Think of colourful bright lights, boudoirs, thumping music, beautiful people, style — and a lot of money. That was how the original FunkyElite page introduced Tantra, and no photograph in this archive contradicts it.
Tantra boasted the biggest underlit dancefloor in Europe, with the added bonus of a mirrored ceiling. Its most talked-about feature was the boudoir: a draped area of seven beds, each divided by Venetian mirrors for privacy, kept candle-lit so guests could sink in, get cosy, or simply lie back and watch the room.
VIP areas ran throughout, lending what the original page called "an air of decadence" with a good view of all the action. This was where the FunkyElite list mattered most — arrive early, dress sharp, and the West End was yours.
“Tantra....... probably the most exclusive club in the West End at the present moment.”
Tantra earned its place in UK urban music history on 8 February 2003, when the venue hosted the press launch for the MOBO Awards nominations. So Solid Crew — Romeo, Nutrino and the wider collective — arrived at Kingley Street for the announcements, with Getty Images photographers on the door. Two decades on, those frames sit in the Getty archive as a Tantra provenance no one can rewrite: the biggest UK urban music awards of the era chose this Saturday-night room to open the season.
An eyewitness account from the period, preserved on Yelp, remembers Tantra as an "amazing interior, draped sheets, soft leather furnishings, lit-up dancefloor, starry ceiling... hot guys playing bongos along to the music, dancers on large marble stages" — matching the archived FunkyElite page detail by detail.
