Rowan Harrington’s unstoppable club alias Secondcity refers to Chicago, home for the first 12 years of his life. It was here, inevitably, that he first discovered house – right at the source. His mother regularly listened to vintage US dance, as well as jazz, funk and soul, and so Harrington’s musical taste-buds were formed. At the age of 13 he relocated to Forest Row just south of London, acquired some turntables and then realised he wanted music to be his career path above all else.
Of course, Harrington’s initial flirtations with music were relatively low-level DJ gigs in and around his East Sussex locale - hobbyist activity managed around a solid, London-based advertising job. He started making music in 2008 but it remained confined to the bedroom. The ‘Eureka’ moment would come much later.
“About two years ago I kind of decided it was make or break” he told one local newspaper last month. “I had to either go for it or not, and I decided that this is what I wanted to do. I’ve wanted to do it from a really early age anyway. I quit my job that day and just went for it, and I’ve never looked back since.”
The emphatic emergence of Secondcity has a little to do with Skream who heard Harrington’s upbeat house experiment with snatches of Toni Braxton’s R&B standard ‘You’re Makin’ Me High’ and instantly saw its tasteful crossover potential. Harrington had made the track, ‘I Wanna Feel’, nearly a year before Skream’s intervention, holding it back for personal DJ use and play by a tiny circle of close friends. In no time now, it was earning major radio play, thousands of Soundcloud and YouTube plays and a flagship release on Ministry of Sound (alongside Speakerbox) – which would, in turn, top the Official UK Charts.
Nevertheless, Secondcity’s rise was already well underway before ‘I Wanna Feel’. Harrington’s first break with the alias came via cut ‘The Story’ which Skream, Huxley and Artwork immediately championed. Huxley, a particular fan of the record’s magnetic space-bass, deep house groove, signed it to his impressionable Saints And Sonnets imprint as a weighty four-track EP under the same name. Serious post-release traction (including a Top 10 spot in Beatport’s Deep House chart) led to an inspired collabo with fellow mover ‘n’ shaker Route 94 – ‘Freak’, a free downloaded posted last summer, revisited Adina Howard’s stellar 1995 lick ‘Freak Like Me’ in swaggering, squelch-funked 4-4 style. There was also a hook-up with Tyler Rowe, ‘I Enter’, on Dirtybird and the remixing of Miami Rockers (‘Disco’s Revenge’) for Strictly Rhythm. Secondcity’s devilish ability to splice house rough and house smooth was drawing an ever louder fanbase.
Things haven’t, thankfully, peaked with ‘I Wanna Feel’. If scene cynics thought that Secondcity was chart-digging fodder timed perfectly to coincide with the faddish re-discovery of Nineties house, and that ‘I Wanna Feel’ was a cash-in career apex, then Harrington has already proved them massively wrong. As Secondcity he continues to thrive, freely pursuing his own creative instincts and advancing his exhilarating sound. Last month he released the ‘Groove ‘N’ On’ EP via Defected sub-label DFTD – snaking sub-bass, peppy percussion, standout vocals – and this, a stunning piano-riffed remix of FCL’s long-standing club fave ‘It’s You’. The mix of raw and radio-friendly continues to beguile.
It’s unsurprising that Secondcity is equally in demand as a performer. Harrington’s lengthy apprenticeship on the local nightclub circuit has, over the past two years, rapidly morphed into prestige bookings with Skreamizm, Heidi’s Jackathon and FWD, as well as at top-tier festivals SW4 and Creamfields. Secondcity is also a key fixture in Ibiza this summer, translating that same white-hot house flow to the Booom! dancefloor for Defected’s prolific Tuesday night In The House residency.
“It’s been crazy!” Harrington said of the past 12 months when speaking to Ministry Of Sound in May. “It’s been really overwhelming actually, in a really good way though. Exciting and just brilliant, it’s so nice to be doing what you want to do.”
One senses there’s a lot, lot more to come....
Words: Ben Lovett
Secondcity plays Defected In The House at Booom Ibiza on 29 July and 23 September – click for full line-up info and tickets
Groove 'n' On EP is out now on DFTD - buy from Beatport, Traxsource and DStore
