conversion of the Old Paddocks snooker club in Holborn, which he designed and launched as the Leisure Lounge, ‘a voracious pace-setting and attitude-free venue’ The Leisure Lounge featured a mix of dance music club nights like Goldie's Metalheadz and live music events, plus arts events like Rankin's first major London photography show. The Complex At the same time, McLusky began a long-term annual collaboration with the Mean Fiddler organization, programming the dance stage Reading Festival and organizing the festival aftershow events. Around the same time as The Complex was seizing a substantial share of the market, McLusky amused himself with a more radical and intimate club night, ‘Fantasy Ashtray’ at Soho's Madame Jo Jo's. Called by Time Out ‘...a rockin’, punky, thrash night with live acts’, Fantasy Ashtray was founded on genuine musical variety and featured classic live acts like Jayne County and the Electric Chairs alongside new live underground talent. Sonic Mook Experiment @ 333 Old Street After a six-month stay in New York, McLusky was the first promoter to discover the 333 club in what was then the very run down, quiet district of London called Shoreditch Sonic Mook pioneered the practice of multi-room, multi sound, eclecticism, drawing hoards of disaffected youths to this forgotten quarter of London. Unconventional and debauched Sonic Mook Experiment attracted a ‘stunning mix of loyal radical chic cognoscenti’ (Time Out) but with awful/ ‘ironic’ Djs playing power ballads and rock anthems plus an eclectic mix of dance music DJ's and guest musicians like Mark E Smith (The Fall), Jerry Dammers (Specials), Jimmy Pursey (Sham 69), Dee Dee Ramone (Ramones), Alan Vega (Suicide). People dispensed with the pretensions and conventions of the West End and came to sample the new East End in what has been cryptically described by Loaded magazine as ‘an eclectic Capri of madness – driven by the insane’. .Sonic Mook Experiment grew in infamy at the 333 Club in Shoreditch from 1996 to 1999 before moving to the Scala in Kings Cross. The Scala The next major project was two years in the making; the conception, design, conversion, programming and launch of The Scala in Kings Cross London, eventually opening in March 1999 to critical acclaim. A derelict cinema infamous for its all-night films in the eighties was transformed under McLusky's guidance into a spectacular music venue hosting club nights featuring DJs including James Lavelle, The Chemical Brothers, Mr Thing,