Club land is a unique, weird and wonderful place. Each micro-scene or genre is built by the interactions of dancers, DJs, promoters and the venues that we call home. Each of these interactions shapes the future of the scene, for better or for worse.
As part of our Meet The Promoter series we have been taking time out to shine some light on the people building our scene from the ground up. This week we head to London to speak to Nick, the founder of Labyrinth. A promotion company that is responsible for bringing Keinemusik, Running Back and Âme to the capital.
Can you tell us about Labyrinth, your role and how the concept came about?
I’m Nick, I’m the founder of and resident DJ at Labyrinth.
I’d been promoting drum n bass, UK garage and bass events in Bristol for three years before I moved to London. By that time my personal taste in music had changed and I wanted to create my own platform, that was reflective of the style of music I was falling for at the time.
So I founded Labyrinth, which started as a series of Thursday evening parties at Notting Hill Arts Club. I live West and there was nothing going on at the time, which is crazy given the culture heritage of Notting Hill and how vibrant the area used to be. The goal of the first series was to bring artists to Notting Hill Arts Club that you would rarely see that side of London.
I had Bradley Zero playing to 200 people in that little basement for the last party, which was pretty cool.
I chose the name ‘Labyrinth’ because labyrinths featured extensively throughout my childhood. My Mum is very spiritual and through her, I learnt a lot about the meaning of labyrinths and how they function. The symmetrical pattern of a labyrinth creates a unique energy field in the middle that can’t be obtained from any other shape.
Hence, when I set out to create a unique event concept, it made complete sense to call it Labyrinth and strive to create a similarly unique atmosphere through our events. The Labyrinth logo is based off the labyrinth in the Chartes Cathedral in France, which I was lucky enough to visit with my Mum and sister, Sasha.
I now run the parties in partnership with Mikey Dicks, who joined me in late 2018 to help take Labyrinth up a gear.
What does London need more of?
High quality small and medium sized venues. In the 200 – 600 capacity range.
What does London need less of?
Corporatism.
Take Broadwick Live as an example. The business is soon to be operating two super clubs in London (Printworks and Exhibition), one of London’s biggest day festivals in Field Day and recently acquired one of the scene’s leading promoters, it feels like they’re monopolising the scene to some extent. If this was the tech industry, there would be regulation in place to stop this.
They run a hugely successful business, with the financial backing of Global Media & Entertainment, who hit close to £20,000,000 in profit last year. Now compare that to me who took a small business loan from Sainsbury’s to fund our first Keinemusik showcase…
If the gap between the top of London’s scene and the middle to bottom keeps widening, I fear that many small and entrepreneurial promoters and independent venues alike will cease to exist and you’ll just be left with the big boys. What a shame that would be! Small venues, those quirky bars, those random raves that you stumble upon are what make London so great and if they diminish, we’ll loose a key part of our culture.
As the top gets more and more successful, the artist fees that are demanded at the middle to the bottom of the scene become higher and smaller underground events just become unprofitable. I speak to promoter after promoter who has lost money putting on really cool parties, with a full venue. That just doesn’t quite add up to me, something is wrong in this market and it needs to change.
Fans also spend their money going to Printworks once a month, rather than going out three times a month to events in smaller venues with a ticket price of £10 – £20. This all hurts the scene.
My biggest concern around all of this is that real estate developers, who have more money than we can all imagine are somewhat fuelling this. Printworks is a place-making play by British Land (one of the largest real estate businesses in the country) who’re going to develop a huge amount of residential units aimed at a younger generation over the next few years, in the area around Printworks. One of the key reasons they wanted to turn the printing factory into a music venue, was so they can attract a young audience to Canada Water, that may one day buy a flat around there.
The same goes for Westfield and their new venue with Broadwick Live at Shepherd’s Bush. Shopping centres and retail globally is suffering due to e-commerce and the owners of these centres have to find innovative ways of driving footfall, so they open a 3,000 capacity evens venue.
But here’s the issue – the real estate developers, the guys with the big bucks, see opening super clubs as the solution. Not artisan bars, restaurants and intimate music venues. They want a super club on their investor sheet that their investors may familiarise with, because they’ve seen a selfie of their nephew there.
As these developers build and build across London and the small venues that are the heart and soul of London’s nightlife continue to close, we may just be left with the super clubs at the top of the pie and that would be tragedy.
I say this all from a position of weakness, as we’re not at the top of the scene using spaces as big as Printworks and I don’t deny that one day, we do want to be there. But this growth all needs to be done in a way that supports London’s nightlife from the top to the very bottom and it doesn’t feel like that is the case right now.
Not all parties can run seamlessly in fact there is often a lot that happens behind the scenes to ensure the best possible event for your dancers. Has there ever been a moment where something went wrong or you didn’t know what to do? How did you deal with it?
Yes. We booked Awesome Tapes from Africa last Carnival Sunday, who plays off a cassette player. He travelled with his cassette’s from Paris and they broke on the Eurostar! So I had to spend three hours of my afternoon on event day calling a range of people I was tipped off had a cassette player we could borrow. We eventually got put in touch with Auntie Flo, who kindly lent us his.
A lot of stuff can crop of last minute that you’re often not prepared for. We’ve had artists sending us guest lists for 75 people, arriving at their hotel to find it’s been fully booked etc etc.
Even when you think you’ve got everything covered for an event, there is always something that crops. But it’s all part of the fun and one of the reasons we love doing this.
You have worked with some impressive brands since your creation and put them on a platform in London. Twice you have booked the Keinemusik collective as well as Gerd Janson’s Running Back and most recently the Melodic Diggers brand with Âme. How do these relationships come about? What is your booking policy and how easy is it to secure these sort of line ups?
These relationships have come about due to a lot of hard work and perseverance. A number of agents, would not have opened my emails when Labyrinth was launched and so many people warned me how hard it is to break into London nightlife.
But that’s the same with any competitive industry and if you work hard enough at it, find your own niche and deliver consistently, people don’t have a choice but to begin to take you seriously and give you a chance at the opportunities you’re working towards.
Our booking policy evolves around supporting the record labels, communities and artists that we believe to be pushing the boundaries of contemporary dance music.
It’s never easy to secure a line up in London, no matter how big or small.
London is a heavily saturated market. There is a larger audience pool than most UK cities but with that comes more promoters. How do you distinguish yourself from other promoters and Is there a sense of community and collaboration in London or do a lot of people just do their own thing?
Attention to detail, consistency and collaboration.
Attention to detail. If each and every one of our attendees doesn’t leave with great feedback, the production isn’t spot on, the artists didn’t have a killer time or the event didn’t run as smoothly as it could have, Mikey and me are kicking ourselves the next day and asking each other what we can do next time to make it better.
Consistency. We firmly believe that less is more and would rather wait half a year for the opportunity to work on a high profile show, than fill that gap with loads of events that aren’t that special in-between. A lot of promoters get sucked into doing events for the sake of doing events and we’ve learnt to do less and maintain a consist level of quality when we do.
Collaboration. We work closely with the agents, labels and artists themselves to produce shows that totally representative of their sound and visual aesthetic. Shows that the artists want to be associated with and are excited to play at. Take the Keinemusik showcase last year, I was on the phone to Adam Port asking him how he wanted the decor at The Steelyard to look, months before we hosted the party.
I would say there is a stronger sense of competition than collaboration in the London scene. Venues like E1 and The Steelyard, are quality acts and most importantly run by lovely people. But not everyone is supporting as they are. Everyone has their own agenda and tends to stick to that.
Is there an inspirational dance floor that you would travel back to or an event you have attended that inspires your Labyrinth events?
When I was really starting to get into club music and culture in London The Hydra’s events really got me. The range of music and quality of programming they manage to achieve time and time again, is just outstanding and takes a deep understanding of music to pull off. As an events promotion business, they’ve been the biggest inspiration to us.
Ben UFO’s closing set at Gottwood in 2016 when he played Four Tet – Pinnacles is a moment I’d love to be back at. Followed closely by dancing arm in arm with Tyson Fury at a few days earlier at Gottwood, that was something I never thought’d happen!
What do you think is the hardest part of being a promoter? Is there a battle you are constantly fighting?
The thing that I’m starting to find the hardest is that as our events grow, you have to book artists that you’re confident are going to sell enough tickets to make the events commercially viable. This sometimes doesn’t align to the artists that you really really dig, who’s music you can’t stop listening to. Striking the balance between billings that I personally love, but also work commercially is going to be a challenge as our events get bigger.
Luckily, every event we’ve done so far, I’d been a huge fan of all the artists. But I can see this being a sticking point in the near future.
Also, there is no denying that artist bookings in London is an utter minefield. This has got to be the most competitive clubbing market in the world and securing top talent is a constant battle.
There is so many elements behind a successful party. A good promotions team, quality artists, an open minded crowd. What do you think makes for a successful party in your eyes?
The crowd.
You can put all the money in the world into artists and production, but if the crowd aren’t connecting to the artist and their music, it won’t be a good vibe.
We work hard to market our events in a way that attracts a crowd that are there for the music and I’d like to think this shows from the atmosphere at our events.
Where do you see Labyrinth in 5 years. You are making a name for yourself in the capital do you see yourself branching out to other cities or into Europe?
Five years is a long time. We need to focus on continuing to produce high quality experiences and build up a strong audience over the next few years, in the first instance.
Although I wouldn’t write it off, I don’t necessarily think you’ll see us overseas, but you will start to see us using unique venues outside of London. We firmly believe that if we can find beautiful spaces and take the dance away from nightclubs, we can create something different to the stereotypical event you see in London.
Why do 3,000 people flock to Gottwood every summer in the middle of nowhere? And Lost in a Moment on Osea island sells out in a couple of hours? Because it’s an unique experience that you can’t get every weekend in London. These are the concepts that really excite us.
What has been your most memorable moment as part of Labyrinth?
We’ve been really lucky to work with a range of artists that are personal favourites of ours and make music that inspire us to do this. The Keinemusik showcase last October was amazing, having the opportunity to host a Running Back showcase, which is in our eyes one of the greatest labels in dance music was really special. But of them all standing at the back of The Steelyard seeing Âme come on to play Live to a full room, was a moment I’ll never forget.
I’m a complete Innervisions nut, so to host that was a dream come true.
