This Thursday at the Magnet, Gold In The Shade is celebrating its fifth birthday in good style, with a headline set from legendary musician Roy Ayers. Noel Bent, the night’s lead promoter, explains the ethos behind Gold In The Shade:

“It started with four of us putting the nights on together. It’s always been kind of funk, soul, jazz, and it’s just kind of grown. I think it just got to the point where using just kind of local DJs and bands, it just got kind of stale, so I think that’s when we tried to introduce a few more high-profile sort of people. But still sort of putting on the local talent, because they just kind of complement each other.”

He reveals that Gold In The Shade was founded largely to plug what its organisers saw as a great lack in the city’s music scene. “I’m just a soul boy through and through,” says Bent, “and living in Leeds, living in Huddersfield, there’s loads of venues that push that, and I think Liverpool, I’ve been here five or six years, and I think Magnet’s the only place that really pushes that sort of vibe in this area. I’ve always tried to push that, and just keep true to my soul roots. And it’s been a hard slog!”

Following Ayers’ set on Thursday, the party at Magnet will continue with Noel’s other event, Downstairs Disco, taking over. DD has been one of a few nights in Liverpool recently that have given the much-maligned genre a second look.

“You mention disco to a lot of people,” says Noel, “and they think, ‘oh, it will be all Flares’. But when I think of disco I’m thinking of a lot of rare groove stuff, and the whole kind of Manhattan deep, dirty basement clubs you know. And that’s what disco was about really.”

Despite the continued success of Gold In The Shade, Bent reveals there’s a chance he might quit while he’s ahead.

“It’s been five years,” he says, “five good years. And I think I’m at the point were I’d quite happily finish it this year. There’s only so long you can take something you know? Everything we’ve got coming up is tied up with something else. There’s the Tate, that’s coming up now, we’re doing their twentieth birthday party, and I think things like that are the only way I will probably do Gold In The Shade after this summer.”

Though, if he could get his ideal line up, Noel admits he might be convinced to continue:  “If I could get to put on Chaka Chan, Chic, and probably Gill Scott. If I ever get to put them three on that would be the peak you know? Yeah, I’d carry on for that.”

By Kenn Taylor

Teenage friend of Sex Pistols’ John Lydon and Sid Vicious, John Wardle first came to public attention in Lydon’s post-Pistols project PiL. It was here that he gained his stage name, Jah Wobble, apparently from his ‘wobbly’ dub-influenced basslines. Since leaving PiL, Wobble has developed a reputation as one of the world’s most open-minded and radical musicians, collaborating with artists from differing cultures across the globe.

Wobble is involved in two projects here in Liverpool for 2008. The biggest, in collaboration with the city’s Chinese Pagoda Youth Orchestra, which is Europe’s oldest and largest, is Chinese Dub – a mixing of sounds that is intended to mimic the integration of the cultures in Liverpool. A live world premier of their work will happen in the city this summer, as Wobble explains, his thick London accent undiminished by his world travels:

“We’re bringing a load of musicians over from China, and we’re doing a gig at the Carling Academy on the 5^th of July. And we’ve already got all the recorded music up online, which was the first part of the project.”

In addition to Chinese Dub, Wobble will be performing live in the city tomorrow, at the first show of innovative Liverpool music collective Hive’s four-part 2008 programme, ‘Twilight City’.  This first event will feature a visual mix of the city’s industrial heritage to a soundtrack provided by a variety of legendary leftfield musicians including dubstep pioneer Shackleton, local krautrock-heads Kling Klang and Wobble himself.

He explains the origins of his involvement with Hive: “It was Gordon Ross at 08 who got the three kinds of music people together, me, the Hive Collective and Hannah Peel. I said to the Hive boys that I would probably like a more left-of-field event and I suggested Jaki, [Liebezeit, radical percussionist known for his work with Can] who’s an old sparing partner of mine, and Phillip Jeck, who I’ve also played with in the past.”

Visitors to the Static Gallery show can expect a totally improvised performance from the trio.  “We’ll just go on stage and play,” says Wobble. “I don’t ever call it jamming, that always reminds me of kind of hippish stuff. All we do is plug into the vibe that’s already going on, which I admit probably sounds like an awfully hippyish thing to say. I don’t ever remember playing a worked out part with Jaki, studio or live.”

In his career, Wobble has worked with everyone from Björk and Brian Eno to Babaa Mal and B.J. Cole, but his next project might see a return to his London roots:

“I’m having a chat with Carl from Madness tomorrow, so you never know. Watch this space.”

Collaborations with nutty boys may be in the pipeline for Jah, but tomorrow and on July the 5^th you’ll have the opportunity to come and see something that the Culture Company did right.

By Kenn Taylor

Tomorrow,

Hive Collective,

Twilight City Show 1/4 ‘Industry Versioned’,

Static Gallery & LEAF Warehouse,

Roscoe Lane,

Liverpool,

8:00pm-3am

£8 adv (£10.00 on door)

Despite buying his first set of turntables in 1982 when he was aged seventeen, it would be some years before Hanover-born Timo Maas would earn his reputation as one of Germany’s finest DJs. His initial gigs consisted largely of him playing top 40 hits, but with the 90s increase in German rave culture, he began to slip in the odd techno track.

Booked to play Circus this Saturday, Maas has DJ’d in Liverpool many times in the past, and, having been initially seduced into techno by the British rave explosion, he’s acutely aware of the city’s role in dance music history:

“When I come to Liverpool, I’m proud of being even just a little part of proper English dance music history, with fantastic crowds and you can’t delete this from your memory.”

Maas cemented his reputation with a residency from 1994 to 1996 at Hamburg’s The Tunnel, then one of the biggest rave clubs in Germany, and it was there that he would produce his breakthrough hit ‘Die Herdplatte’. Maas has since been booked everywhere from Berlin’s Love Parade to the new Pacha in New York, and, having had a few weeks off in January, he’s looking forward to the return at Circus:

“Oh yeah man, when I get chance to be with together Yousef and the boys, I just like it. It’s a really nice feeling coming back to Circus.”

It’s been a few years since Maas released a record. His last was the 2005 album ‘Pictures’, featuring Kelis, Neneh Cherry and Placebo’s Brian Molko. But he reveals he his currently working on a big, new, as yet mystery, project:

“It’s one of Mr Maas’s big secrets. I’ve been working the last twelve months with Martin Buttrich and an anonymous person on a complete new project basically. No Timo Maas, no obvious club thing, electronic music but something really, really different. I consider myself pretty revolutionary,” he says with a wry laugh.

But, despite our pressing, he refuses to reveal anything more: “Not many people know about it, but everyone who knows a little bit about it are freaking out, so that’s good. Let us just say, the needle is in the ream.”

Before he goes, Maas reiterates. He likes playing Liverpool. He really likes playing Liverpool:

“Liverpool is like a stand alone city really, the people up there have their own mentality, I mean they’ve even got their own language. I dig it man, I know many people, all those crazy guys who have got Cream tattoos. Yeah, I like going there, there’s really good vibes and I always have fantastic times in Liverpool. I repeat myself, but I’m looking forward to kicking people’s ass.”

By Kenn Taylor

Saturday 23^rd February,

Circus,

Barfly,

90 Seel Street,

Liverpool,

10pm-3am,

£15 adv, £13 NUS

Tel: 0151 708 5051

http://www.circusclub.co.uk

If you want decent quality dance music in Liverpool, it nearly always means a trip to the city centre. The Soulful Vibes music collective however, are building a successful audience out in suburbs. Co-founder Gavin Kendrick explains the group’s origins:

“We started off just a group of DJs, producers, writers and musicians who were just interested in the culture of the city. There was a gap for the kind of music we were into, which is all strands of black music going back to the 60s, jazz, soul, funk, up to the modern day fusions of broken beat, techno and new disco, so we started putting a couple of nights on. We did parties at Quiggins, when that was still alive, then we moved to our biggest night, which was the Dragon Bar.”

Unfortunately, as we’ve documented before in Metro, the Dragon was forced to close, a real blow to the city’s quality dance music scene. Gavin still laments its loss, but like many others, Soulful Vibes has adapted and survived.

“The Dragon was an Oasis for underground dance music in Liverpool,” he says. “With its open-minded music policy it was a really utopian bar in the city, and when he closed it left a lot of clubnights homeless. What we did at Soulful Vibes is that we split our sound in two. The electronic sound moved to Parr Street, and we do a monthly night there playing some broken-beat, abstract future hip-hop and instrumental music like techno and new disco. The organic, live disco sound we moved to the Vinyl Bar on Lark Lane.”

And it’s at Vinyl that you can sample Soulful Vibes this weekend. Gavin explains the make up of the night:

“Vinyl shares a lot of characteristics of the Dragon bar, it’s underground, promotion is mainly done by word of mouth, and you get a good mixedcrowd. This week we have Sean Martin, who co-founded Soulful Vibes with me, and Disco Dick, his partner in crime, both big disco and funk collectors.”

But Gavin is keen to point out that Soulful Vibes is more than just a clubnight, it’s a real creative collective:

“We’ve got some of our DJs putting mixes up on the website. We’ve got guest mixes from Greg Wilson and Rune Lindbæk. They’re going through iTunes now as well, and they’re really popular. We’ve also got Sound, which is a small handmade magazine that documents all the things that we value in the city; music, art, literature, and that comes out about every two months. It’s all more of a concept really, an idea. That’s what unites people in Soulful Vibes, a love of ideas and using art in all its manifestations to help us think about the way we live and who we are.”

By Kenn Taylor

Soulful Vibes,

Vinyl,

Lark Lane,

Liverpool,

9pm-Late,

Free

http://www.soulfulvibes.co.uk

Club

This weekend, it is finally upon us – the 10^th anniversary Creamfields event. It’s the biggest event in Liverpool’s clubbing calendar, one of the largest dance music festivals in the world, and is attracting some of the biggest names in electronic music to the region.

Undoubtedly one of these is Paul Van Dyk, the German trance pioneer whose career has been intertwined with Creamfields since the event’s inception in 1998.

“Obviously Creamfields and myself have a big shared history,” he says. “1998 was the first time I played Creamfields, it was their first event and it was also the first time I played ‘For An Angel’, which as you can imagine is a quite a memory. And things have picked up from there somewhat.”

It was ‘For An Angel’ that turned the Berlin-born DJ into a household name, and he has been a regular fixture at the festival and other Cream events ever since.

“I’ve seen it grow,” he says. “I’ve seen the changes that were made, and the dos and don’ts that happened. Still, at the same time, something that is always visible with the festival is the passion and effort that the team is putting into the festival. It’s not just the overall feel that’s cool it’s also in the detail. And it’s obviously something that matters to a lot of people, and why a lot of people repeatedly say that it’s one of the best festivals in the world.”

In addition to gracing the decks of Creamfields, Van Dyk was also a regular fixture at Cream club events when the Wolstenholme Square site was in its heyday – something else which also provokes fond memories.

“I remember playing the Courtyard and it all going off absolutely crazily,” he says. “It’s just one of those venues. They have great rooms and great people playing in them. I remember a time when Paul Okenfold was playing at the Annex, I was playing the main room and Nick Warren was playing the Courtyard, all at the same time. Can you imagine, one club, on one night? What a line up!”

He refuses to be drawn on who on the Creamfields line-up he’s looking forward to seeing himself, but he will, it seems, enjoy the backstage banter almost as much as the crowds:

“One thing that I can say I’m looking forward to is the fact that a lot of the DJs and acts that are playing there are very good friends of mine, but obviously we don’t se each other that much because we are always travelling. So those festivals are always a chance for us to get together and have a good time. So it’s an extra bonus for playing the festival.”

By Kenn Taylor

Saturday 23^rd-Sunday 24^th August,

Creamfields UK 2008,

Daresbury Estate,

Halton,

Cheshire,

Saturday day ticket £57.50 plus £5.00 booking fee
Sunday day ticket £53.50 plus £5.00 booking fee
Weekend ticket (without camping) £105.00 plus £10.00 booking fee
Weekend ticket (with camping) £115.00 plus £10.00 booking fee

www.creamfields.com