Terminal West at King Plow: The house that dubstep built
An 18-and-up crowd christened the new Westside music venue with glow sticks and barefoot figure eights
- brandon english
- Girl on Girl
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He whipped them out of his cargo shorts and twirled them around his fingers like a cowboy, only to be tapped on the shoulder by an employee shaking his head and motioning for him to cut it out. His jaw dropped as his hands fell, still holding the strings with glow sticks attached to each end.
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Atlanta’s newest music venue, Terminal West, is the last place one would expect to see a recess monitor. For more than two years, co-owners Robert Shaw and Alan Sher regularly booked electro-heavy concerts/DJs for 18-and-up crowds inside a King Plow Arts Center gallery space, starting with Pretty Lights in 2009 and ending with Emancipator in January. Such shows helped the Westside complex gain an unusual reputation, deemed the Best Event Space-Turned-Dubstep Destination in CL’s Best of Atlanta issue.
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So Shaw and Sher decided to open the 6,700-square-foot permanent music digs to cater to all things electronic, sort of. “It’s definitely going to evolve,” Sher said days before the preview show. Washed Out is set to perform there in May, as Terminal West looks to book “more indie stuff, more rock stuff” and draw a more varied clientele than QUAD or the Sound Table. But for the start of its two-part concert preview series last Friday night, the owners tested out the lights and speakers with former King Plow resident Mayhem, Skrillex-endorsed duo KOAN Sound, and Gemini.