Q1 lineup for the city’s underground faithful.
Yesterday, Dublin’s newest concept nightclub, FRAME, announced its Q1 lineup, a star-studded billing that speaks volumes about the club’s devotion to underground music. Spanning techno, jungle, house, and dubstep, the January–March programme features artists such as Rene Wise, Sterac aka Steve Rachmad, Tim Reaper, Grace Dahl, Philipa Pacho, and more.
While the lineup is undeniably eye-catching and reinforces FRAME’s commitment to underground sounds, it also reflects a deeper alignment with artists who share a similar ethos around how club culture should be experienced. That philosophy is evident in each artist’s individual approach to their craft. However, FRAME’s vision very deliberately moves away from the idea of the headliner as the focal point. From early conversations with the team behind the space, it became clear that the intention is to build a club that is greater than the sum of its parts.
The concept itself isn’t revolutionary, but rather a conscious regression to how clubs once functioned, with less emphasis on the stage, lighting, and the glossy spectacle modern clubbing has become synonymous with, and more focus on the space, the crowd, and the atmosphere. Here, the room itself becomes the headliner.
This ethos is central to FRAME’s mission. As the team explain, “increasingly commercialised landscapes in a struggling industry, Frame was formed to offer an escape from these spaces while maintaining the professional production level.” They continue: “Our goal as a venue is to prove that it is possible to create a purpose-built space for dance music and its community under a diy grassroots foundation. We aim to create an experimental space for culture to prosper instead of having to fit into an existing mould.”
Despite the ever-decreasing number of club spaces in the capital, FRAME represents a rare opportunity to create something new. Housed in a renowned Liffey Street venue, The Grand Social, the team have carved out a space they can call home.
FRAME will host installations ranging from dancing platforms to works by local artists, reinforcing the importance of spotlighting the city’s wider creative community. At a time marked by mounting social and financial pressures, as well as ongoing touristification, the space positions itself as a much-needed platform for culture, community, and expression.
What’s the importance of having nightclubs that are purpose-built for dance music?
In the modern age of clubbing, it really feels like we’re losing spaces that are built primarily to provide a space to dance. With the rising cost-of-living crisis and lack of care/funding being put into nightclubs globally, we’re seeing spaces adapt and become multipurpose, as it’s no longer feasible to solely be a club space. We’re seeing this, especially in Dublin, with venues becoming restaurants during the day, dance floors hidden in the back of bars, etc. We understand spaces need to be diversified in order to stay afloat. We just feel that a lack of dance-music-first spaces still exists in our city. We need these flagship venues to help build communities and grow dance music as a whole. Without purpose-built spaces, we’re fighting a losing battle.
The club is notably much darker than many of its competitors. Why is that?
With LED screens and over-the-top, festival-style light shows seemingly becoming the norm in the modern landscape of nightclubs, we wanted to fight back against it. Clubs are meant to be spaces where the music and dancers’ experience come first, as a space for us to get lost in it all and forget our problems. There’s room for these kinds of venues; however, it seems that we’re losing clubs that aren’t focused on this more and more over time. To us, it creates a focus away from the music, even though the music is what brings us clubbing in the first place.
Is the club modelled on any other spaces?
Whilst there is no specific club that we take our inspiration from, it’s rather a litany of spaces all of us at Frame have experienced in our own journey into clubbing spaces and music that we take inspiration from. From Basement NYC, RSO in Berlin, Tresor, Fold London, the list goes on. We know we can’t take a direct copy of any space, as it doesn’t translate directly across to Dublin, and we don’t have the capacity to copy and paste these esteemed spaces. But small things we have all picked up on from these broader clubbing experiences are what we like to apply to Frame: a strong soundsystem, a place for people to worry less about what’s going on outside and more about inside, minimal lighting, podiums, and a space that we think retains some Dublin essence.
How much potential do you think a space like this has in Dublin?
We think there is a lot of potential and scope for growth, so we are optimistic for the future. It’s easy to get caught up in some negative realities many of us hear surrounding Irish nightlife, with club closures, archaic nightlife restrictions, and limited clubbing infrastructure across Dublin and Ireland. But within this, we feel it reflects a demand for nightlife to be treated properly and demonstrates a great grasp and care for the Irish club scene. If there were no noise, it would reflect a landscape where nobody cares, which is the complete opposite of what we see and feel.
We hope to be an outlet and place for people who care and want to enjoy the best that Dublin can give and has given over many years before us. Accompanied by the fantastic feedback and smiling faces from our first show, we were blown away by the support, and this is hopefully reflective of the future we want to continue at Frame: good music, good sound, a good environment to enjoy yourself, and building a sense of belonging to nightlife. We hope that when we look back a few years from now, we can solidify ourselves firmly in the positive light of Dublin’s nightlife history, and we have great belief and trust in ourselves to rise to that challenge.
You can purchase tickets to upcoming shows here.
