It has come around so quickly. Christmas and New Year is here once again. But whilst we’re all clocking off from office jobs and the like, what are our clubland favourites up to? DJing and producing ain’t exactly a typical 9 to 5 is it? But then isn’t the dance music scene gearing up for one of its busiest times of the year? – monster festive shindigs, marathon New Year’s blowouts?
Perhaps. “Christmas is on of the biggest party times of the year,” so says merry-maker David Guetta. “I get to drop classics like 1999 and Fairytale Of New York that I can’t play at any other time of the year.” At the other end of the house scale, underground (but fast rising) housers DeepCitySoul share a similar opinion; the outfit’s Matt Mckillop explains: “Christmas, for us, is a hectic schedule of completing the year’s projects. It also offers a mixed, extremely busy DJ agenda and a cracking social time. All of the clubs are full of people out to party and we lead by example….”
Former Hed Kandi supremo Mark Doyle, these days running a new suited-and-booted house set-up Fierce Angels, finds the whole festive thing overwhelming but irresistible all the same. “There are some amazing events and great potential for amazing events at Christmas” he explains. “You’ve got to love it but, for me, this has been a tiring, hard year of trouble and strife. What I could really do with for Christmas is a nice three or four-week holiday… no music…pile of DVDs… small island somewhere; but it ain’t going to happen.”
It’s been Doyle’s unenviable task for the past three years to manoeuvre out from Hed Kandi’s shadow – the label he so successfully founded and then left in 2005 – and come up with something equally influential, but sharp, snappy and independent. “We’re getting there” he explains. “The Fierce Angels radio station is going soooo well, as is our events business. Both are truly international and still growing.” On top of that there’s the Fierce label which has just dropped a tidy new triple-CD comp Fierce Angels Presents The Collection, and promises major artist development plans in 2010 around heavyweight house producers like Chris ‘Wamdue Project’ Brann.
Tired equally sums up Christmas for Defected’s A&R ‘consultant’, mercurial DJ and producer Andy Daniell. And laborious plane flights to overseas gigs – especially testing this year what with all that crazy-ass’d snow. “At the moment I’ve been sitting in Southampton Airport for the last seven hours so I’m not full of Christmas cheer right this second” he hammers into a late December email on his Blackberry. “But, no, in general Christmas is a great time for clubbing – Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve are obviously two of the biggest dates for parties in the calendar. Gotta dance that turkey off haven’t you?”
Indeed. But then it’s easy to forget Christmas’ religious significance when you’re giving it large on the dancefloor and Baltimore’s finest DJ Spen is keen to remind one and all of why there is a holiday season in the first place. “Christmas for me as a DJ is all about celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ” he confides. “When I have gigs this time of year I try to express that musically and in general people are very receptive. I have grown to really love and look forward to Christmas and the positive things it brings out in those that believe. All we have to do now is spread that attitude around the rest of the year….”
The holiday season may mean many things to many clubland folk but there’s no denying that, on the whole, it’s a highly unique, special and uplifting time of year. If this year’s frivolities are even half as slammin’ as billed then, surely, we’ll have our bounciest ever springboard from which to positively inspire the following 12 months – as Spen sagely recommends we do. What a New Year that’ll be…..
