As Wax Poetics gets ready to auction off The Box’s Martin Audio sound system stacks as part of The Ministry of Sound: The Gaunt Street Archive, we look back at the club’s sonic history.

------

“This is a journey into sound”: The history of Ministry of Sound’s speaker stacks

by Andy Thomas

Following a weekend celebration and a final emotional marathon set by DJ Larry Levan, New York’s Paradise Garage closed its doors for the last time on September 26, 1987. But its legacy and the idea of a club as a spiritual sonic space built for the community would provide the inspiration for the greatest room in London’s clubbing history.

It’s the spring of 1986, and London rare groove clubber and aspiring DJ Justin Berkmann is living in New York, where after a number of attempts he entered the hallowed ground of the Paradise Garage one Saturday night. “It was paradise. It really was a Paradise Garage. It was the best club I’d ever been to,” he explained in a 2019 feature for Red Bull Music Academy taken from the DJ History archives.

After going there religiously every Saturday night through 1987, all of that has gone when the Garage closes. “It was devastating, but I suppose that was the moment when I knew I wanted to ensure that what I had experienced there wouldn’t disappear,” Berkmann explains in Simon Moore’s heavyweight new Ministry of Sound (Anthology).

On his return to London in 1988, Berkmann played the seminal Acid House party Hedonism II before starting a Friday night at the legendary gay club Heaven. Spinning the deep soulful house sounds he’d heard in New York at the Garage and over the airwaves of Kiss FM/WBLS through DJs Tony Humphries and Timmy Regisford, Berkmann’s Heaven Garage is something of a forgotten footnote in London nightlife.

The truth is, it paved the way for one of the world’s most iconic clubs, which celebrates its 35th year anniversary in 2026. “I wanted and needed to build a Paradise Garage in London,” Berkmann told DJ History. “The only club that was relatively up to date was Heaven. But that was a ‘70s/‘80s club, and we wanted an ‘80s/‘90s club.”

With former banker James Palumbo and fellow entrepreneur Humphrey Waterhouse, Berkmann scoured London for a space to create their version of Paradise Garage. Hidden away on a side street a short walk from the faded pink monolith of Elephant & Castle shopping centre, the old bus garage Berkmann discovered at 103 Gaunt Street was converted through a £750,000 re-build.

The Box at Ministry of Sound, with its original speaker stacks.

The venue’s beating heart would be the 285-square-metre club space known as The Box, which would come to rival the great rooms of New York. But without a sound system of comparable weight and fidelity to Paradise Garage, all of that would have meant nothing. “My idea for the Ministry was purely 100% sound system first, lights second, design third. In that order; usually the inverse of everyone else’s idea,” Berkmann told DJ History.

“My idea for the Ministry was purely 100% sound system first, lights second, design third.”

— Justin Berkmann

While Heaven’s turbo-sound system by Electracoustic was regarded as the best in London, it couldn’t compare to the iconic Garage model designed by Richard Long & Associates in close association with Larry Levan. “To this day it’s still the best sound I’ve ever heard. People often talk about The Loft having the best sound system, but The Loft had a pretty sound, The Garage was hard-hitting,” DJ David De Pino explained in 2014 prior to playing at A Night In Paradise at Ministry of Sound, an unforgettable celebration of the Garage to raise funds for HIV charities.

Inspired by what he had heard and felt in his chest through the Garage’s acoustic clarity and famously heavy bass, Justin Berkmann set about creating the greatest room in London’s clubbing history, housed in a soundproof magnesite-insulated shell to handle extreme decibel levels.

At the heart of The Box’s legendary sound system would be the six massive speaker stacks (containing the Bertha sub bass cabinets made famous at the Garage), developed by Richard Long’s assistant Austen Derek and tested out by Larry Levan during an historic residency in late 1991. “As soon as he put his hands on the system, I was back there at King Street,” Berkmann recalls in the Ministry of Sound anthology. “There was something about the way Larry played the system - it was like we’d been watching mono black and white TV and suddenly it was colour with surround sound. We’d brought him over for three days and he’d end up staying for three months.”

“It was like we’d been watching mono black and white TV and suddenly it was colour with surround sound.”

— Justin Berkmann, on Larry Levan at Ministry of Sound

Through the ‘90s, Berkmann joined New York legends Tony Humphries and David Morales and the UK’s DJ Harvey, CJ Mackintosh and Smokin Jo in holding down other famous residencies at Ministry of Sound.

In the booth at Ministry of Sound. Photo by Mark McNulty.

The original speaker stacks were officially retired in 2010 as Martin Audio progressively replaced components of The Box’s sound system. Founded in 1971, Martin Audio made its name building touring systems for rock acts including Pink Floyd and The Who, before bringing that live-sound expertise into the club.

The bespoke system at Ministry of Sound was commissioned in 2008, with a further upgrade in 2010 introducing the ASX subwoofers. Retaining the six-stack layout modeled on the Garage, the upgraded system featured two ASX subwoofers per stack and custom-flared horns, reaching down to a visceral 30Hz.

Each stack was rated at a hefty 25,000 watts, but with the system running well under capacity, The Box’s sound was always loud and clear rather than ear ringing. Martin Audio’s R&D Director, Jason Baird, recalled first hearing the set up at the Ministry. “At the audition, one unit comfortably outperformed a Bertha cabinet.”

For anyone raised in the clubs of London through the ‘90s and early 2000s, where sound was too often an afterthought, the scale and sound of Ministry of Sound’s Martin Audio system would be a revelation.

Even New York legends who were brought up on the best sound systems were impressed by the Martin Audio setup. "Ministry of Sound's new sound system, is one of the rare few systems left that bring the spirit of Richard Long's work from the Paradise Garage with a digital edge,” said Louie Vega, who held his Soul Heaven parties in The Box for over 10 years.

“One of the rare few systems left that bring the spirit of Richard Long's work from the Paradise Garage with a digital edge.”

— Louie Vega

The Martin Audio system powered many of London’s other greatest parties of the 2010s, including the aforementioned A Night in Paradise and a four-date residency by DJ Harvey in 2017, a revival of his seminal 1990s night Rulin’.

The Box at Ministry of Sound.

In January 2026, the famous Martin Audio system that carried so much history was officially retired as part of the Ministry of Sound’s 35th anniversary conversions that saw the installation of a state of the art KV2 Audio sound system in The Box.

As part of Wax Poetics’ Ministry of Sound collection, six complete Martin Audio stacks from The Box, with two ASX bass bins, two mid cabinets, and two tops, with custom flared horns, are now offered together along with the famous mirror ball and other ephemera. Coated with the sweat and steam of thousands of clubbers, these stacks hold a sonic imprint of one of the last great club rooms.

One of the six Martin Audio stacks from The Box.

VIEW THE MARTIN AUDIO STACKS

EXPLORE MINISTRY OF SOUND: THE GAUNT STREET ARCHIVE