Arma 17 is The Best Techno Club in Moscow, Russia. It is often compared to Berghain and that’s a flattering comparison.
As Natasha Abelle – the club main figure says, “Berghain is a boy and Arma is a girl”.
Arma 17 is an ambitious project of Natasha Abelle and Alexei Shelobkov.
“Arma17 is a unique phenomenon of Moscow’s nightlife, the only underground venue in Russia with worldwide recognition” © RA
When it opened in 2008 a stone throw from the Kurskiy train station in the very center of the city, in a warehouse of an ex-plant, people started going there to see what’s that place.
Eight years later, after problems, fires (in 2009, the first location was destroyed by a fire) and one huge move from the plant area, we can say certainly – Arma 17 is the European-level club, close to Berghain atmospherically and musically, but much, much friendlier.
The huge main dancefloor hosted a list of international stars like Sven Vath, Ricardo Villalobos, Steffi, the local Nina Kraviz, Raresh and all the Romanian mafia, you name a DJ and he’s probably played there. Arma is the place which gave birth to the careers of Etapp Kyle, who’s been a resident here for 3 years, played a huge role in the careers of Unbalance and Nastia and gave people hundreds of hours and even days of fun and feeling safe.
Natasha and Alexei, the club authors, promoters and runners didn’t have routs in electronic music business. They both came from different places, started organizing events in various venues, but soon enough, decided to open their own space, where everything will be played by their rules. They succeeded. Not only in that, but also in making Moscow love techno.
They’ve also made their own dream come true – created a festival, which became the first festival of it’s level in Moscow. The first Outline festival tool place in July 2014 and in 2016 people are buying tickets to fly to Moscow from abroad to attend it.
Arma 17 has extended it’s influence by opening a record label in 2011.
In the first years the club was sort of a huge place for friends and friends of friends, but by now, the audience has grown and you can meet all kinds of people in the club, not only the same guys you’ve been bumping into every weekend.
