I Went To "The Only Club In The UK With a Swimming Pool" - Surprise, It Was Shit

If you've ever been to a market town, a Leicester Square hen night, or Tenerife, you'll have realised that "clubbing" has very little to do with the music for most British people. While you were at Evian Christ's Trance Party, your work colleagues were five miles across London at the Penthouse; posing for official club photos, and kissing strangers to 'Break Your Heart' by Taio Cruz. The majority of people have a very casual interest in pop music, and absolutely none in BPMs. They like to go out, get drunk, and listen to what they've been told to like by Edith Bowman.

You can blame this indifference on a number of things - a population exhausted by long, unfulfilling service sector employment, the decline of definitive subculture  - but whatever the reason, clubs and their punters are far more prepared to embrace novelty and nostalgia than Ngunzungu. The USP of a lot of clubs hosting neither the most commercial, nor the most underground DJs, seems to include music as an after-thought to the decor - and themed dress-code.

Club Aquarium in Shoreditch performs well on both fronts. It all seems pretty representative of the state of mainstream UK clubbing, yet a quick browse through the venue's Facebook page gives a different impression. One user describes it as the "best club in London <3", another as " a orgasm", and a man I never want to meet said it "will always be a big part of me". So while the promo pictures of v-necks and pouting lips seemed to show a fairly drab novelty night, these comments suggested a transcendental experience - as much Siddartha as James Arthur. Boasting the title of "The only club in the UK with a swimming pool", three dance floors playing varying styles of bland party hits spanning the past 50 years, and the most old people I've ever seen at a club, Club Aquarium is actually pretty unique.

When I went to Saturday night institution Carwash there was a glorified wedding disco vibe to the place, complete with the middle-aged white woman getting drunk, and trying to rap along when the DJ drops 'Push It'. In amongst the 40-year old middle managers and sales reps were three pretty distinctive groups of young people: teenage girls talking about how "sik" (sic) the deep house in the third room was, Home Counties rude boys pulling ironic bass faces to Erasure, and a large group of young professionals from Iceland having their drinks paid for by Samsung, and shouting "This is London living!"

In the corner of the first room I met the man who made the magic happen - perhaps the most jaded promoter I'd ever encountered. However much I tried to project positivity onto him, he would respond with a non-committal "Yeah, kinda", or "It's just a bit of fun for everyone, isn't it?", re-adjust his sparkly silver hat, and continue to survey his sanitised nightlife empire. In stark contrast many of the crowd themselves were more than up for it, gushing about how much the main room's DJ was taking them back to "the good times", or telling themselves (and others) they were living the high-life.

While the entrance area and first room were dominated by the over 35s, the young people were out in force in the swimming pool, hot tub and third dance floor, where everything sounded like Disclosure. As with Maggie's and Klute, I was cringing at Aquarium's tame and unpleasant version of revelry, but once again found myself surrounded by people having a great time,  and feeling completely uninhibited. When I asked a group in the hot tub for a picture, one of the girls jumped out of the water topless and - rather than interpreting it as a frantic call to garms for her dignity's sake - stood in the middle of the room waiting for the photo.

Back on dry floor the elder generation were turning up in force. Countless beer bottle-branded glasses, pink cowboy hats and fairy wands could be seen raised in unison, as 'Living on a Prayer' became 'Sweet Child O' Mine'. It sounds rubbish, and it is, but moments like these provided the perfect moment for numerous divorcees to swoop in for the successful kiss they'd been planning since they arrived. I still wasn't having a good time myself, but was at least developing a mild contentment from the genuine enjoyment on the part of the people old enough to be my parents.

I left Club Aquarium with slightly mixed feelings. On one hand, you can't really blame the older people for wanting to go to a big room, listen to the music of their youth at a high volume, and indulge a nostalgia trip. For many, it's the most exciting time in your life. It's understandable to want to re-live it once in a while.

This made it all the more unfathomable just why the young people here would choose to pay £15 to get into a place aimed at people twice their age. A lot of young people spend much of their teens yearning for the day they can move out of their childhood home, and embrace full autonomy. Imagine finally getting that chance, and then going to the exact place your parents would have taken you anyway.

You can follow Jonny Chadwick on Twitter here: @JonnyChadwick93