This week Ministry of Sound announced the arrival of a new cutting edge sound system, Dolby Atmos, that will bring “a complete paradigm shift in how consumers experience music”. We got the chance to experience the difference for ourselves and find out what this means for DJs, clubbers, and the future of Ministry of Sound.
Since the Ministry of Sound club opened its doors in Elephant and Castle in 1991, it has been at the forefront of cutting edge audiovisual technology, firmly establishing itself as a destination venue for clubbers from across the Capital and beyond. Recent years have seen the competition between venues reach fever pitch, and along with the growing pressure from local councils to crack down on nightlife and capitalise on valuable real estate, the modern London club has needed to develop an edge. For MoS, that may well be Dolby Atmos – an immersive sound system coming to The Box room in 2016.
Gabriel Corey, product manager of Dolby Atmos, explained the idea behind the new system. Originally developed for the cinema, the developers were approached by music artists who wanted to know how they could incorporate surround sound technology into a DJ set or live show. At this point, that technology did not exist – so they decided to work with the artists to make it a possibility, and where better but in the Ministry of Sound, an establishment “originally completely designed around the principles of sound.”
DJ, Producer and owner of Circus Recordings, Yousef was on hand to demonstrate the new system.
Within The Box, overhead speakers have been added to complement the existing 6 stacks around the room so that elements of a track can be moved around in real time. The result is truly impressive – tracks played in surround sound give the feel of being in front of a live band, but even more so, as if the players are around the room and the vocals are being belted from the rafters. A side by side comparison to the classic stereo sound makes a clear case for the superiority of the Atmos system. However, discussions with other DJs and producers in the room have raised a common concern – the time commitment involved in preparing a set for this new system. There’s no way of just ‘turning up’ and making use of it – tracks need to be specially prepared and with many acts playing two or more sets in a night, the question is whether DJs simply have the time to use Atmos to it’s full potential.
In order to convince consumers and DJs alike, MoS are running a residency from January with a range of events spanning different genres to showcase the sound.
Kicking off with Hospital records and with Yousef bringing Circus to the venue in March, the residency culminates in September to coincide with Ministry’s 25th anniversary. It’s hoped that by then, clubbers and artists alike will agree that this new technology is the future of music events. Whether Dolby Atmos is a hit with clubbers or not, it’s great to see new ideas and investment in our Capital’s nightlife, and we can’t wait for the residency to begin.
As demand for track reviews is on the up, and the Public House UK network is growing in popularity, we’ve had a lot of requests to start reviewing clubbing events and festivals all over the world. We are currently a London based non-profit organisation, and promoter budgets rarely stretch to paying for travel, accommodation etc for us to come and review their club, brand or promotion. With these limitations, we selected a few events and brands within London and the southern coast, and the first on the list was possibly the biggest:
THE SOUTHWESTFOUR FESTIVAL, Clapham Common, London – 29th & 30th August 2015.
Now before this event, we had a phuk meeting about what we were going to do at the festival, who we wanted to see, and who we could meet and grab a few words with. If you are regular subscriber to our reviews then you’ll know that there are two of us (at the moment) who write all of the content posts; Marcus Ali and Myself (Lawrence Friend). We both have a strong background in tech-house and techno as we are both djs, producers and label managers. It was fairly obvious we were going to head to the more underground artists to hear their sets.
The lineup was huge on both days so we had to pick wisely who we wanted to see. I wasn’t really up for getting there before 2pm on both days for a few reasons, mainly being that it would’ve been a bit too quiet at opening time. We tried to document the weekend as well as we can, let’s talk about how it went…
On the Saturday I met Marcus and a group of about 8 people at Clapham Common at about 2pm. Marcus and I were fortunate enough to be given guestlist passes by LockNLoad Events, so we headed over the guestlist entrance whilst the rest of our group went to the standard entrance gates. We were greeted at the gate by friendly security and staff and given our wristbands before heading into the festival.
Upon stepping foot into the festival, I put on my press lanyard and was immediately approached by two young ladies with clipboards, they worked for SW4 and informed me that Luciano was about to start his set on the main stage. I was asked if I would like to go backstage to take pictures of Luciano, obviously I accepted and was swiftly ushered through the dressing-room areas and straight onto the main stage. Now, it was at this time I realised that I hadn’t actually planned on taking any professional photographs and had left all my camera equipment at home, all except my trusty iPhone 6 – complete with high-quality camera.. Yes, you read that correctly, the only camera I had on me was an iPhone 6! Admittedly I looked a bit of a tit waving an iPhone around whilst there were other photographers nearby with lenses as long as my arms! Nevertheless, I took a few pictures and got out of there… quickly!
I went back to the other side of the barriers and re-connected with my group. We stuck around the main stage area and listened to the rest of Luciano’s set, the festival was still filling up so at this point there was only a few hundred people at the main stage. As well as trying to listen to the music, I was also trying to familiarize myself with what was going on, and where throughout the weekend. From what I heard, Luciano played some huge tracks and had everyone in front of him. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of the memorable sets for me over the weekend.
Next up on the agenda was to catch the end of Belgian DJ ‘The Magician’s’ set on the indoor main-stage, aka ‘Fatboy Slim presents the Smile High Club’. His set was exactly what I expected, some nice bouncy deep parts, followed by some dirty warpy basslines! A nice up-beat start to our festival experience. We stayed in the indoor main-stage tent for a few hours after this as the music selection was absolutely rocking and before we knew it, it was getting dark! So far we’d seen sets by Magician, Kolsch, Pete Tong and Gorgon City and they were awesome, but now we simply had to see Nic Fanciulli in the DJ Mag tent. As we were having such a good time in the indoor main-stage, we hadn’t noticed that the heavens had opened and turned the whole festival into a slippery mud bath. Nevertheless, we slid over to the DJ Mag tent. By the time we managed to get there, the tent was absolutely rammed, and rightly so; it was half way through his set and Nic Fanciulli was smashing it! Now, I know I’ll get some stick from readers when I inform them that also playing at the same time on other stages were artists such as Amine Edge & Dance, Sven Vath and Paul Oakenfold, but trust me, I have no regrets and know I was in the right tent. In the same tent straight after Nic was Solomun Vs AME then PanPot, needless to say, I was going nowhere! Thoroughly loved my first day at SW4 and it wasn’t finished there. There were still two more acts for me to see once this tent closed, these were Maceo Plex in the ‘Dream Don’t Sleep’ tent, and then the mighty Faithless in the main arena. Originally it was a toss-up over Faithless or Fatboy Slim, but as I’ve seen FS many time before Faithless won the bet. I was not disappointed! Their versions of Insomnia, God Is A DJ etc were spectacular. Unfortunately I only managed to get a few dodgy iPhone video’s of Faithless, but here’s a very grainy Insomnia..
So after an amazing day on the Saturday, I was ready for it all again on the Sunday! I headed up to Clapham Common for about 2pm again and was still nursing a sore head from the previous days antics, but I was so excited about the day ahead; I mean, had you seen that lineup??!! I pretty much knew who I wanted to see throughout the day, and fortunately most of which were all in the same tent. Upon arriving, I noticed it was much busier already than the day before and strangely all the mud from the previous day had disappeared?! I don’t know what they did throughout the night but it was all back to grass again… Weird!! I met up with my friends inside the gates and prepared for the day ahead; step one – beer!
The first set on my hitlist for the day was George Fitzgerald playing in the Maya Jane Coles & Friends tent. We arrived at the tent and things were warming up nicely, George was banging out some big techno tracks and the crowd were lapping it up, as were we. A great start to the day. We stuck around for most of George’s set but headed over to the indoor main-stage after about an hour. Now those who know me and have followed my DJing throughout the years will know that I used to be a resident for the event ‘Connected’, owned and operated by Jesse James. Jesse was on the lineup for the Sunday along with Johnny Bloomfield but unfortunately he was on before I arrived, I was gutted. On my way over to the indoor main-stage I bumped into Jesse James and Sam Divine, Jesse was in a great mood and informed me that Adam Beyer was running late for his set at 4pm and that he and Johnny Bloomfield will be covering his set until he arrived. This was great news, so I headed straight into that tent and waited for their set. Needless to say, Jesse & Johnny absolutely smashed it! I stood at the back again and got a bit of a grainy video but I can only imagine the buzz from playing in front of this many people, one day maybe eh?!
Next up after Jesse & Johnny was the mighty Marco Carola and unbeknown to me, was the set that blew my mind and left a mark. Whenever anyone mentions SW4 to me now, this set is the first thing I think of! Marco played the perfect mix of tech & techno, taking everyone in the tent on a journey of highs and lows and the crowd were going absolutely mad from beginning to end, I was hooked and going nowhere! Now, being a reviewer of many different styles of house and techno, it’s very easy for me to simply forget about certain DJ’s as I look forward, and although I’d heard Marco perform on recorded mixes a few times, I knew he was up my street but never got so excited about him. One of my friends who joined me on this day is a guy (and absolute legend) called Danny Cook. Danny is a straight arrow, he knows what he likes and he’d been waiting all weekend for Carola. As soon as he saw the name ‘Marco Carola’ move across the on-stage graphics he had the biggest smile on his face, he looked at me and simply said “watch this!”. He couldn’t have been more spot-on if he tried, my mind has been changed and this guy is now someone I follow intensely! The best set of the weekend in my opinion, here’s some footage I took of one of the drops… Hear that crowd!!
Up after Marco was the rescheduled later set from Adam Beyer. Adam played very well, some huge bangers in there and the already hyped up crowd were loving it, I was loving it! I was being dragged through so many emotions and feelings whilst going off to these tracks and I new the end of Adam’s set was close. Up after Adam was Loco Dice, someone I’d been waiting all weekend to see! By this point, I was cutting some serious shapes and was in desperate need of a break and an energy boost, so for the beginning part of Loco Dice’s set, I was searching for food, drink and somewhere to rest! Our group spend most of the Loco Dice set sitting just outside the tent where we could see and hear everything that was going on, but also recharge for Carl Cox’s set up afterwards. Even though I wasn’t actually dancing to Loco Dice, the set was amazing and ranked third in my personal best sets from the weekend. So now you know that Loco Dice was my third favourite set, and Marco Carola was my favourite, so who played the second best? Oh Yes Oh Yes, you got it.. Carl Cox! From the second that Carl stepped up to the decks, I got goosebumps! I mean, this guy is my absolute idol, he’s the biggest dj in the world! Fortunately I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Carl a couple of times and I’m also lucky enough to say that he actually grew up in the same road that I live in now in Carshalton, Surrey. It made a great conversation piece the last time I met him. Great guy, and an inspiration to so many djs. There’s not much to say really about his set, it went just how you would expect a Carl Cox set to go, he smashed it completely! I did manage to get another dodgy quality video during his set, here you go..
So to sum up the weekend, we had a really good time and saw some of the best djs in the world. It was obvious from the start that we would avoid the commercial performers. SouthWestFour, you ate us up and spat us out and we loved it! I would definitely do it again, and again, and again. My only criticisms on the weekend were that it could’ve been louder. On every stage, the sound systems were only set up at the front, meaning that the back wasn’t very loud. Due to this, the sound was bouncing off the back of the tent and creating a really irritating delay, this was the case for all stages except for the main outdoor. The only other thing was that this particular area on the common was a phone network black spot which stopped me from posting live images on our social media accounts, maybe this was something that the festival put in place on purpose to limit social media posts, who knows?! It would’ve been nice to do a few updates though!
We need to say a massive thank you to the guys over at Lock N Load events for giving us our passes for the weekend and the opportunity to experience something that will remain with us for years to come. Also gonna do a few shouts to some of the people who joined us at the weekend. Firstly Dmarco, my partner in crime at Public House UK, DEV:ROX (Craig) from Locker Room Records, Danny Cook from Arcko Digital, Daniel Green from Phonetic Recordings, Nicola, Laura, Reece, Raji, Katy, there’s a few more that I met over the weekend who’s names I never got, and a huge thanks to anyone reading this 🙂 Here’s a few blurry images of a select few members of our group.
As you are most probably well aware, true house music legend Frankie Knuckles passed away this morning due to difficulties with diabetes at the age of 59. Here at phuk, we were deeply saddened by the shocking news.
Only a handful of days ago, Frankie performed his last UK set in London. I have heard through social media that a campaign is being set up to get Frankie’s track ‘Your Love’ to number one as a mark of respect to the Godfather of House Music.
You can purchase the track on iTunes by clicking HERE
Here are a couple of Frankie’s biggest tracks (including ‘Your Love’)..
I have finally risen from pit after the new year celebrations and I wanted to wish you all a great new year. I hope that 2014 brings you all that you want it to.
From now (2nd January) I will be updating the blog back on a regular basis with all of my favourite new and forthcoming releases. I will also be adding event information to the blog to let you all know where/when you can catch me playing out.
If you have any release recommendations or tracks you want featuring on phuk then please email me at info@publichouseuk.com.
Take care and I’ll see you on the dancefloors….. Lawrence (phuk).
Well it’s taken us a day to recover from the antics of our event night on Saturday and all I can say to sum the night up is “Wow”..
PHUK hosted the brand new glass room at Pacha, London on Saturday (4th May) and it was nothing short of a spectacular night. Kicking things off we had Thomas Frake playing some nice bouncy tech house which got the room nicely busy and kept it bubbling, then at 1am we had DJ Dan Britton take over and play slightly deeper with a touch of techno. By this point, the room was absolutely rammed and was staying that way. Eventually it was time for my set (DJ Lawrence Friend) and I followed Dan Britton with some banging main room house and tech tunes (many of which feature on this blog!). The room stayed at capacity ’til 5am and the club was due to close.
We want to say a big thank you to all those who came along and supported the launch of our promo night, we are already in talks about putting the next event on and will let you know in due time. If the first event is anything to go by, then we are set for an amazing future.
Remember, we are always on the look out for new DJs to play at our events. So, if you want to play at venues as prestigious as Pacha and can bring a crowd down with you, then email us and send a link to one of your mixes.
DJ, Producer and owner of Circus Recordings, Yousef was on hand to demonstrate the new system.
