Have you ever felt like your life has slipped into a routine? Friday and Saturday nights are all partying, on Sunday you go to the movies and Monday morning you are back in the office, ready to nurse your beaten body through a dull week until it starts all over again.

If you feel like breaking that tradition and injecting a positive spice that will freshen you up through the week, then Cult might just be the place you need. The area around the Yauza River is an intellectual zone, with the Library of Foreign Literature, the British Council and the Illyuzion Cinema. Cult blends in well, as a chill-out cafe for the intellectually minded.

This cafe-club is housed in a yellow building – behind a fly-over, giving it something of a subterranean feel – on the corner of Yauzskaya Ploshchad, beside the river. The entrance door, adorned with a picture of a tribesman, is down a precariously steep stairway, putting the cross-legged, orange-colored individual at street level.

And inside? An oasis of soft, relaxing music, which may be downtempo, reggae, old-school funk, jazzy groove or an international ethnic style.

Every Sunday the club hosts a regular party with a difference: Strange Day. This is a day for bringing your own music to entertain – or torment – the other guests. It's worth bearing in mind that if you don't take your own choice along, you are likely to have to suffer the preferences of others.

Cult is a unique chill-out club because it's not expensive. The best dish on the menu, "gofry" (waffles with jam or chocolate), costs only 50 rubles. "Shamikhishi" (spicy rice patties filled with meat) and "risoyeshi" (rice patties filled with shrimp) are both 90 rubles.

The club is best for its coffee, though. The espresso (30 rubles) is enough to raise spirits well beyond the levels of regular caffeine drinks.

Cult is co-owned by two friends: Gosha Rozanov and Dima Chyuk. (The latter became famous as the first-ever male waiter in the dance club Propaganda.) Three years ago the pair noticed the building alongside Yauza River and developed the idea of setting up an ethnic-music club there. "We named the club ‘Cult,' because it connotes African rites and rituals as well as world culture," Chyuk explained." It's the latter that particularly applies to our club. What we really wanted, though, was to show different cultures in their diversity."

Embracing such variety, the club's interior is divided into four separate rooms, each with an individual style. The largest has a wood decor, furnished with roughly cut tables and chairs – reminiscent of the tale of Masha and the Three Bears – and accommodates a bar and a small stage. The club favors performers like St. Petersburg beauty Lyuda Raketa.

The second room is for chilling-out. It is round and boasts a huge and branchy baobab tree in the center. The third is multicolored and furnished with tables and chairs and the fourth is used for exotic music concerts such as tam tams, exhibitions of paintings or photographs featuring ethnic motifs, and fashion shows.

When the Queen of the Netherlands visited Moscow, the club hosted an Orange Party. Only people wearing something orange-colored were admitted. The party was combined with a photographic exhibition by Natasha Schastlivaya, titled "Daily Amsterdam," and a show of Olga Feshina's "orange" collection of summer clothes. The party, one of many, proved to be a sensory delight, though admittedly somewhat unusual. Rarely do you see so much orange in one place.

CULT
5 Yauzskaya Nab.
Metro: Kitai-Gorod; Taganskaya
Tel: 917-5706
Hours: Sun. to Wed. noon to midnight
Thur. to Sat. noon to 6 a.m.
Cover: None