Art meets arcade at new Detroit nightlife hotspot Deluxx Fluxx

Ryan Patrick Hooper | Special to the Detroit Free Press

Detroit’s newest music venue and bar is a collision of art and entertainment that, at its heart, has the DNA of an arcade.

The venue-meets-art installation known as Deluxx Fluxx is set to debut on Friday and is designed to feel like a well-kept secret in one of the city’s hippest public spaces — the Belt alley in downtown Detroit.

Minimal neon Xs hang just above the nondescript door near the north side of the alley. Once you’re inside the basement venue, it’s clear the latest addition to Detroit’s ever-expanding entertainment scene has few — if any — contemporaries.

Nearly everything inside Deluxx Fluxx is the custom creation of Brooklyn-based artist duo Faile and fellow street artist Bast, who originally unveiled a version of Deluxx Fluxx as an art installation in London in 2010 before touring the concept to locales like Brooklyn and Miami.

The permanent brick-and-mortar version landed in Detroit after nearly two years of planning and discussion with partners Anthony Curis of contemporary art gallery Library Street Collective, which has worked with Faile in the past — including on art installations in the Belt and a solo exhibition of the duo’s work in 2017 — and Joe Robinson of The Skip bar and food cart and Standby restaurant.

Iconic street artist Shepard Fairey, who has work in the Belt alley and a massive 184-foot-mural less than a block away, is also a partner in the project.

The aesthetic of Deluxx Fluxx is a nostalgic nod to childhood basement hangouts and the design styles of punk, graffiti and arcade culture that have influenced the work of Faile (Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller) over the past 20 years.

The result is a venue that’s intimate (240-person capacity) and loaded with details. Its elements will be adjusted over time to create a sense of constant evolution.

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“Looking back on nightclub culture, there (have) been a lot of clubs (where) great art has always been a part of — down to the posters that promoted the shows there,” says Miller. With its array of posters and wall graphics that cover almost every inch of the space, Deluxx Fluxx is designed to be an art installation first and foremost, he says.

McNeil says the pedestrian-heavy vibe of the Belt made for a perfect landing spot for the venue.

“The alleyway has a great synergy to it,” says McNeil.

The details are everything at Deluxx Fluxx. Faile’s top-to-bottom design approach even includes the arcade games themselves.

There’s no recognizable name-brands like Pac-Man in the roster of game cabinets and pinball machines that line one of the walls. Instead, the games were created and designed by Faile in collaboration with Brooklyn-based developer Matthew Cooley.

Experience Detroit's new nightclub Deluxx Fluxx Deluxx Fluxx is opening it's first permanent nightclub in Detroit featuring the art of FAILE and BÄST.

“The games are custom. The sounds are custom. Everything is custom,” says McNeil. “The arcade is an art piece. It’s interesting sculpturally. It’s interesting audio-wise.”

“That’s what art does,” adds Miller. “It’s able to show you things around you that you don’t appreciate as art and see it through an artist’s eyes. We tried to do that through this project.”

While one game takes you into the boxing ring as RoboCop, another sends you running from ghosts in the Michigan Central Station as you try to make your train on time.

Miller teased a game currently in development that puts players inside of Diego Rivera’s renowned “Detroit Industry” murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts, battling it out with Henry Ford via arcade joysticks and colored buttons.

“I think our work has always been about going into different cities and taking it in and spitting it back and playing with that,” says Miller. “We’re excited to have a little fun with that in Detroit.”

Like the wall graphics in the space, the games are designed to be able to evolve and change as the space is tweaked and updated.

“The next few months will really be about finding the different gears a little bit,” says Miller.

Even the lighting was carefully designed. Andi Watson, a renowned lighting and stage designer best known for his work as the creative director behind Radiohead’s touring show, handled key elements.

Watson visited Detroit several times to work on the project including for a couple of days during Radiohead’s recent tour stop at Little Caesars Arena in July.

“The installation elements were very site-specific,” says Watson, “and required a lot of thought to make them work with the existing fabric of the building and in harmony with the beautiful walls, floor, video and pieces that Faile were installing.”

In addition to the main ceiling lighting, which can be easily programmed to match the mood of the live show or event taking place, Watson designed the entrance lighting as well as a backdrop piece for the stage.

Faile’s Miller says that while museums have given Deluxx Fluxx an artistic context in the past, the “raw, underground quality” of the Detroit location fits the ethos of an arcade.

“It was an empty space, so we literally designed it from top-to-bottom,” says Miller. “From street art to the pop-ups with the arcade, it’s always been about trying to engage the public in a new, unexpected way where they walk into something and it reveals all these layers.”

One of those layers will be a music venue that will regularly host local and national touring live bands booked by Detroit-based talent buyer Virginia Benson, who will leave a similar role at music venue El Club to book Deluxx Fluxx full-time.

On Friday, Deluxx Fluxx will open its doors to the public for the first time with a headlining show from Austin, Texas four-piece Summer Salt. A full list of shows and events can be found at the Deluxx Fluxx Facebook page.

In addition to Faile and Curis, Robinson is a Deluxx Fluxx operating partner. He holds a similar role at fellow Belt businesses The Skip bar and food cart as well as the Standby restaurant, which has drawn national attention for its cocktail program.

Robinson will bring some of that success to Deluxx Fluxx, where he’ll oversee a beverage program that’s built to accommodate thirsty crowds that want craft cocktail quality with less wait time.

The solution? Craft cocktails on tap.

In addition to the standard issue mixed drinks and beers, Deluxx Fluxx will feature 10 pre-made craft cocktails on tap including a variation on the margarita and the Manhattan.

Even the tap handles themselves were designed by Faile and complement a rotating reel of animations that appear digitally atop a two-way mirror behind the bar. A series of lights installed in the countertop were designed by Watson.

“We have a state-of-the-art system that can control each cocktails specific carbonation,” says Robinson. “There’s not too many places in the country that are doing things like this with tap cocktails.”

The cocktails will play off the larger design concept of Deluxx Fluxx by interacting with the black-light room just to the right of the stage. Like the floor-to-ceiling Faile designs that plaster the room, a few of the cocktails will react to the light by changing color.

The menu will be in the $3-to-$12 range, says Robinson, and will be limited to just beverages. Non-alcoholic drinks like a house-made strawberry soda will be available as well.

When it’s not booked with live entertainment, Deluxx Fluxx will settle into the role of a neighborhood bar with weekly events — think black-out bingo nights in the black-light room, burlesque nights and karaoke.

“It’s one of many things beyond being a music venue,” says Anthony Curis. “We’ve been trying to find those things and ideas that can really help create a 24-hour community here and give it a neighborhood feel even though it’s blocks from the center of downtown.”

Deluxx Fluxx

1274 Library St., Detroit

DeluxxFluxx.com