Disclosure had to cancel their London Boiler Room set at the weekend following a crowd surge.
The British electronic duo – comprised of brothers Howard and Guy Lawrence – were scheduled to perform a surprise set at Boiler Room’s World Tour stop in London on Sunday (August 25).
Their performance, which was due to take place at Lee Valley Showground in Waltham Cross, was announced just three days prior and promptly sold out.
However, the set was cancelled just five minutes in due to crowd surges posing a health and safety risk.
boiler room organisers should’ve known better than to put disclosure’s set in a tiny tent pic.twitter.com/nHIlo4ANeb
— magnetic (@katnofeline) August 26, 2024
A source told Mixmag that people began queuing to enter the tent “half an hour before Disclosure’s set”. They told the publication that punters pushed inside the tent through a forcibly opened gap, causing a crowd surge. The set was then shut down and security “closed off the tent and barricaded the entrance, moving people back”.
In a statement, Boiler Room said that it “became clear five minutes into their set that a big proportion of festivalgoers wanted to get into the tent to see them, so as a safety precaution, the set was halted”. No one has been reported as injured.
The performance was cancelled entirely, which Disclosure responded to saying: “Unfortunately it’s out of our control, but the festival has deemed it unsafe for us to play due to crowd surges.” They also told fans on Instagram that they had worked “really hard” on their set, and flew to London from LA just to perform.
The news comes just a month after Peggy Gou’s Seoul Boiler Room set was shut down by police over fears of crowd-crushing.
The Boiler Room event, which was held at Seoul’s SFactory on July 27, was evacuated “between 12:30AM and 12:40AM” before the South Korean DJ was due to headline the stage, according to reports from Mixmag.
In added reports from Korea Times, emergency services received reports of overcrowding during the event, whereupon 11 fire engines and 42 firefighters were sent to the venue. Five people were reportedly treated for breathing difficulties, but no casualties or serious injuries have been recorded.
At the time, Boiler Room also added in a separate statement that it takes safety “extremely seriously”, with “detailed measures in place at every event to ensure a situation like this doesn’t occur”.
“We are reviewing our systems internally to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” they continued. “To our fans in Seoul, you and your city are incredibly important to us, and we’re devastated that we couldn’t deliver you an event to the standards we hold ourselves to.”