DJ

The solution for my stress related illness was ‘nothing’. Doing nothing more challenging over the Christmas period than trying to get a PS2 to work with a modern television was indeed the solution to my problem. With no Djing to think about, New Years Eve was spent at Electric Dreams, hiding from the over-the-top social pressures that would have presented themselves at Slimelight. And the first set of the year was already sorted. Reptile, Protafield and I were all set for another crack at turning the-event-that-never-was into the-event-that-took-place-one-month-late.

Striving for Perfection – Man is Back in Action

It was my fifth go at Djing Reptile, but my first in the Nightclub Kolis venue, and the first time where at least some of my remit was guitar-driven industrial. At the time, the DJ booth was cramped, but somehow I managed not only to play a floorfilling set before Protafield, but managed to get NINE songs into the half-hour allocated to me (talk about quickfire!). The second set was deep in club hours with a more open policy, and I was relived to find that the relatively recent “Robo Sapien” by Die Krupps was well-recognised enough to get everyone dancing also. It became something of a later-day signature tune of mine – certainly I knew few other DJs to pick it up.

This set was a partial return to form for me, but I still needed to get closure on another piece of unfinished business from the previous year. The old-school EBM night. Dirty Dicks, host of two of my earlier events, became available once more, and Nathan was available to DJ, also bringing in a third DJ Kriegslok. We still had to deal with the problem of the venue having no CD players (apparently they’d got rid of them years ago), but Nathan was able to cobble together enough kit and we were set. My love of wordplay and a certain Front 242 song led me to the title ‘Tragedy >For Us<’. My limited graphic design talents came up with a suitable 242-themed flier (the old-school genre meant old-school design to match!), and the event was announced.

This time we starting getting real interest from announcement through to the final countdown, with people even travelling from outside London. And despite the limitations of the venue, it was nicely busy throughout, including an old friend from the pre-Facebook era, who’d turned up with no idea that Terminates Here was me. One notable memory was during my ‘lucky burger’ before the event spotting that Leonard Nimoy had died, and hastily getting SPOCK’s “Never Trust a Klingon” into the set (having previous triggered a near mosh-pit with Erdball’s “Monoton + Minimal, of all things). A side note was that it was the first event of my own creation to actually end up ‘in the black’ financially – but deep down I was happier that the concept had worked. It’s the night I always wanted to run all along.

The weekend wasn’t over DJ wise. There was still the March ABBS and the now-established open-request list afterparty in Aces and Eights. These events remain something of a blur to this day, it was only on the morning after that I woke up feeling like the jinx that had followed Terminates Here since early 2013 was finally lifted. It seemed fitting that this rush of DJ activity was finished with one more set with Die Kur, MaxDmyz and co, my one and only chance to play the legendary Purple Turtle venue before it fell victim to another owner vs management “difference of opinion”. My late night set was another tag-team with Scott, starting with late 90s SOAD and seeing how far back into music history we could get (late 70s Buzzcocks in the end).

You Keep Me Running Round and Round, Well That’s Alright With Me

There was another two-month gap before my next set, but this time I wasn’t worried as I had plenty in the pipeline. One slight problem came with the death of one of my original pieces of equipment. Somewhere in amongst one of these sets, a drink was spilled on my USB DJ console. First the faders lost their smoothness, then the whole thing started cutting out, luckily never during the key phase of the night, and I still had the tablet for backup. Dismantling it to diagnose and possibly clean proved to be a one-way process. No way I could trust it live again, and hence the next run of sets were run with some rather “improvised” equipment. Not that improvisation was a stranger to me, and it was a workaround that would play great dividends later in the year.

A run of half a dozen sets came in quick succession from late May through to July. There was my first (and so far only) go at Djing Electric Dreams, the long-running 80s night. The next ABBS came a week later. Scott had to disappear early from this one due to an all-day event elsewhere, so the original DJ for the event, Andy Ravensable, returned for one day only, joining me not only for this event but also the Aces afterparty. It was the only time I’d tried the formula with any DJ other than Scott, it worked well but I still wouldn’t try it with any DJ I hadn’t worked with a few times.

Next up was a private booking – a ‘Northern Hemisphere’ wedding party for a couple who’d got married a few months previously in Australia, with one of their friend’s 50^th birthday parties thrown in! I was the only DJ here, all requests this time, but surprised the happy couple with the number of their favourite tunes I already had to hand. It wasn’t a continuous set, as London’s most original covers act, The Memepunks, did their trademark play-more-than-one-song-at-once thing and gave me a couple of breathers. Only downside were the sulky venue staff, who closed us down an hour earlier than previously agreed.

I managed to get another EBM night going again, again playing games with the English language and names of Belgian bands with the title “Tragedy >For Two<”. My connections to Aces and Eights allowed me to use their basement room on a Friday night. Attendance was as good as last time, and whilst DJ Kriegslok wasn’t available this time, DJ traumahound (remember Byte Back?) was ideally suited as replacement and we had another night to remember.

That looked like it for a while, but I was called upon one more time to play a couple of hours at the Dark Disco night. This one actually goes back a few months….I’d first met the DJ and event founder Shai having handed him one of my otherwise-ineffective DJ Terminates Here business cards when I heard him playing A Split-Second, I decided there and then that we’d work on an event together some day. The event in question was back at Dirty Dicks, my fourth time playing there but the only time I’d visited for an event other than my own.

As it happens, my usual crowd didn’t really show, so I was playing songs based on their popularity on the Facebook event page during the days leading up to the event. As a result, the most popular track of the night was The Eternal Afflict’s “San Diego”, rarely heard in London. I fluffed the end of my second set though, having misread the popularity of old-school EBM amongst the largely unknown crowd, and decided to head for home and have a nice lie down. It didn’t matter in the end – a successful summer of Djing was complete.

But If The Answer Isn’t Violence, Neither Is Your Silence

It’s time now to look at a more strategic element to my Djing. I’ve mentioned a few times a list of bands that I owned more than 20 tracks by, with the objective being to play at least one by every band in the course of my DJ career. The purpose of this mission was to prove that anything could be viable DJ material, not self-indulgence, and hence other rules followed, namely that I couldn’t hire a venue and play all the bands on a list to an empty room, and all the bands had to be played in a suitable context – I wasn’t allowed to break music policies of events (mine or anyone else’s) to cut the list down.

Fortunately, the ABBS was open enough to allow most things at some point, with the various guest DJs actually obliging me to vary my own sets, though the extremely noisy material was off-limits there. And by the time of the September ABBS, my list of bands that once numbered in the hundreds was down to 15. One hour would nail them all. Or it would have done if no-one else mattered but me, but such a set would have cleared the room and ensured I would never have been invited back. I still had to work up interesting and varied sets and not alienate anyone along the way.

Sure, I used the September ABBS early setup time to shoehorn in a Nurse With Wound track, an interesting project that’s otherwise near-impossible to get into a DJ set, but had to get more accessible later on in the day, even joining Scott in a Madchester revival moment later on. The Aces and Eights afterparty yielded some interesting requests of it’s own (This Morn’Omina? Fine by me!) and actually overran it’s 10pm endpoint when people refused to let us stop. Not only was it a great day, but that list of bands I mentioned? Without going off-topic or receiving death threats, I’d got it down to five. But they were five of the least-accessible industrial bands in existence.

I’ll Give You Something, Even More Interesting Than The Last One

But for the moment, that was a distraction I didn’t need. Renaissance VI was back at Elektrowerkz in October. This time, the second stage was open only when bands were on, so it was more a case of making sure the six DJs all had enough set-time to play, and my own set got brought forward two hours due to the lack of CD players for the one DJ still using them! Myself, I didn’t even bring a laptop along, instead using my second and improved tablet for my own sets. It was a fast-moving day and dragging kit around would have been an unwelcome distraction.

I was also Djing the other multi-band festival at Elektrowerkz that Autumn. The small-scale event Stompa the previous year had grown into Ad:Rem. Nathan and I were called upon for our Tragedy >For Something-or-other< credentials to DJ between and after the bands, along with the Belgian DJ Danny Dupont, coming over from Antwerp with the band Lizard Smile, one of eleven acts on the bill. Unlike Renaissance, which adopted a noon-to-midnight pattern, Ad:Rem opened in the evening and went through to the early hours of the morning. And unlike Renaissance, which offered a plethora of bands that were essentially accessible to the end music fan, Ad:Rem put no limits on the extremities to which it would go.

But before any live action look place, we had a brief birthday celebration for one of the co-organisers, formerly known in elitist corners of the industrial scene as Andi Penguin. He had various neovolkish requests for the occasion. And guess who out of the DJs available had the most of those tracks to hand? Add this to a support DJ slot for Institution D.O.L., where I finally got a legitimate chance to play Whitehouse in a DJ set (“WHY YOU NEVER BECAME A DANCER!”), and I’d scratched one of the longest-running DJ itches of all.

Later sets demanded a more straightforward EBM approach, not a challenge after everything else that year. I’d originally agreed to play a rhythmic noise set as part of the Slimelight afterparty, but the event ran an hour late, and by 5am the crowd had thinned to the point where I just had to dig out more predictable scene favourites. The thing was, once the birthday tunes and band supports were out of the way, only two names were left on my to-play list. Proyecto Mirage and Hypnoskull. If not today, then definitely by the years end.

I Broke The Silence – I Rose The Volume

Only thing was, the only set left open to me that year was the Christmas edition of the ABBS, with extended play at Aces and Eights afterwards. Neither venue suitable for rhythmic noise, but with a this-ends-here mentality, I found a track by each artist that would be melodic and subtle enough to play on a Sunday afternoon. Just for good luck, I sorted an Imminent track (in case it counted as distinct from Imminent Starvation) and some before-he-was-famous Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids (in case it counted as a different band from the one he’s in, or rather is, now) and just to put the nail on the head, some TV themes.

But on arrival, we found the PA system in pieces, the usual mixer replaced with a cheap model, and no-one to help get it turned on. We turned on the PA only to find a severe ground loop, no use when we have a room full of people. It looked like we were defeated. But it was in the mid-afternoon that I had a brainwave. My improvised DJ setup included a Komplete Audio 6 audio interface, which was really intended for studio use. This had the option of a balanced XLR line-out. In a last ditch attempt, I plugged this XLR directly into the PA, bypassing the groundlooping mixer, and finally we were playing.

A couple of Christmassy EBM tracks were immediately played to wake the mood up, and then I got in those two elusive project that crossed those last names off my list. And the Imminent one, it’s glitchy sound a sideswipe at the issues that bugged us. And, later on, the theme from the TV Show “The IT Crowd”. Because we’d tried more than just turning it off and on again. We still had to figure out how Scott could play his set, given this solution was unique to my setup. Luckily, I had some of his favourites stored on my laptop for such an instance, and the rest were transferred on USB stick during a short break for a charity promo.

By the time we got to the Aces afterparty, there was a celebratory air. We came close to being cheated of a moment but we’d pulled it off anyway, symbolic of a year where I felt a cloud hovering over me had been lifted. An interesting set of requests saw the DJ year out nicely, the days leading up to Christmas and New Years Eve spent either catching the last few gigs of the year or playing various Source-engine video games, investing the “Chrimbo Limbo” week living the Half-Life 2 experience 11 years too late.

And as a bonus, the Dome’s management changed soon after – refitting the venue and generally organising things much better. We haven’t had any problems since.

Onto 2016….

Intro / The EOL-Era / 2008 / 2009 / 2010 / 2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / The Last Word / The Facts / The Credits

The early days of 2014 saw a couple of the seeds I planted on New Years Eve began to bring forth promise. First was a birthday party, back at the Elixir Bar and with a simple classic rock remit. I also found myself back in the role of DJ co-ordinator and found myself with two half-hour sets at either end of the night. The first half-hour was played to a near empty room, and nine of those minutes were eaten up with the no-one-else-would-play-it request “Freebird”.

Thankfully, the joker dealt to me on NYE was an ace this time. Itching to get back on before everyone disappeared, one of the DJs failed to show (he did my a favour so will remain nameless). I got extended play and hence dropped in the cheesy anthem rock, with everyone singing over the PA once more. It was like Nightrain all over again. Apart from the Hawaiian shirt dress code. I’ve still got mine. Never found another use for it, really.

There was my third and final set at the Intrepid Fox with Die Kur, MaxDmyz and co, which went without a hitch this time, even if the writing was on the wall for the venue, what with Crossrail redevelopments and the like. The Fox briefly moved to the complex on the Archway Triangle, which itself became something of a scene focus point for a few years, but the pub itself didn’t last and hasn’t been heard from since – another scene name was lost in the name of “development”.

You Blame Yourself For Wanting More

The most interesting set in the early part of the year wasn’t in London at all, though. My conversations on NYE night had opened up one particularly interesting opportunity – the Asylum Club in Chelmsford were interested in putting me on one Friday night. It was only a short train ride from my East London residence, so a deal was quickly put in place and my first set outside the capital occurred in the city where I had my first full-time permanent job. On arrival, discovered my original office was in the process of being demolished, never liked the place anyway so I shed no tears.

A couple of bands (Faceless Dolls and Swivel Man) were booked. I’d originally agreed to play after they were done, but I quickly agreed to play short sets before and between them also – having come this far, I was going to play every minute I could. So I got in short sets hovering between grunge, shoegaze and experimental rock (best I could do with the clues soundcheck offered) and then two lengthy afterparty sets, one in the upstairs ‘live’ room and a second in the downstairs bar, not stopping to the early hours of the morning. My take from the night didn’t even cover my hotel costs (DJ Terminates Here has always worked at a net loss), but I didn’t care. I’d pushed the boat out and not sunk!

Another lengthy set followed at the March ABBS with Scott – this set out of all of them wasn’t particularly competitive and many of the guest DJs we’d put on were now focusing on other things (acting, tech writing, live bands, etc). But once again, I had the feeling that once it was over, I didn’t want to stop. But stop I had to. No bookings were forthcoming. But thinking back to last year, I realised destiny could still be in my own hands.

With The Wrong Tune Playing ‘till it Sounded Right

Initially I wanted to re-run my 1990s event, but not-enough-available-DJs prevented that taking place immediately. I did establish that the Elixir Bar would let me put on free entry nights on the occasions they weren’t booked for anything else. With only Scott showing any interest in working with me at the time, we dreamt up an open-genre event called ‘Vs’, which soon evolved into a kind of ‘the audience decides the music policy’ event. We held it on Good Friday, clear of obvious scene activity from others. Though obviously many people would be away, it was still the best option open to us.

I wouldn’t say the place was packed, but it was a moderately successful event. The open request concept eventually took off, even scoring a free beer for playing AC/DC, thanks to some old men who’d wandered in expecting nothing more than a quiet pint. It was also the point where I met a couple of DJs from ‘Oop North’. DJ Electric Dream is someone I’ve yet to play an event with, but I’m sure it’d work if it ever happened. DJ Nathan Nothing, however, would go on to play a role in the later chapters.

The next event I put on was back at Dirty Dicks – I’d originally planned to use a club in Shoreditch but the sulky management and high deposit demanded just presented me with a sign pointing back towards Bishopsgate. X-KiN were ready for another video launch, and a venue with both a PA and screens was required. On this occasion, I had the benefit of X-KiN’s front man Karl to design a flier, something he was much better talented at that me. However, as it was also his leaving the UK party, I also had to accept his choice of DJs.

At least Howard was back, and DJ Jester (ex-Inferno, ex-Neo Noir, now Slimelight) came along and did his thing without fuss. The fourth DJ, well, I won’t name him here as he’s got too many friends in high places, but I only remember him kicking up a lot of fuss about the substandard equipment (including my own DJ laptop) – I was close to kicking him out, but the repercussions of such an act could have been severe at a time where he was several step further up the scene establishment than I was. However, it reinforced my belief that my own events should focus on up-and-coming DJs, one used to working with less-than-the-best. Because people like me can’t afford the best. And don’t need it anyway.

This event was still the best attended of my ‘Irregular Events’ so far, but it felt a little hollow as it’s the one over which I had the least creative control, as if X-KiN had outsourced their party organisation to me rather than serve as something I’d dreamt up myself. Still, there was time to think of my next move. The June ABBS gave me a two low-pressure hours of Djing – though in attempt to distinguish this set from the others I was playing at the time, I ended up inserted things as obscure as Karjalan Sissit, Monte Cazazza and Amon Amarth into my playlist. But Summer 2014 was turning ugly.

And Then Dance and Drink and Screw, Because There’s Nothing Else To Do

It was a warm and muggy summer, with the atmosphere in the scene as thick as the air outside. I was never directly involved in the various occurrences, but that was in fact part the problem. There is a Diary of Dreams song with a lyrics that say “You cannot help where your help is not wanted”. And that’s pretty much were I stood at the time.

I thought I might try to drum up some international interest in my Djing at Wave-Gotik-Treffen, but in a city full of scene people from across Europe, it was impossible to find the promoters, shot-callers and other people of influence, especially when English was the second-at-best language to use (anyone thinking I should have become fluent in multiple European languages, easier said than done and scarcely the best use of time on a return-on-investment basis). It later became clear that all the people I needed to speaking to were in the sealed-off worlds of VIP lounges, places where my regular wristband didn’t grant admittance.

On my return, I faced a multitude of domestic breakages, eating up the money I didn’t have. And then the Reptile club, location of some of my most memorable sets, were booted out of their original venue. This story at least had a happy ending – they ended up in Nightclub Kolis in North London, a better location for most, a friendly and receptive management and a more suitable facility all round, the only downside being they couldn’t host NYE there any more. But for the summer at least, their future was uncertain.

In all the confusion, I managed to bag the Elixir Bar one more time to re-run my “(Un)Common People” night with budget only for a few monochrome fliers. Scott was back on board as DJ, and as Shadowchaser was unavailable, we brought in Ross Liddle as our third and we were on. It was another moderately successful night, unsure of the correct balance between ‘dance’, ‘rock’ and ‘pop’ but covering all bases in the end. And then for the next few months, the story ceases to be mine to tell.

Alt-Fest collapsed amidst acrimony, the initial sympathies for the organisers evaporating once the true scale of the fuck-up became clear. Some hastily thrown together substitute events, a few one-off DJ nights and then an Infest hit by three line-up changes. And I was just a punter. I’d tried to get my foot in the door at various points, but no, it wasn’t my moment to shine. At this point, I was travelling to work starting into my DJ notebook, thinking “What action could I take right now to improve my booking rate?”. I’d exhausted my own idea pool, pulled in all the favours I could, even resorted to Any Question Answered (AQA) at one point, and had drawn a blank.

And the solution? When you can’t think of anything, try everything.

I Have Roads to Walk, I Have Mountains to Climb

Firstly, I though the ‘open request list’ idea had legs, even if it needed two DJs who knew each others styles well enough to divide up the tunes into manageable chunks in similar styles. Secondly, I knew the ABBS was my one remaining sure-fire booking and that many people stuck around hours afterwards in nearby pubs, especially Aces and Eights on the other side of the crossroads. And I knew they had an upstairs DJ booth used on some nights. Could I put all these pieces together.

Yes, I could. The Aces and Eights management agreed to trial the idea of occasional Sunday night DJs, with the proviso of nothing too noisy being played – something we defined as ‘no extreme metal, no harsh noise, no dubstep’ (we’ve broken one of these once, another a couple of times, and another one never – can you work out which?). We still had the issue of the ABBS itself before, which Scott and I decided to play on our own, meaning we had 3 hours of Djing under our belts before we’d even opened up the floor for requests.

We had some initial issues getting set up, a lesson we later learned involved getting a guest DJ to do the last hour of the ABBS whilst we got a head-start over the road. As it was, I got in a couple of warm-up tunes whilst I got used to the PA, before the requests landed. There then followed the process of taking the disparate collection of tracks asked for, working out which one I had, which one’s Scott was likely to have (between us we had most of them), working out which ones would mix well together and trying to make a DJ set from crowdsourced suggestions that was an improvement on a jukebox or iPod on random.

There was even the continuation of our habit of tag-teaming (alternating tracks each) the final phase of the night. We’d had some practice back in April, but now we’d made the format work on all levels. It’s almost as though I’d found the format to which my DJ skills were best suited. A lot of DJs I’ve spoken to simply shuddered at the idea of turning up with blank pieces of paper that could take you in any direction. But my background musical knowledge allowed me to solve that puzzle on-the-fly. To this day it’s my favourite Djing format to actually play.

Hand Me a Line – Really Hand Me a Line

This short burst of DJ activity continued for a few weeks. There was a downstairs Elektrowerkz slot supporting the Dutch industrial metal band Deadcell, though it was more apparent than ever that the Slimelight DJs really didn’t want me to play any overtime in ‘their’ bit of the night. There was also a totally unplanned set a few weeks later at the Black Heart in Camden. It was an open mic/jam session event, and I’d turned up with my laptop planning to give my Deja Vu 2 tracks an airing.

This indeed happened, with my anti-dubstep anthem “Invasive Species” getting the best response. But I also had a tablet by now and hence pulled double-duty but piecing together the various live contributions (experimental projects, performance poets, live covers) with various pieces of music played through CrossDJ (which I still believe is the best Android-based DJ software). I then played a half-hour afterparty and then packed up my things contented with progress in multiple areas. But once again, it was a false dawn.

Deja Vu 2 never progressed further – I hit a brick wall with creativity soon after. What I most wanted to do was get another Irregular Event going. The DJ Nathan Nothing had recently moved to London, and we’d spoken about getting an old-school EBM night started. I’d always had a thing for the style, more so since my return to Wave-Gotik-Treffen in 2013. I didn’t make it my first Irregular Event as I didn’t want to risk anything too specialist until I knew what I was doing – also with London in the throes of the dubstep fad at the time, it’s not a concept that would have been well-received in late 2013. But despite some increased interest in the concept, trying to find an available venue suddenly became impossible.

I thought I had it at one point, only to find I’d booked an event clashing with ‘Beat:Cancer’ at Elektrowerkz – no chance against that, but more upsetting was that I didn’t even know the event was taking place until someone pointed it out. Had I seriously fallen out of the loop to that extent? I got various leads on possible venues, but e-mails weren’t replied to, even with the offer of money. Because that’s what venue mangers like, right? I also tried to find myself a booking agent, again with the promise of a cut of my take, but the genres I played seemed to exist in a black hole as far as anyone on the dance scene was concerned. Nobody that could of helped did, and I had nothing I could offer to incentivise them with anyway. Unlike some, I’ve given up on the notion that the majority of human beings will do something for another without something in it for them.

Some Doors are Better Left Unopened

So I had to hold out until the next ABBS. Even here, my Djing seemed fated, the door to the room with the PA kit was locked with the keys nowhere to be found in the venue. In the end, the handyman had to unscrew the lock for us to gain access, and we were an hour into the event by then – notably when the management of the Dome changed, one of their first acts of note was installed combination locks instead. At least we were back at Aces afterwards, with a welcome set of requests for various German bands that I seldom get to play elsewhere.

The Renaissance festival moved to Elektrowerkz in 2014 and took place six days later. Once again, six DJs and countless live acts were booked across the day-long duration. With an additional second stage improvised in the back bar, it also meant a whole lot more Djing to do than the previous year. Starting at noon, I was playing classical, film score and darkambient music to whoever happened to be in the room at the time. Some of the other DJs (Scott, Vade Retro and Jester) also took the chance to play extra sets – the CD DJs really missed out on this chance. Everyone got a go on the main floor, too – and I also took a chance for 45 minutes on the goth/80s floor of Slimelight later on, my energy finally failing at around 1:30am, thirteen hours after my first set of the day.

There was meant to be one final set at Reptile, supporting the Welsh band ‘Protafield’ (aka Jayce Lewis’ project), but a police cordon outside the venue on the night put paid to that. Perhaps not in the best state of mind, I went on AQA once more in desperation to try and find an alternate venue, a futile mission, with everyone else heading for home or Slimelight, I was left standing in Archway wondering why I thought, even briefly, that I could be the saviour of the second biggest non-event of the year (Alt-Fest was the biggest). All that I remember afterwards was downing a six-pack of Lech lager back home.

But in many respects, it may have been a blessing in disguise. I was not in a happy place emotionally for much of 2014, though this was largely due high-pressure period in the day job (a massive story in it’s own right), which left few escapes. I was sleeping poorly, drinking too much and generally just zoning through life. Had I played Reptile that night in December, I most likely would have gone through the motions, such was my state of mind.

A few days later and stress-related illness put me out of action for the rest of the year. And it seems a pity to end like that when in actual fact, 2014’s Djing adventure really saw me take fate into my own hands in terms of defining my destiny. But there’s a difference between “making your own luck” and “bashing fate’s head against a wall to force things to happen that otherwise wouldn’t”, and this year just felt out of balance in every sense.

Onto 2015….

Intro / The EOL-Era / 2008 / 2009 / 2010 / 2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / The Last Word / The Facts / The Credits

2013 initially looked like it was going to offer more of the same. Things actually got off to a bright enough start. First a trip back to the Intrepid Fox to play for a Die Kur, MaxDmyz and Drilling Spree lineup – thankfully with considerably more polite venue staff than last time. Three DJs meant there wasn’t actually much to play, even if we were able to squeeze in a brief afterparty this time, but what was played fitted the spirit of the night and it was a nice low-pressure way of kicking off the year’s DJ action.

I Relied Upon You To Break The Silence

February saw an unprecedented four sets, including two in one night (the only time I’ve done this with a tube ride in between). First a birthday party at the Elixir Bar, where mittelalter and symphonic metal were the order of the day, and then back for a late pair of sets at Neo-Noir. And it was here that I got the first clue that my credit might be running out. The first set (synthpop and EBM) suffered from a ground loop whenever I mixed something (the spilled drink in the DJ booth might be an explanation), the second, which was meant to be a full-on 90s-style industrial dance set, was cut short by the venue staff. No warning, no “10 minutes left”, they just stopped the music mid-song, as “there weren’t enough people in the venue”.

A private party booking in South London saw a near-continuous 6 hour set from me (2 short breaks for the celebratory moments), and then at the other end of the spectrum, a tightly-packed 40 minutes of eighties hits at Living On Video. Technically, it was one of the most satisfying sets I’d ever played – a lot of DJs in this genre don’t bother with or can’t do precise mixing – even though modern laptops make it much easier than it once was. The software might micro-manage the tempo, but you still need to know the songs well enough to know which ones go well together, cue them right and figure out the best crossfade points, and on this occasion I nailed it. Laptops and tablet didn’t destroy the art of Djing, it just raised the bar.

But things were starting to go sour. I’d long been talking to promoter Kirlian Blue about running a minimal synth/old-school EBM type event – it was a style of music I wish I could have played more of, but my current sets wouldn’t allow it. The working title of this event was ‘Blind Youth’ – both an old-school Human League classic and a swipe at a younger generation who seemingly didn’t know where electronic music came from prior to the EDM boom of the time. This eventually morphed in ‘Reproduction’, we bagged a floor of Elektrowerkz and the band Futureperfect were booked to play. It was an event I really though London needed – with the tastemakers still publicly masturbating over dubstep, it would be a sharp reminder of what electronic music could be if it had space to breathe.

Late March snow put paid to the band on the morning of the event, and also scared off plenty of potential punters (even if nothing much came of it in London). It would have made sense to have run what was left of the event as another floor of Slimelight, but complicated scene politics put paid to that. Then was the issue of DJs. No issue with any of the individuals, but there were simply too many of us! Eight or nine, the exact number escape me, but there just wasn’t enough set time to go round. By the time I played my set, there were five people left on the dancefloor. About fifteen minutes after I’d finished, they closed the event early because it was a ‘waste of electricity’. And that was the end of that.

And You Think About The Past Time, When You Were Still Loved

Neo-Noir was also on it’s way out. The poorly attended February event and the loss of enthusiasm from some of the organisers meant that the April event would be the last. As a club night, this one actually went quite well once we got a malfunctioning sound system (another one?) going. By the time of the final sets, we had decided “what music policy?” and were freewheeling across the genres, a last act of defiance and a final salute for an event that remains the nearest I ever had to a club residency.

And so began the DJ desert of summer 2013. With most of the promoters I’d worked with in recent times either moved on to other things or offering their sets to others, I suddenly found myself surplus to requirements in the London scene. Only a couple of my longest-established contacts were still able to offer me something. The Renaissance festival at grown into a 12-hour epic, now with over 20 bands and 6 DJs. As a live event, it was a mammoth achievement, never sitting still for long and barely scraping in headliner Die Kur before the time was up.

However, my focus that day was as ‘DJ co-ordinator’, making sure all the changes in the booth happened in a timely manner. My own set didn’t feature until the very end – once again, no-one else felt esoteric enough to DJ support Jordan Reyne’s slot! In the small amount of DJ time allotted to me (3 band supports and a ‘go home’ song) I did manage to get in bands as diverse AC/DC, Death In June and ABBA without any of them being “out of place”, but I wasn’t going to make any lasting impressions on anyone on this day.

The other slot was two months later back at the ABBS. I’d skipped the spring event in order to sell CDs rather than play them, but now I really needed any DJ action at all to keep the flame alive. My opening salvo was closer to ambient house and IDM than anything scene oriented, in my continuing attempt to find new ways of handling the Sunday Morning Set. The later set featured a track called “World Alert” by my own project Deja Vu II, something I’d tinkered with in the Djing lay-off. The track in question appeared a few more times and I even performed it live once (more on that in 2014) but it’s hardly a spoiler to say it never really went anywhere.

It’s Been A While Since You Pulled The Plug On Me – I Tried To Keep It Together

After this, things really went quiet. I had scrabbled around and sorted myself a couple of band support slots for October (co-incidentally either side of the next ABBS), but most of my messages to people in positions of influence went ignored. But I wasn’t willing wait that long to play again. . I’ve never worked out why patience is a virtue – what is so virtuous about sitting around waiting for other people to sort your life out for you? Get up and get on with it – now THAT’S a virtue.

So that’s what I did. I tried to make things happen. At the time I had stashed a few hundred quid due to my heavily-subsidised social life earlier in the year and throughout 2012, so I first looked into pay-to-play, common in the USA and some other countries. But I tested the water, realised quickly it was a bad move on several levels and abandoned the idea. Friends talk other friends out of bad things, but only true friends don’t think worse of them for having though of the idea first. I also looked down other avenues, finding myself a booking agent and even overseas slots, but drew a blank at every turn. So, if I couldn’t make my musical statement in the confines of someone else’s event, I would have to do it at one of my own. Only problem, I had no idea how.

It was a couple of nights after the July ABBS. I’d downed a few too many beers, and decided to hit Google looking for an answer. First thing I found was a site called “Digital DJ Tips”. The technical advice was useless to me – the genres I played weren’t even acknowledged to exist, but they had a very useful, if somewhat US-centric, series of articles on running your own DJ event. I’d already broken one rule – putting on an event for the purpose of giving myself somewhere to play. So I was going to have to follow all the others to compensate.

Firstly, I needed a selling point. There wasn’t space in the London scene for another regular club night, the failure of some of the events earlier in the year put paid to that idea. So instead I hit upon the idea of ‘Irregular Events’ (IRREV for short) – one-off events, each with a different theme. The theme wouldn’t be decided until I knew who was Djing. A quick poll on Facebook yielded five names – I’d had too much trouble with crowded DJ lineups recently, so two were declined – one for stylistic incompatibility with the others (yep, he wanted to do dubstep), the other because of a residency at an existing scene night. Both took it with good grace, which was one of the more welcome lessons learned – you don’t have to put on everyone who asks. Another DJ pulled out later, but agreed to help with the promotion.

This left me with DJ Captain Howard (from Non-Bio) and DJ traumahound (of A Model of Control, also Djed Infest a few times). The line-up felt right. The name BYTE BACK was dreamt up whilst walking to the station one day, with a remit to revive tunes that were popular in the alternative electronic scene until recently, but had since been pushed aside in favour of other things. I tried to design a flyer using a retro-video-game font, but soon realised I had zero graphic design ability (five years on and I’m no better, it just ain’t my thing). In a scene full of artistic people, we would look amateurish if we couldn’t get this right. After breaking down in front of my PC trying to get text to line up, I called upon Howard’s assistance, who’s actually quite good at such things, and we got something distinctive.

Around this time, I also had to find a venue. I didn’t have any leads, so I had to start from scratch. I found a service (now seemingly gone) that would email multiple London venues and interested parties would write back. The site was clunky as hell, but I sent off my application anyway, and got a stackload of emails over the next few days. Most declined as they weren’t licensed to hold publicly-promoted events (a technically that annoys me to this day), but I got half a dozen maybes, eventually whittled down to Dirty Dicks on Bishopsgate. The hire fee was over my estimated budget, but I was so desperate to make this happen that I paid up anyway.

The promotion got underway, but I simply didn’t sense any interest. Too many “I’d love to but it clashes with —-”. I knew I was up against Inferno at the Electric Ballroom, but it turns out two other vaguely-industrial events were going on that night, all with bigger name DJs that I had – it also meant that many of my potential avenues of help were already committed to help the competition. At my wits end, with the FB attending figure in single figures with a few days to do, I posted a cry for help on Facebook. I got nothing directly but encouraging words directly, but it’s only looking back years later that I realised that something must have happened in the background. Someone must have rallied some friends or done something similar, because plenty of people showed. I had no idea who most of them were, but it didn’t matter. To whoever did this, I’m eternally grateful.

Not knowing about this at the time, of course, I was stressed as hell the night before. I worked out two music policies on my laptop, depending on whether I was playing to scene people or drunken city workers (cheesy 90s dance was my backup plan – and I still ended up playing Born Slippy.NUXX!). I didn’t get to bed until 1:30am, and couldn’t sleep when I did. This meant I slept through my alarm the next day, was late for work and was lagging behind the whole day. At 5:30pm, I went into Wetherspoons and ordered a gourmet burger. For good luck, you see? I ate one on the day each of my last three relationships truly began. I ate one on the day of the interview for the job I have to this day (remember the 2009 chapter?). If I was a general, I’d eat one before going into battle. If I was a deity, I’d eat one before creating a universe. I needed every plus I could get.

Anyway, enough people showed for opening to ensure we weren’t playing to an empty room. I deliberately played the first and last sets to leave the middle free to play the host, avoiding the temptation to talk to friends only and actually welcome the new people to my event. Howard and Adam had this covered perfectly, including a comical moment where a drunken group nearly fell over trying to dance to FLA. Howard had also prepped some retro-video game graphics to play on the screens in the venue. We had our own event, our own brand.

The last hour, and I let rip with Cubanate’s “Oxyacetylene”, followed by Funker Vogt’s “Gunman”. Actually playing my DJ set was something of an afterthought but I wasn’t going to screw it up now I was on. Eventually I had to calm things down as people went off to catch last tubes and suchlike, but important thing was, we’d pulled it off. Adopting a “pay what you want” policy – I didn’t come close to clawing back the hire fee, but as a Terminates Here loss leader, it was the best I could have hoped for.

And in case you think I spent too long writing about one event, well, I hope I’ve made it clear what made this one special. To think, if one of my earlier messages out to a promoter got me something around this time, this event most likely would never have happened. But it turns out that whilst some more assistance from those who could have helped but ignored me would have indeed been useful, ultimately I didn’t need them then, and I don’t now. But if you’ve actually read this far, dear reader, it means you’re not one of them.

The Utopia You Were Promised Has Been Destroyed

Anyway, I’d kept myself on the radar long enough to make it through to a trio of sets in a single week. There was a Saturday night band support at Elektrowerkz, featuring Paresis, Machine Rox and (headlining) a brief return for Global Noise Attack. No Slimelight overtime was possible, even though I tried. The October ABBS was the next day. There was a ‘standard issue’ gothic rock set here, but I also decided to bring the classic rock along and played a set consisting of all the bands that were too folky, proggy or psych-e to feature in a club hours set.

And then a gig on the Leytonstone High Road. History of Guns were also making a one-off comeback and I’d arrange to support this one too as part of a drunken conversation with Anton from Bleak back in the summer. The show itself was something of a reunion of at least some of the Wasp Factory/Line Out collective who made their mark on the UK scene back in the 00s, and I ever squeezed some of the bands into my DJ set, though once again an intermittent power supply kept disrupting proceedings. According to a live music expert friend of mine, PA maintenance is the first corner to get cut when venue budgets are squeezed. And it as we emerged from years of recession, the long-term price of this decision was becoming clear.

My own financial hit came the next day. A backdated electricity bill put me nearly £500 down almost immediately (yes, I protested, no I failed). That was the money for the next Irregular Event gone. If I wanted to get one more into 2013, I’d need to find a venue that would let me use one of its floors for free or near enough. I eventually found Ryan’s Bar in Stoke Newington had a cancellation and could host my event in November. Which gave me 9 days notice. I needed two DJs I knew well and a concept – Scott was an obvious choice, Shadowchaser also came on board, and we devised a 90s tribute night called ‘(Un)Common People’, my thinking being that as 80s tributes nights had been around for ages, moving one decade on would give us something fresh.

There wasn’t time for much promotion – Scott found an event to flier and I pushed it online. And on the night itself? Once you discount DJs, partners and people-wandering-from-the-upstairs-bar, we had an attendance of one. 1 person. Nothing ventured, nothing gained I guess, but that’s exactly what I gained – Nothing! The real pity was that I actually did some of my best ever beatmixing that night, the 90s dance really adapting to my style (futurepop got most of it’s ideas from there after all). But in the desperation, I also forgot to eat dinner, drank too much, and ended the night in a puddle of my own vomit. There, I said it.

I Wake Up In The Dark, There’s No Tomorrow

The next ABBS was in December, sandwiched in between a Claus Larsen double header (Leæther Strip and Klutæ in Elektrowerkz) the night before and a train to Cardiff immediately after (two day meeting starting on Monday morning). Despite the time pressures, there was no way I was missing the last solid DJ booking left open to me, and Scott and I duly put in three hours worth of music each. Each of us thought the other was doing the trad-goth, no-one did it in the end and quite frankly, no-one missed it.

It was on the way to Cardiff that I looked back over the list of ‘bands I wanted to play in a DJ set’ at some point. It had been falling in size since it started in 2011, but there were still over 100 left, and in all genres. My mission statement to cover all music that I thought was worth the airtime was still far from complete.

And this left me with one set left to play. Reptile on New Years Eve. I went there with no DJ booking lined up for 2014 at all. So whilst others were only thinking of celebration, I was trying to drum up some business. This action might have seemed out of place given the night, but it actually had some success in the end, even if no deals were done there and then. As for my Djing, I knew what my remit was, issued two sets of stuff-I-knew-would-work, one in each year, and was getting cued up for my third set when the power died. The event came to a premature end and I walked out into 2014 not knowing what would follow next.

Intro / The EOL-Era / 2008 / 2009 / 2010 / 2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / The Last Word / The Facts / The Credits

January 2012 was quoted in a VNV Nation song (‘Honour’) and sure enough when the date arrived, they undertook a mini-tour to mark the fact. The London gig was stuffed into the tight confines of The Purple Turtle pub, a show so packed that the guest list had to be turned away. Schadenfreude for me, as to this day I’ve never felt I’ve truly been accepted as a DJ by the scene shot callers who inhabit such lists.

But within a week, I’d be taking a substantial step up myself. The VNV song involved wasn’t the one with the dateline actually in it, but it was off the same album, and this isn’t their story anyway (though I hope Ronan writes such a thing one day).

I Have No Doubt From What I’ve Seen, I Have Never Wanted More

Ah, Reptile January 2012. This time the CD players were fully functional, and I had some better ideas as to what to play. I put on ‘Set Me Free’ by In Strict Confidence, and…..nothing but a crushing noise. If ever I needed a real-life demo of what the ‘loudness war’ had done to hurt music, shoving this through a club PA was all the proof I needed. Die Krupps didn’t get anyone on the dancefloor either, so I pulled out Das Ich’s ‘Destiallat’. Briefly considered the original, but given the empty dancefloor, went for the VNV remix. And suddenly everyone rushed through from the bar.

“Christfuck” by Wumpscut kept them, as did (amazingly) “God Wrote” by Project Pitchfork, the dynamics of this late 90s coming over as strong as the more recent “Set Me Free” was weak. But it was the second set I’ll always remember. Oxyacetelyne, the Re:Boot live mix of Front 242’s “Happiness”, and then, sensing a kind of “Full Tilt Revival” theme, “Cowgirl” by Underworld, actually mangaing to mix the two quite tight given we were in the pre-sync era. Old-school VNV and Apop, both rarely aired the club at the time but no-one was unhappy to hear them, and the live 101 version of “Everything Counts” to finish. Nowadays, it might read like a standard issue alt-scene setlist, but it’s one of those “you had to be there!” moments.

Now things really took off, but don’t believe it was an easy ride, because it wasn’t. My next set was a band support slot in the Interpid’s Fox’s old location under Centre Point. Support DJ for MaxDmyz and Die Kur shouldn’t have been a problem, but that didn’t account for a venue with the most awkwardly located DJ booths ever, and the most aggressive venue manager and security guard I’d had the misfortune to deal with. I regret the loss of the venue in any form, but alas I cannot say that extends to some of the individuals who worked there. It left a sour taste following what should have been a simple Saturday night of live music.

Insane With Faith, I Took The Driving Front Seat

The next event also had some bitterness surrounding it, but at least this one had a happy ending. Neo-Noir was a promising alt-scene event that I’d attended several times, but finally I got a chance to DJ it. Only one of the ex-organisers tried to cancel it the night before. Messages and Facebook posts were exchanged and it went ahead after much confusion, with me getting extra DJ time into the bargain (never a problem) – the packed dancefloor towards the end was proof that whilst spite can be a powerful force, it rarely wins out in the end.

A return to the Underworld next – Dark 7 2012 featured another seven bands, with Paresis replacing K-Nitrate at the last moment (no-one told me until AFTER I’d played the intro DJ set), and Deviant UK headlining – so a chance to play some Numan and Pitchfork then! I’d also adopted the habit of working in bands from the 2011 Underworld events into my set – V2A, Method Cell and Dreams Divide were all now part of my repertoire.

Two more live music supports in May. The aforementioned Dreams Divide were back in London, headlining this time at Elektrowerkz, thus giving me my first DJ shot at this legendary/notorious (delete according to allegiance) venue. Then there was another mixed-genre line-up at the Boston Music Rooms. And it was here that I added another string to my bow. I decided to start playing classic rock. Old-school metal. Blues riff withs amps up to 11. I did say that nothing in my collection was off-limits, and I just had to wait for the right moment to put each genre into practice.

Afraid of a Ruthless New Age While Their Future Screams Unknown

It was around this time that I acquired a laptop good enough to DJ with. I’d stuck out with CD-Rs longer than most, but it was time to make the switch. A remarkably unspectacular Currys PC World discount later, and the acquisition of the Mixxx DJ software and a USB console and I was set. Not the most glamorous setup, but it served me well for years to come. The kit was debuted at a low-pressure event – System:FX were headlining a 4-band lineup at Elektrowerkz and no-one minded the occasional drop-out as I tried to get the settings right. As with all my computers, their network name is taken from an album from the year the technology dates from, and in this instance, the first track played was the title track from the album in question – Kirlian Camera’s “Nightglory”.

Mid 2012 was also when one of the adversaries enter the story. It wasn’t a person, a club or a venue but a music genre. Dubstep. Before the electro-musicologists wade in, I’m not talking about the original, English underground style from the 00s. I’m talking about the bass-drop heavy, stuck-CD impersonation popularised by the like of Skrillex in the early 10s – most of the human race outside elitist dance music circles regard this as ‘dubstep’ now, just like everyone calls St Stephens Tower (or is it the Elizabeth Tower) “Big Ben”, even though Ben is just the name of the biggest bell. So everytime I use the term “dubstep” from here, assume I mean the stuff we were all forced to listen to for a couple of years. Yes, forced.

Because unlike most extreme music genres (usually ones ending in ‘core”), who keep themselves to themselves in specialist events, dubstep invaded the music scene like an invasive knotweed, winding it’s way into countless genres. Watching the band She Wants Revenge live (not practitioners of the style in any way), the support DJ on stage (On STAGE? FFS!) was playing a dubstep set that would have resembled a malfunctioning CD player had it not been obvious that he was playing from laptop.

And it came into play again at my next set – it had been arranged for me to play the Die Kur support slot at Voodoo Rock – the monthly metal-fest at Elektrowerkz (there they are again!). One of the organisers was complaining that my music “wasn’t suitable for this floor”. I’d supported Die Kur often enough now to know what to play before their sets, so what was the problem? It only became clear afterwards. The established DJ was playing dubstep remixes of Rammstein, Rob Zombie and the like. These bands might remix well in the right hands, but this was nowt more than crow-barring in the latest music fad. And the drunken, rowdy crowd went for it. Add a hefty does of irresponsible behaviour and I soon realised the current metal scene was not for me.

Next up was a go at the short lived ‘Y34R Z3R0’ Nine Inch Nails tribute night. I’d attended the first running, and suggested to the promoter that I had a good idea for the first hour (mainly – play the album tracks too slow for regular club play). That was enough to get me on at the second event – alas we were competing with a Numan night and a scene-focused 80s event at the same time and attendance wasn’t what it could have been. Still, the final 40 minute set (should have been an hour!) dispensed with the ambient stuff and I just nailed in the hits one after the other, which seemed to work.

This Is The Lonesome Death Of A Goth DJ

Dubstep reared it’s ugly head again at August’s hot and sweaty ABBS. Scott wasn’t playing this one, but both the guest DJs thought bass drops were appropriate accompaniment for Sunday afternoon shopping. I went in the other direction, with an extended-length opening of minimal-melodic-synthy-stuff (just right for a summer morning) and then a more club-friendly industrial/darkwave set later – after a run of ‘variant’ sets, it was essentially a chance to get back to my core styles.

But another variation was only a few hours away. Renaissance 2012 was taking place downstairs in the Boston Music Rooms, and I was Djing that one, too. DJ Vade Retro (Reptile’s founder) was here to help this time, though in the division of labour stakes, I happily took all the genre option bands (everyone always let me be Jordan Reyne’s support for some reason). Laptop began to play up in the heat, but we made it though and my longest-ever day of Djing was done. A couple of years later and the idea of a Sunday double-header wouldn’t seem so unusual.

But the events kept coming. Neo-Noir made a comeback in it’s original home of the London Stone (a venue which has since been transformed – minus the scary pub decor and under the name “The Cannick Taps”). This event had a super-sized DJ lineup. In the short time allotted to me, I decided to act on a rather vociferous Facebook war over the previous week about ‘Ibiza’ music being played at scene events. By playing some Ibiza music. If Faithless “God Is A DJ” counts. And then some futurepop. In case THAT counted!

Cybersonik festival was back in 2012, too – this time in Elektrowerkz. Another lengthy band support slot ensued, but with a hidden bonus. Gigs at Elektrowerkz on Saturdays don’t generally chuck out after the last band – instead the show simply evolves into a Slimelight. In this case, Slimelight’s 25^th anniversary. It had been made clear to me earlier in the day that I was ‘only’ Djing Cybersonik, and ‘not’ Slimelight. But no DJ was booked on the top floor until 12:30am. And Cybersonik ended around 11:45pm.

With no-one stopping me, I carried on Djing after the bands were done. And what does one do with the top floor of Elektrowerkz with no stated remit? Rhythmic Noise, that’s what! Mak actually verbally approved me to do this, and my first Slimelight set was in the bag in the last style anyone would have expected me to play. But, as previously stated, nothing was off-limits and I was actively seeking any opportunity to get in the styles of marginal interest. Sometimes you just have to jump on these things when the chance arises.

There were also a few sets back at the Elixir Bar. The first was a video launch for the bands X-KiN and Non-Bio, both friends of mine, with an open remit afterparty set essentially going from harsh EBM to alt-rock. The second was Nightrain, an attempt to start a new classic rock night. I’d volunteered on the back of one of my DJ support slots earlier in the year. Some hasty research, including consulting some old friends of mine back in Essex and trawling the rock compilations in HMV (who were playing fuckin’ DUBSTEP when I was in there, proof that there was no escape at the time), and I got enough material together.

The event was enjoyable enough, but not exceptionally well attended, playing to a too-competitive market, and hence it ended up as a one-off. A few of the bands I missed on that evening got squeezed into a Halloween band-support slot I played for Bleak in Whitechapel, my first set in my native East London but otherwise quite not-really-my-kind-of-thing in terms of audience, though even here I believe I acquitted myself.

Time Was The Force, Brought Me Back On Course

Neo-Noir was still going. The November event had a 80s/90s theme, which was no problem for me – an early set of industrial from Neubauten to Thrill Kill Kult and a second set resembling turn-of-the-millenium Slimelight. December saw them join up with the other two London Stone based scene clubs (Y34R Z3R0 and Electric Dreams). Nine DJs were billed, but pre-Christmas illness and commitments meant only six played. My own 90s industrial set didn’t really work, so I ended up playing things like Echo & The Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes to keep people dancing.

There was one more ABBS in December. We turned up to find the venue was still being cleared up from a club the previous night (yep, it was a dubstep night). Once we’d finally got going, I once again found myself playing the trad-goth. Turned out I owned more of it that expected and thus was able to able to mostly avoid the bleedin’ obvious. Which left just one final set – Reptile, New Years Eve. It was my first chance to DJ the busiest clubbing night of the year in any location, and it was back in the club where my 2012 DJ adventure kicked off back in January. It couldn’t have been better placed. Only downside was having to switch back to CDs due to a lack of space for multiple laptops.

Now fully validated in playing the tracks that Full Tilt used to and Slimelight had largely forgotten, I nailed in the 11pm-11:30pm set. Pitchfork, VNV, Covenant, Front 242 before giving Arif the segue back to 80s classics that would see out the last thirty minutes of the year. The place was rammed, so the people in attendance probably couldn’t have left the dancefloor if they wanted to, but we certainly kept them moving. Two more slots were played in the early hours of 2013, one mainly-industrial, the other a twenty-minute burst of 80s classics when the crowd was thinning, but it was Mission Accomplished.

Indeed, 2012 was a case of Mission Accomplished all round. Twenty DJ sets played, the first year since 2008 without a house move and at the halfway point, a relationship began which remains strong to this day – but I won’t be writing about that here, nor will I any in future memoir. Question was – where to from here? It turned out I didn’t actually have an answer to that.

Onto 2013….

Intro / The EOL-Era / 2008 / 2009 / 2010 / 2011 / 2012 / 2013 / 2014 / 2015 / 2016 / 2017 / 2018 / The Last Word / The Facts / The Credits

The start of 2011 was a very busy period that left little time or capacity left for Djing. I did get a chance to assist tech writer KG Orphanidies with a trial run of some entry level Digital DJ kit (a sign of things to come) at a relatively sedate Sunday afternoon event, but that was merely a warm-up to what should have been my breakthrough set. Club Reptile were calling. Established in 2008, they had succeeded where many had failed in establishing a formula for a cross-genre alternative night. I’d been attending for a couple of years, and finally my DJ activity had caught their attention.

Meine Freunde, Tanz mit mir

The event fell around my birthday weekend, which should have made things even more special, but I’ve never had much luck (and more recently, enthusiasm) dragging out large groups of people to mark the passing of another year. More of a concern was that one of the club’s CD players was malfunctioning. I was still playing the things in 2011 and not-being-able-to-mix would be a significant issue.

In the end, we wired an iPod Classic into the left side of the PA and this Heath Robinson solution saw me through. And this remains the only use of an Apple-branded device in any Terminates Here DJ set, ever. Whilst the Classic was the only high-capacity MP3 player available at the time, I’ve never cared much for the ‘Apple way of doing things’.

My setlist selections that night were, in the circumstances, a “play it safe” affair. Darkwave and EBM standards made up the bulk of my set – I eventually played Project Pitchfork’s “Timekiller” as a birthday present to myself (I’d never heard said band played in there), enjoyed my birthday cake straight after, but there was no real feeling of having taken a “big step forward” in a DJ sense. The post-club mood was debates about whether to ‘go onto Slimelight’ – I wasn’t interested and hence the night just fizzled out.

One more set remained before an enforced break. The Dark 7 festival took place at the Camden Underworld – my friends in System:FX were headlining, the band Machine Rox were organising, and I’d also got to know the band Global Citizen quite well by then, so it wasn’t like my first attempt as ‘Band support DJ’ (at least under the Terminates Here name) was to be among strangers. Luckily, preparing for such things is pretty easy these days – listen to a stream of each band you don’t know and pick out four potential songs to play before each (you’ll usually only get two or three in).

I did get one of the strangest requests ever – System:FX wanted the old Inkpots track ‘I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire’ played before they came on. We were both fans of the game ‘Fallout 3’ and if you’ve played it too, that one will make sense to you. Perhaps more prophetically, I also played a track by Cubanate offshoot ‘Be My Enemy’ before they came on. Steve and Deb from FX would join the live line-up of this band a year later. The two projects aren’t that dissimilar so it all makes sense.

Now You’re One Of Us

However, these two relatively high-profile sets didn’t trigger anything. I soon got occupied with the process of buying a flat in the midst of the credit crunch and then filling it up with all the things that turn it into a home, so hunting down DJ sets proactively was a low priority for a while. I got back into the swing of things at the August ABBS, having had a pre-move sale at the spring event in lieu of actually Djing. Highlights here was opening with a 13-minute track (Fly and Collision of Comas Sola by TanDream, if you must know), and my first real old-school EBM set later in the day. Two more habits formed.

But things were finally moving again. A few days later, a few messages were exchanged, and I was support DJ at a four-band line-up at the Boston Music Rooms (underneath The Dome) headlined by New Zealander Jordan Reyne. Among the support bands were MaxDmyz (back as their support DJ after a full decade!) and Die Kur, Ays Kura’s band, who have a significant role to play in this story from here. Add Ventenner, and it was a varied billing that played to the strengths of my increasingly diverse style.

A couple more live support slots came in October. The first was a return to the Camden Underworld for Cybersonik, the follow-up to Dark 7 earlier in the year, calling upon various brands of EBM and electro-industrial throughout the day. A style that needs relatively precise mixing, yet with the event running late and no time to soundcheck the DJ booth, I didn’t discover until we’d opened and everyone was pouring in to catch Dreams Divide that the faders in the booth were broken. Ended up spending the whole day mixing by tweaking the AUX knobs. Not elegant, but by now I was used to substandard kit. It’s par for the course in our scene.

But Now You’re Worried That I Just Might Win

And then came Renaissance….The set I played for the Jordan Reyne gig a few month back clearly triggered something. A number of the bands returned the same venue play this eight-hour festival on the eve of Halloween, and the promoter NMTCG (Ays Kura – pulling double-duty as promoter and frontman of the headline act!) invited me back to DJ. I accepted without really considering what I was going to play, and researching the line-up gave me few clues about what direction to take. Every band seemed to have it’s own style. It was at this point that I decided that nothing in my collection was off-limits, and hence I came well-equipped for whatever the day may have thrown at me.

The early bands and link-ups went well, but things got interesting when I got talking to Anton, lead singer of Bleak. He requested “something relevant before we come on, like some blues”. Now, whilst all contemporary rock music is essentially blues-derived, my collection didn’t quite extend to the style in it’s purest form. So some lateral thinking was needed. What is blues, really? Miserable old men, right? Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen. What can I say but “it worked”! I’ve been friends with Anton ever since.

Each band called upon a different aspect of my collection. Somehow I had them all covered. There was one moment when someone came up to me and begged me to play The Clash. Even though I’d played them earlier on and was now in the midst of my ‘metal set’ leading into old friends MaxDmyz. I’d then sussed out that the person doing the begging was actual from the band setting up at the time, and they’d come all the way from Spain. A compromise was reached and we went for The Sex Pistols instead.

A couple of the days after this set, I reflected on the extent of what’s I’d played. I looked at my ripped-to-MP3 collection in Winamp (remember that?) and wrote down the name of every artist I hadn’t yet played in a set, but had at least 20 songs by (thus excluding any artist where I’d bought one album and wished for no more). It covered 6 pages of an A5 notebook. The mission was on – could I play all of these bands in a set at some point? Because I didn’t see any point in repeating myself every time.

2011’s Djing ended at the ABBS once again. Opened up with the longest track I ever managed to play (Synphära by Klaus Schulze) but otherwise the day was only notable for me DJ wise for me playing more trad-goth than ever before, with Miss Jade back covering industrial this time. But arrangements had already been made for a set that would finally kick me up to the next level. Reptile wanted me back.  In 2012….

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2010 had a surprisingly sedate opening, only woken up by a stag party (OK, ‘Gentleman’s Tour of Historic Public Houses’) at the end of January. Up until that point, I had no inkling it would be the most eventful year of my life so far. But then absolutely everything took off. Including the Djing. Finally I was ready to graduate from the ABBS and get some live sets in elsewhere. And that stag party was the precursor to one of them.

It Was Me, Waiting For Me, Hoping For Something More

A couple of weeks later and I was Djing at the wedding party, alongside Cowlin and scene veteran Martin Oldgoth. Being the token ‘not goth’ DJ essentially meant one darkwave set, one EBM set and one metal set. It all went down quite well until someone came up to me in the middle of SOAD’s “Chop Suey” and asks “Can you play MORE Crüxshadows please?” (having long since delivered the full length version of “Winterborn”).

My response was something like “Sorry, there’s no way I can fit that into what I’m doing right now”. This comment got passed on and mangled by the increasingly drunken attendees into “he told her to fuck off”. No long term ramifications, but it proves how utterly thankless the job of Djing can be sometimes, and how unfeasible some people’s expectations can be. At least the newlyweds were grateful.

As for my own ‘love life’, well, I won’t cover those details here, but it was around this time that I found myself in one of those ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ relationships that ultimately, well, wasn’t. Somewhere amidst the confusion, I found myself back at the Dome Djing at the March ABBS, this time alongside DJ Scott McMahon. We didn’t know it at the time, but this would be a DJ partnership that would last right through to the present day. For now though, I got my first go at Djing ‘proper goth’ (as some like to call it) on a ‘if I don’t, no-one will’ basis.

The events between this and my next “live set” four months later would be worth a chapter of their own if this was a conventional autobiography. But it isn’t, and even if it was, it’s not a story I really feel like telling in full, now or in the future. The only DJ Terminates Here action during this period was a pre-recorded hour of music for a Mittelalter night held at the Zeitgeist pub in Vauxhall. A good attendance for a style only of marginal interest in the UK, but how much of that was down to the popularity of the venue at the time, and how much of it was down to the music?

Never Say Never ‘Cause I’ll Do It Again

I returned to real Djing in July with a one-time ‘Sunday Afternoon’ event in the London Stone pub. I’d arranged to start relatively late, due to having moved house the previous day and also due to my plan to watch the British Grand Prix at the Haymarket Sports Bar first. And mid-race I get a phone call, barely audible amongst the background noise. Turns out that as the venue was opening especially for us, it was locked up until the scheduled start time, with the DJ kit not wired in. Why they rang me, when I was obviously distracted and over a mile away, is a mystery.

Still, I set off the moment Red Bull’s ‘Number 2 Driver’ had received his congratulatory face-full of chessboard. Two buses and thirty minutes and I was there. The event itself went quite well, despite the delayed start. The gothic-themed pub quiz was fun, whilst Scott, Robert, myself and guest DJX (from Tanz Macabre) covered all bases music-wise. I had a lot of fun with my final set in particular, ending with covers of the Pac-Man theme and Popcorn.

It was at this point that I caught the attention of another promoter (who, given the following paragraphs, is best left unnamed here), who ran a Depeche Mode night (‘Black Celebration’ the too-obvious name) at the Elixir bar, and was on the lookout for new DJs. I gave a verbal agreement there and then, before returning my far-too-exciting life away from the DJ booth. Which I’m not writing about, see?

Whatever You’ve Planned For Me – I’m Not The One

I was originally due to play said Mode night in September but my debut was brought forward by a month due to a lack of other available and willing DJs. That should have been a warning. The August event actually went quite well, though. With little guidance from the promoter (who was outside smoking most of the time), my early set combined early Mode material with various minimal synth and old-school EBM tracks, with a second set later packing in most of the hits. Bit surprised that Yazoo cleared the floor, given it was Vince in his immediate post-Mode phase, but felt like a good event, let down only by the fact that my partner at the time (and Mode fanatic) was visiting family in Germany and couldn’t attend.

I wasn’t too worried as we’d get to right that wrong a month later. Sure enough, we had a bigger crowd next time out, with Electric Dreams veteran Paul Alan joining me in the DJ booth. With both of us on hand, we shouldn’t have needed any assistance. But the promoter had other ideas – when not outside getting her nicotine fix, she was switching DJs, letting her friends play sets, taking over the booth whenever she pleased and taking over the music policy as it suited her, acting like it was her own private party (it wasn’t). Having got a 101-style singalong going to “Everything Counts”, I was aghast when she insisted playing her boyfriend’s sub-Rammstein-style metal band, not only clearing the floor but leaving me at least two mixes away from playing any more Mode.

The only upside to this was that I used Skinny Puppy’s ‘Smothered Hope’ as one of my ‘rescue tracks’, finally getting this critical band into a Terminates Here set. It was on the night bus home that I began to think that there must be quite a few other bands I’d never played in a DJ set but should do at some point, and doodled a list in a notebook that would later chart the course of my Djing directions (plural intended) from here. As for the event and the promoter, I never heard from either again, and I hope it doesn’t jeopardise my commitment to the health of scene events if I said “Good Riddance” in this case.

And I’m Not From Heaven Sent – I’m Not Holy Just Like You

Unfortunately, 2010 was all downhill from here. An increasingly busy time in the day job, second breakup of the year and I was just too emotionally exhausted to feel anything any more. A four DJ line-up at the October ABBS (with Ashleigh, aka “Miss Jade” joining Scott Robert and myself) made my life easy that day. Other than making my attempt to support local acts by getting System:FX into my ‘industrial’ set, I pretty much sleepwalked this one.

A second running of the pre-recorded ‘Mittelalter’ night in late October saw an expanded “pre-J” lineup, with me now able to focus on my speciality of synth-enhanced medieval (yes, that is a thing), but ultimately we focused too much on the technicalities of assembling the sets and not enough in making the event go with a bang. The night itself was well-attended and well-received, but some of the venue staff didn’t want us there and that was the end of that.

By the time of the December ABBS, I was ready just to wind down to Christmas. Fate decreed that such a luxury would not be afforded at this time, with family members stranded overseas due to heavy snow and a major project starting up at work, but the DJ set here was quite a lot of fun, with Scott now established as ‘regular’ and James Black of ‘Black n Beard’ radio as today’s guest. I didn’t really get into the Christmas spirit as much as I could have done, but my closing-hour synthpop set was sufficiently rollicking to bring my DJ year to a close.

Onto 2011….

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One swallow doesn’t make an orgy, and one setlist doesn’t make a DJ. A single set doesn’t allow you to attract much attention, so I needed to wait until the ABBS (as it’ll be called from now) rolled around again to DJ once more. The quarterly pattern of the event wasn’t established by then, so this didn’t happen until August 2009. It was otherwise a “dead time” for scene events, with Infest on their year off due to venue refurbishment and Eurofests unreachable due to exchange rate issues (as bad as it is under Brexit now), employment uncertainty and, dare I say, not many exciting new bands coming through. But no reason not to DJ.

I’ve Got Nothing To Lose and Everything To Win

With Andy having moved on to other things, a new DJ was brought in – Robert Cowlin, later known for Terminal Gods, but now as a trad-goth DJ with a penchant for playing tunes older than he was. With that side of thing sorted, I had every other scene genre at my disposal, and indeed kicked off the day with one of NON’s more ‘ambient’ compositions, which at least set the right atmosphere. I hovered around the dark-ambient and film soundtrack era for a while before moving onto a more conventional darkwave and electro-industrial style, with my first DJ plays of Leæther Strip and Front Line Assembly being relatively unknown but personally favoured album tracks.

Later sets saw my first of many explorations into old-school EBM (not a big thing in London at the time, indeed some would say it never was), gothic metal and industrial rock. Indeed, this was the set where I really got to grips with the concept of ‘genre bridging’, picking out the interim tracks that could get me from Style A to Style B without a jarring interlude. Though in one case I have to thank an Italian musician who passed me a CD of his latest album and asked me to play a track off it. It got me from Die Krupps to Lacuna Coil perfectly. His name is Ays Kura, the band Die Kur, both of whom would go on to form a major part of the story to come.

The is also where I first came up with the idea of tag-team (aka ‘versus’) Djing at the close of the event. Robert was playing The Human League, and I though it’d really cheer up the closure and cleanup to play some ‘fun’ tunes. On this occasion, pop-styles 80s tunes were enough of a deviation from what we were playing during the day. We would push this boat out quite a bit further in later years.

Two Sounds Are Better Than One

Robert and I later assembled some music for a London Gothic Meetup anniversary event, though I don’t class it as an official set as it was pre-recorded and played at relatively low volume in a pub that wasn’t really equipped for such things. Also, I had a job interview (two, actually) the following week and hence my mind was at least partially elsewhere. This diversion was at least successful, giving me financial stability at a time when such things were by no means guaranteed for anyone.

We were back for a full DJ set at the Christmas ABBS – my first time playing the closing hour. The celebratory atmosphere encouraged me to break from the goth/darkwave/industrial boundaries, introducing some borderline-mainstream hits (Editors ‘Papillon’ and Muse ‘Uprising’) and bringing some of the 80s throwback material into the main set. I wasn’t the only scene DJ doing this, of course – scene breakthrough hits were hard to come by in the late 00s and if we had to look to the charts to find something fresh to play, so be it. In any case, it might have only been my third live DJ set, but I certainly left the day having felt like I’d ‘arrived’ if not yet ‘established’ myself. 2010 would be my chance to build on all of that.

Of course, it’s never that simple – as we’ll find in 2010.

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The story of my first DJ set under the Terminates Here game actually dates back to December 2006, when an event called the Alternative Bring’n’Buy Sale was born in the function room of The Blue Posts pub. I got talking to the organiser Steph, suggesting that “a bit of music” would help add a bit of atmosphere. Sure enough, the next couple of events saw us move to venues with PA systems and veteran scene DJ Andy Ravensable was called in to provide the music.

I was a stallholder at the summer 2008 event, and observed that it did seem a little unfair that he was covering six hours on his own, missing out on both the commercial and social opportunities the event provided. Talking to Steph in the Reptile club (plenty more on them later), I offered to share the Djing with him. Despite not having played for six years, we quickly agreed to share the set on an ‘alternating hours’ pattern and I was at the races.

Don’t Be a Plague, a Spell to Kill, You Should be Grateful

I’d run off some CD-Rs and practised in software the previous week, laptop Djing still a few years away. Only to arrive at the venue to find the whole DJ booth not-wired-together. Took about half an hour to connect it all up and find someone to turn the PA system on. Little did I know at the time that this would become something of a trend….another lesson being “Learn where all the wires go and never expect everything to be wired in perfectly on arrival.”

Anyway, once the assembled in the Tufnell Park Dome had the early morning delight of Laibach’s version of ‘Mama Leone’ to enjoy in the later stages of setup, I found myself with a DJ booth, lots of music, and a low-pressure environment to find my way around the kit again after six years off. No pressure to fill a dancefloor, indeed at 11am one shouldn’t be thinking about that kind of thing anyway.

As for what I did play, it largely reflected my tastes of the time, for the most part taking the form of a WGT line-up distilled into setlist form. One side-effect of this was that I didn’t play an English-language song until I was half-an-hour into the set. There was a brief salute to the ‘mittelalter’ sound I’d discovered during my six-year Djing lay-off (someone even thanked me for playing ‘Vollmond’), tracks by both Solar Fake and Zeraphine (a Sven Friedrich double!) and a couple by Diary of Dreams, always a favourite and a frequent appearance in Terminates Here sets from now.

I went home from this event happy with the day’s work, hoping that I might get a few more chances to do something similar. As it happened, the results weren’t immediate, but the first seed was planted at least.

Onto 2009….

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