basic vision. artwork courtesy jamie read. photo credit elspeth moore

I realised that it was the end of my time as a resident DJ at back to basics, looking out over a packed club, as Carl Cox rocked the house. It was May 24th 2019.

Clear

I first invited Carl to play in Leeds in 1990 for a Wednesday night party I’d started with some friends at a small club called Digby’s on York Place. Carl played for the grand sum of £100 and even then had to drive back to Brighton the same night, as we couldn’t afford a hotel for him. As far as I know it was his first ever gig in Leeds and about 50 people turned up. He was already playing on three decks, way back then, and I asked him for a request of Renegade Soundwave - ‘Ozone Breakdown’. He seemed impressed I knew the record and promptly mixed it straight in. A year later we started a new night at the same venue called ‘Clear’, named after the classic Cybotron track by Juan Atkins, from Detroit. We also invited Andrew Weatherall and the Most Excellent residents from Manchester - Justin Robertson and Greg Fenton and Simon Scott from The Bridewell Taxis.

I started buying records from a store called Kik Flip, where a DJ named Alistair Cooke was working behind the counter. Ali was best friends with a guy called Dave Beer and he brought him down to Clear. Ali and Dave were planning to start a new Saturday night called back to basics above a venue called Rockshots in the town centre. I guess they were impressed by what they heard at Clear, as they invited me to DJ on the very first night. Ali wanted to close, so I ended up played first, which meant that I put on the first ever record at back to basics at exactly 9pm on November 23rd 1991. The record was Marshall Jefferson presents Truth - ‘Open Our Eyes’. The night went nuts from the start and attendance doubled every week, until basics took over the full 1200 capacity venue over three floors. We renamed it - the>music:factory, a permanent weekly home for back to basics.

back to basics

I have remained a resident DJ at back to basics since that date, a little over 28 years ago. That’s a crazy amount of time. It has been ‘a residency’ in the true meaning of the word, originally playing every Saturday for many of those years before I started touring internationally. It’s a tricky job to work out exactly how many times I’ve played for back to basics but my rough estimate, from looking through the flyer archives, would be around 700 shows. Leeds was also one of the first UK cities to allow late licensing in 1994, which meant that the resident DJs played long sets every week to cover the extended opening times. All in all it adds up to a considerable amount of hours behind the decks.

daft punk are playing at my house

During my time at back to basics I have been fortunate to play alongside many of the finest live acts and DJs from around the world, many were originally my heroes. My job, as resident, was to leave the club in the right place for them to have a good session themselves. They nearly always did. Over the years guests have included -

Daft Punk, Dust Brothers (pre-Chemical Brothers), Carl Cox, Fat Boy Slim, Sasha, Basement Jaxx, Leftfield, Laurent Garnier, Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins, Carl Craig, Marshall Jefferson, Francois Kevorkian, Lil’ Louie Vega, Kenny Dope, Danny Tenaglia, Murk, Groove Armada (live), Josh Wink, Claudio Coccoluto, Derrick Carter, Mark Farina, Kerri Chandler, Stacey Pullen, Chez Damier, Ron Trent, Alton Miller, Claude Young, Delano Smith, Felix Da Housecat, John Acquaviva, Doc Martin, DJ Sneak, DJ Harvey, Greg Wilson, Don Letts, Herbert, Andrew Weatherall, David Holmes, Justin Robertson, Greg Fenton, Coldcut, Jose Padilla, Danny Rampling, Farley & Heller, Mike Pickering, X-Press 2, Ashley Beedle, Rocky & Diesel, Slam, Jon Digweed, Evil Eddie Richards, Kid Batchelor, Kelvin Andrews, Harri & Domenic, Fabi Paras, Darren Emerson, Clive Henry, D.O.P, Billy Nasty, The Shaman (live), The Beloved (live), Moodswings (live), Secret Knowledge (live), Sly & Lovechild (live), Boy George, Mark Moore, Nancy Noise, Lisa Loud, Jon Pleased Wimmin, Emma, DIY, Luke Soloman & Kenny Hawkes, Goldie, LTJ Bukem, MC Conrad, Dub Pistols, Junior Sanchez, Justin Long, Cricco Castelli, Lottie, Damian Lazarus, Craig Richards, Terry Francis, Ivan Smagghe, Cassy, Steve Bug, Matthias Tanzmann, Tiefschwarz, Dixon, Henrik Schwarz (live), Âme, KiNK (live), Lindstrom, Prins Thomas, Maurice Fulton, Levon Vincent, Motor City Drum Ensemble, tINI, D’Julz, Dan Ghenacia, Dyed Soundorom, Maya Jane Coles, Jamie Jones, Richie Ahmed, Patrick Topping, Huxley, Youssef, Subban & Shelton, Nick Curly, Lunar City Express, Sebo K, Anja Schneider, Alex Arnout, Brawther, Jeremy Underground, Gideön, Gavin Herlihy, Krysko, Greg Lord and so many more. I became a much better DJ by listening to the best electronic music artists perform every week. Due to the intense atmosphere at the club they also tended to really raise the bar with their sets. Resident DJs need to become chameleons, able to change and adapt their selection. I always know when a DJ has cut their teeth as a resident, as they are able to play a much wider selection of music from different genres.

Basics had three floors of music and a dedicated team of residents. Through the early years that was Alistair Cooke, Huggy and James Holroyd. We would mostly ‘book-end’ the night which meant that we would do the opening and closing sets on each floor, while the guests played the middle set. I love warming up a club, an opening set allows a DJ to set the mood and atmosphere for the night and play records that just won’t work later on. The sweet spot always came the moment the club had filled and the crowd were ready to go. At that moment - we’d crank the volume up, hit the black out and drop our favourite record. The result was always the same - ignition.

I have been very fortunate to play for so many enthusiastic people over so many years. Basics has had a fiercely loyal following since the very first night. The people coming to the club have changed many times, even passing through generations, but the vibe has always stayed the same. You entered back to basics to lose yourself on the dance-floor. It has always had a super charged atmosphere and many friends were made along the way in the nooks and crannies of chill out rooms and outdoor terraces. As long as you played with energy and passion the crowd would follow. As there was such a mix of musical taste between the different DJs it was less important to keep to one style as people were happy to be transported, as long as the transitions were tight and the tracks cut up well. The basics crowd has always been clued up musically so noticed if a DJ wasn’t on their game. I remember having a bad night once, in the early days, and receiving an anonymous phone call from ‘the mixing police’ letting me know I’d dropped a mix! That call made sure that I tried never to drop a beat at basics again, one of the keys to a being a good resident DJ is simply being consistent.

America

I was exposed to many of the great American resident DJs from the very beginning of my adventures in house music. One of my best friends from Leeds moved to New York and became a disciple at The Sound Factory, attending every week. He took me down to The Factory on W 27th Street on my first night visiting in New York - the whole experience blew my mind. I was fortunate to catch Junior Vasquez at the height of his powers playing all night marathon sets to an entirely devoted, predominately queer crowd. Through the 1990s I also had many memorable nights at the hands of other legends from the city including; Danny Tenaglia, Francois Kevorkian, Danny Krivit and Joe Claussell. Just across the water in Jersey, Tony Humphries created his own garage sound at Zanzibar. They followed a long tradition of New York resident DJs including Larry Levan at the Paradise Garage, David Mancuso at The Loft, Nicky Siano at The Gallery and Mark Kamins at Danceteria. The most iconic artists of the early 1980s; Keith Haring, Jean Michel-Basquiat and Futura 2000 were heavily influenced by the energy in the early 80s clubs. Keith Haring would return every week to dance at The Paradise Garage from wherever he was in the world.

Chicago and Detroit had it’s own separate history of great resident DJs. House music originated as a form of black music predominately focused in the queer scene in Chicago with Ron Hardy at The Music Box and Frankie Knuckles at The Warehouse. It was Knuckles residency at The Warehouse that even gave ‘house music’ it’s name. This was an age when there were no guest DJs. It was just one DJ playing all night for 12 hours straight. Lil Louis held huge raves at a venue called The Bismark at the height of the house phenomena in 1988 while DJ Pierre famously created the acid house sound in Chicago. It wasn’t just in the clubs that resident DJs had a huge impact, regular shows on WBMX by the Hot Mix 5 - Farley Jackmaster Funk, Ralphi Rosario, Kenny ‘Jammin’ Jason’, Mickey Oliver and Julian ‘Jumping’ Perez pumped the house sound over the radio airwaves every night.

Over in Detroit the music also originated as black music and techno was created by a group of artists knows as ‘The Belleville Three’ - Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May. The early Detroit techno scene was centred around a venue called The Music Institute, where you could find the resident DJs Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Chez Damier and D-Wynn play at the first club night in the world playing techno music. It’s name? Back to Basics, which surprisingly I only found out while researching this article. Of course Detroit produced so many more great artists all from African-American heritage including; Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Eddie Fowlkes, Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir, Claude Young, Underground Resistance, Mad Mike Banks, Keith Tucker, Aux88, DJ Stingray and on and on…

Legends

In the UK our club scene has always been based around resident DJs. You can look back to the origins of Northern Soul in the late 1960s at The Twisted Wheel in Manchester and The Torch in Stoke to find early resident DJs behind the decks. By the start of the 1970s they’d become the first superstar DJs - Ian Levine at Blackpool Mecca, Russ Winstanley, Richard Searling and Kev Roberts at Wigan Casino. These clubs set the blueprint for the future of acid house with both ‘all-dayers’ and ‘all-nighters’ common across the north. It always blows my mind that Wigan Casino didn’t even open it’s doors until 12.30am and closed at 8am. Somewhere during the 1980s the UK went backwards and clubs closed at 2am, but the resident DJs didn’t stop spinning. In Manchester Colin Curtis crossed musical boundaries from northern soul into jazz funk and Greg Wilson began his pioneering mid week residency playing electro funk at Legend, both DJs went on to play early sessions at the nascent Haçienda alongside original resident DJ Hewan Clarke.

greg wilson managing to mix records with a cigarette at legend in manchester circa 1983. that extra hand must help though.

London town

Growing up in North London my own early experiences of house music came courtesy of Norman Jay’s pioneering High on Hope residency at Dingwalls in Camden. Just down the road the Camden Palace also hosted early dance music nights with DJ Jay Strongman playing funk, soul and rare groove. Jay was an early instigator on both the club and east end warehouse party scene. Also in Camden The Electric Ballroom was used for dance events with Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson the first DJ in London to champion the electro sound from New York. Around 16 years old I ventured into the west end to The Mud Club. It was their resident DJ Mark Moore, who really summed up the 1980s west end club scene with it’s flamboyant fashionable art school crowd. It was commonplace to see Boy George, Leigh Bowery, Haysi Fantayzee, and Phil Dirtbox on his dance-floor. Mark was a huge influence for me with his knack of making it all just fun. I still love the records I heard for the first time there like S’Express - Theme and Bomb the Bass - Megablast.

Other early adopters of house music - Noel and Maurice Watson started their massive Delirium parties as early as 1985 at The Astoria on Charing Cross road for 2,500 people. The Belfast born brothers had been playing at London’s first warehouse parties to a very fashionable crowd for years previously. Sadly, I never got to see Maurice spin as he was before my time and passed away back home in Belfast after years in New York. However Noel Watson was a big personal early influence, alongside Zaki D, both early guests for us at ‘Joy’, which was my first ever residency. They also worked behind the counter at Black Market records in Soho, alongside Ashley Beedle, which was the best store to buy house music records back then. I also started going south. I actually had some of my best experiences at Soul II Soul at The Fridge in Brixton and Dance Wicked at the Vauxhall Arches. The resident DJ, alongside Jazzie B and Nellee Hooper, was Trevor Madhatter, better known as Trevor Nelson. Unfortunately I never made it down to the infamous Clink Street parties, that took place just across London Bridge.

All the classic London acid house parties were driven by residents; Danny Rampling at Shoom, Paul Oakenfold & Nancy Noise at Spectrum, Nicky Holloway at Trip, Weatherall, Farley & Heller at Boy’s Own, Fabio & Grooverider at Rage, DJ Harvey at Tonka and later Phil Perry at Full Circle. Acid house transformed the west end by moving out of the intimate 500 capacity venues into huge venues ,where people could rave. Oakenfold brought Spectrum to the cavernous ‘Heaven’ and others followed suit with DJs Colin Favor, Evil Eddie Richards and Kid Batchelor playing house dubs at Asylum.

Who inspired these early acid house DJs? The resident DJs at Amnesia, Ibiza - Alfredo and Leo Mas, who they’d heard play while on holiday. Back in the day on the White Island you could also find Caesar De Melero at Ku, DJ Pippi at Pacha and José Padilla at Cafe del Mar, long before the next wave of British run clubs brought in their own resident DJs including Steve Lawler for We Love Space. Significantly, it was finally left to one of the first female resident DJs on the Island, Tania Vulcano, to create her long lasting and influential residency for Circoloco at DC10.

Warehouse music

DJ Martin at the baSsic studio, leeds 1989. Courtesy Christian wood

I arrived in Leeds in 1988 to go to University but learnt more at The Warehouse on Somers Street, where Nightmares on Wax and DJ Martin served up my education in mixing house with hip hop. The scene was so small and friendly at the time that I ended up meeting Martin in person. He invited me round to his studio in Chapeltown and played me LFO - LFO (Leeds Warehouse mix) a good year before it was released. I’d never heard anything like it. LFO defined the emerging sound of ‘bleep’ alongside other key records produced by DJ Martin at The Bassic Studio and played at The Warehouse including Ability II - Pressure Dub and Ital Rockers - Ital’s Theme. For the complete story of the ‘bleep sound’ I recommend checking out the recent book by Matt Annis - Join The Future. Alongside Leeds the bleep and bass sound emerged from Sheffield with it’s base at Warp Records and pushed by pioneering Jive Turkey resident DJs - Winston & Parrot. Yet it was Unique 3 from Bradford that can claim to be the originators of the bleep sound with with their influential record ‘The Theme’ released in 1988.

The book also rightly pays tribute to the resident DJs at the after hours clubs that started when the clubs shut notably - The Twilight Zone and Sunny’s. It was Drew Hemment (DJ Drew) at The Twilight Zone, who was a particular inspiration for me and I heard several mind blowing records for the first time there. Drew would play ‘bleep’ records such as Unique 3 - The Theme mixed with heavy Belgian new beat records like D-Shake - Techno Trance and Frank de Wulf’s forward thinking B-Sides collection.

The Warehouse opened it’s doors in 1979 and is widely recognised as being the first club outside London to open in the ‘New York style’ with a great sound system and mixing DJs. This was a good three years before the Hacienda opened in Manchester. Ian Dewhirst was resident through the club’s formative years in the 1980s and Marc Almond from Soft Cell worked behind the cloakroom. It was Dewhirst dropping the original Northern Soul hit ‘Tainted Love’ by Gloria Jones that led an excited Almond to rush up to the booth to ask after the record. Soft Cell went on to record their breakthrough number one cover version of ‘Tainted Love’, while in Leeds. They also paved the way for early acid house with ’Memorabilia’ in 1981, surely inspired by nights at The Warehouse. Another nice bit of trivia is that ‘Memorabilia’ was produced by Daniel Miller who went on to found Mute records, the home of Depeche Mode.

Just listen to this record. so ahead of it’s time.

Manchester vibes in the area

Over in Manchester it was Mike Pickering & Graeme Park’s partnership at the Haçienda that ignited the house music scene in 1988, although it had taken over five years of trying at the Haç to finally get the club full. A short while later, just down the road in Liverpool, Andy Carroll & John Kelly played to a totally bonkers crowd at Quadrant Park. Sasha became the first modern superstar DJ guesting at both venues, but it was his own residency at Shelley’s in Stoke that cemented his reign in the north and beyond. However, it was the lessor known Mancunian DJ Steve Williams that I personally enjoyed listening to the most. It’s no surprise that he used to play alongside Laurent Garnier during the Madchester period. Even more impressive, in many ways, was that Steve just quit the scene forever in 1991, once he wasn’t feeling it. The kids that were on the dancefloor at The Haçienda dancing to all these great residents went on to great things. I saw the Chemical Brothers perform live there when they were called The Dust Brothers. Of course we all know what happened to the band but their long running DJ residency at Heavenly Social has to be classed as one of the most musically influential residencies of all time, simply down to the impact it had on London and beyond - the sound of Big Beat reverberated the bass bins of the club. It was also a fertile breading ground for indie dance and the great crossover bands to come like LCD Soundsystem, Soulwax, Franz Ferdinand and Hot Chip. We couldn’t move on from Manchester before mentioning - The Electric Chair. If any club in Manchester was defined by it’s residents it has to Luke & Justin Unabomber at The Chair. The club, fairly, single handedly dictated that Manchester became the central hub for balearic beats in the world. Far more so than the balearic isles themselves.

The next generation of clubs in both London and Manchester finally produced some female residents with DJ Paulette at LGBT club Flesh nights at the hacienda and Smokin’ Jo at Trade. The 90s passed in a blur of hedonism as new clubs sprung up in every city, with the result that the music became more and more commercial. Despite their size Cream at Nation and The Ministry of Sound still held some excellent nights and carried on the tradition of strong resident DJs, re-instating Paul Oakenfold and DJ Harvey respectively.

A different space

In 1995 underground house music crept through the gaps at smaller capacity venues in London such as Plastic People and Bar Rhumba with resident DJs Luke Soloman & Kenny Hawkes playing twice a week between the venues. They hosted the next wave of Chicago house DJs at their regular mid week ‘Space’ nights notably; Derrick Carter, Mark Farina, Iz & Diz, Justin Long, Heather and Honey (well before she was Dijon). Also in the west end on Central Street, Layo & Bushwacka and Mr. C kick-started the harder edged tech-house scene at The End. The venue also hosted Erol Alkan’s genre busting, ground breaking residency - ‘Trash’. Around the same time in the mid 90s a new abrasive and frenetic sound emerged called drum n’ bass or jungle. Once again it was the familiar story of a crew of resident DJs, led by Goldie, kick starting a scene from their regular ‘Metalheadz’ nights.

luke soloman & Kenny hawkes. a different kind of space at bar rhumba. Not sure you’d get away with that poster these days?

Cosmic

Italian dance music was also built on the backs of resident DJs. It was Italy that first adopted New York style mixing DJs, long before the rest of Europe. The story goes that two mystery DJs from New York called Bob Day & Tom Sison arrived in the Adriatic coastal resort of Gabicce Montemare to become resident DJs at the infamous Baia Degli Angeli club. The club boasted multiple indoor floors and outdoor terraces that could hold up to 4000 people. The mystery Americans taught two local Italians Daniel Baldelli and DJ Mozart how to mix by replacing the hard plastic vinyl mats supplied with the turntables with prototype slipmats made from sticking card onto seven inch records. When Baia closed down due to excessive drug use the duo moved to the Lake Garda venue Cosmic, unwittingly starting the post disco movement of the same name. It was another Italian holiday resort, Rimini, that then produced many of the country’s most celebrated clubs including the recently closed Cocorico, where both Cirillo and DJ Ralf had huge impacts as resident DJs. Just along the coast in Riccione, Ricky Montanari played seamless house music at his Peter Pan residency. However, the Italian DJ that had the most direct effect on myself and back to basics was Claudio Coccoluto, who became a regular guest at basics, alongside his residencies at Angels of Love in Napoli and Goa in Rome. There also has to be a mention of Francesco Farfa who forged the path for techno in Italy from his residency at Tenax in Florence.

da funk

Elsewhere in Europe - The Rex Club in Paris always based itself around strong residents with Laurent Garnier’s pioneering ‘Wake Up’ parties and D’Julz long running ‘Bass Culture’ nights inspiring future generations of French DJs and producers. Dan Ghenacia and Dyed Soundorom also came out of Paris, before going on to become long standing residents at Circoloco in Ibiza. I first met Ivan Smagghe as a resident at Queen Club in 1995, which was an eye opening mixed night, right on the Champs-Élysées. He later brought his influential ‘Kill the DJ’ parties to Pulp with Jennifer Cardini and Chloé, two much loved Parisian resident DJs, who kick started the Parisian underground scene for LGBT electronic music parties, years before their modern equivalent.

laurent garnier - photo credit Olivier Degorce

In Amsterdam - one of my early inspirational experiences of house music was at the hands of Dimitri at the Roxy, while an even earlier Dutch house music instigator was DJ Per at Milkweg. Down the road in Belgium, a country that has long gone relatively unrecognised for it’s early contributions to electronic music, was the mighty Boccaccio club, where the late Eric Beysens aka DJ Eric B played new beat records to 5,000 people. The club had a huge effect on many DJs and producers including future Belgian stars 2ManyDJs and The Glimmers.

Wild Pitch

Of course Germany has always been incredibly important for electronic music, producing many of the most significant bands and DJs from as far back as the late 1960s. There have been many great clubs but the most enduring club of them all has to be Berghain, which has produced possibly the greatest techno resident DJ of all time - Marcel Dettmann, who has held court behind the decks since 2005. Upstairs in Panorama bar, although it’s often hard to pinpoint actual residents, I’ve witnessed great regular sessions over the years from; Prosumer, Cassy, Steffi and Virginia. I was invited to play there way back in the late 90s when it was a far more militant gay club called Ostgut. It was a real culture shock for me at the time. Also in Berlin I played at an amazing club called WMF, where I was shown around by a young resident DJ called Dixon.

However, my first ever experience of German clubbing was in Mannheim at the Wild Pitch Club, run by the Playhouse crew who would go on to found the Robert Johnson in Frankfurt. I have good memories of meeting the resident DJs Heiko & Ata alongside Roman Flügel and Jörn Wuttke (aka Alter Ego) at the Wild Pitch. We struct up a friendship which resulted in swapping tracks and remixes between 20/20 Vision and Playhouse, including Random Factor - ‘Broken Mirror’ and Blaze - ‘Lovelee Dae’. It was really sad for me to find out while writing this piece that Heiko passed away in 2017. He left a really interesting five part mix as a testament to his own inspiration - the Dorian Gray club, that lasted unbelievably from 1978 - 2000, right inside Frankfurt airport.

Of course you can’t mention Frankfurt without Sven Väth, whose legendary residency at OMEN gave birth to European techno and later Cocoon. Here is some crazy footage taken after the last ever OMEN party with Sven continuing the chaos onto the street…

Subculture

Great clubs have always had resident DJs at their heart. Residents have been the backbone of a successful club since the very beginnings of dance music. Yet none have lasted longer than Harri & Domenic at The Sub Club in Glasgow. We may have had a long run at back to basics but surely the undisputed longest serving residents must be the dynamic duo from Subculture? It is even more impressive given that the club has always taken place in the same venue on Jamaica Street (except for a brief spell when the building was closed due to fire damage in 1999). The Sub Club opened on April 1st 1987 and there is good case for DJ Harri to be the longest running resident of all time, as he played on many of the pre-incarnations of Subculture, including the Slam nights that preceded it. That would be doing their long running partnership a disservice though as they have a clear unbroken lineage together as joint residents since 1994. Although back to basics started in 1991 we moved venues several times and also had some periods with no venue at all. By 2011, after leaving the Stinky’s Peephouse venue, basics ceased being weekly. We were not alone as across Britain nightclubs were experiencing a decline and there were hardly any able to afford the luxury of hosting the same party every week.

fabric

In London, fabric alone proved to be an exception to the trend as a long running weekly club, that success was largely down to their ever consistent resident DJs Craig Richards and Terry Francis. These guys just kept their heads down for years and years, playing their records and plying their trade without a fuss - late nights, long sets, every week. It’s worth noting that resident DJs often do so much more than just holding down the fort with their record selection. They can be found behind nearly every good promoter, helping out with bookings and musical direction. Craig Richards has been instrumental, alongside legendary booker ‘Lady’ Judy Griffith, in shaping the musical direction of fabric over the years. Advice on artists and spotting emerging talent is an obvious jump to make for residents, as it’s an easily adapted skill from finding new records. It’s Djs that are the first people aware of a hot new record and they love finding out whose behind that record. They will always find new talent long before it reaches the surface and hits a promoter’s radar. The primary concern of a promoter is to sell tickets. To sell tickets people need to have heard of the line up. It can take a long time before an artist is big enough to sell tickets but when you have a regular night, such as fabric or The Sub Club or back to basics, you can rely on people turning up every week. At basics we didn’t even need to worry about ticket sales for over a decade because the club was always full, so we could book the most obscure artists that no one had heard, before entering the club. We could break talent in the same way we broke records. It’s no surprise that when turning his hand to curation Craig Richards came up with Houghton Festival - a logical progression from all the years spent behind the scenes as a resident DJ at fabric.

Homegrown

james holroyd. long serving back to basics resident

back to basics has also produced a steady stream of resident DJs. James Holroyd has been a consistent player since the early days, while holding down his night job as tour DJ for The Chemical Brothers and making some highly sought after balearic beats. Huggy’s reign as Lord Hoth in the Pleasure Rooms basement is fondly remembered as a pioneering forage into pure techno; playing a selection of Underground Resistance, Drexciya and Derrick May records. Tristan Da Cunha, aka Freakenstein aka Dungeon Meat, has been a resident at the club for over 20 years, always lifting the party with sublime DJ skills and expert level crate digging. Paul Woolford, aka Special Request, was at the club for nearly a decade and went on to become an award winning, internationally renowned producer in his own right. Denney started life at the club behind the scenes before getting on the decks himself as an energetic DJ. He has since followed Woolford onto the international circuit. Burnski, came from the same music college as Denney, in Middlesborough, passing on his early demo tapes through his friend while just 18 years old. He went on to become a solid resident and one of the most talented UK producers of recent years. Buckley was another long serving resident, joining the dots between Leeds and Manchester, following his residency at the Haçienda. The club finally managed to secure it’s first female resident, to date, taking on Laura Jones in 2011. Laura brought a welcome update to the basics sound with her sophisticated take on techno including a wealth of original productions on Visionquest, Crosstown Rebels and Leftroom. Frenchy has had a big impact on the basics story, especially during his time at Waxwerks, remaining one of the best kept secrets from the city. And still there’s more with James Barnsley, Ryan Shaw, Simon Mu and Lee Wright all playing in their own styles over many appearances for the club.

Resident DJs

I started writing this piece looking back over my own residency at back to basics, but the more I got into it the more I realised I was just a small part of a bigger story. The deeper I delved into the history of the resident DJ the more it struck me that we are in danger of extinction. The current economics of dance music are run to scale with huge one-off events. Big venues and big festivals need headliners who can sell tickets in their thousands. In return, the headline artists command huge fees. Even support slots are allocated on the basis of the artist’s ticket selling ability or ‘pulling power’. Smaller venues are also dictated by people coming through the doors, so they too are currently relying on one off events with guest DJs. There is currently little room left for resident DJs at either big one off events or their natural habitat of the smaller club.

There has been recent discussion (in RA and Mixmag) about the current economic climate for dance music being unsustainable; both for small promoters and emerging artists. But there hasn’t been a conversation on the effect for resident DJs. It’s time to add residents back into the mix and realise their value. No one understands a club better than a resident DJ and no guest will ever care as much about the club. Residents bring consistency and reliability, alongside their spinning skills, that people come to trust on a regular basis. At a point, in the not so distant future, resident DJs will once again make economic sense. As artist fees spiral outside the affordable budgets of clubs and air travel is demonised for it’s environmental impact, promoters will need to revert back to the model that served them so well for so long - regular nights with resident DJs, with a focus on the music rather than the names.

Clubs have traditionally been so much more than just an event. They are places for like-minded people to meet and share their creativity. Clubs have inspired people to make music, create art, design clothes and find love. Clubs are a hub for the community and in these troubling and stressful times people need communities more than ever. House music began in gay clubs and now LGBT communities from London to Leeds and Berlin to Barcelona are reclaiming clubs as safe spaces. It’s no co-incidence that this trend has now reached mass proportions as the recent success of Homobloc in Manchester attests. Also in Manchester, longterm residents DJs Krysko and Greg Lord have shown that even big one off events like The Warehouse Project can benefit from resident DJs. It may often mean playing the least attractive set times but having a DJ that understands how to warm up or close a venue gives huge value to the event.

Resident DJs have paved the way for today’s global dance music industry over several decades. They have been at the cornerstone of every major music movement since the 1960s and I’ve only just scratched the surface. The more you look the more you will find in every city across the world. Of course guest DJs play a vital role and it’s been a privilege to play alongside many of the very best but I do hope that we manage to achieve a much needed balance in club culture. It’s no co-incidence that many of the current big international guests all cut their teeth as residents and speak vocally about how important that learning process was for them as DJs; The Black Madonna at Smart Bar, Seth Troxler at DC10, Peggy Gou at Clack, Denis Sulta at Fly and on and on.

Parties with a purpose

The turbulent times experienced around the world since 2016 are also producing DJs that are prepared to stand up and become involved in the political process. After years as a resident DJ behind NYC Downlow and Block 9 Glastonbury, Gideön has tirelessly organised free protest events against Brexit over a three year period, attended by thousands of people as part of mass rallies. Dance music has once again found it’s political edge, which has been largely missing since the late 1980s.

An ending

My last gig at the club but the show must go on. photo credit elspeth moore — My last gig at the club but the show must go on.
photo credit elspeth moore

As I watched Carl Cox tear the roof off the last back to basics at Church - I realised I had come full circle. That circle of the line has taken a mighty long time to get round, and been one hell of a ride, but in that instance I knew that I didn’t have either the time or the energy to take another trip around. All that’s left is to say is -

Thank You…

basic vision

I started the basic vision blog to document the life and times of back to basics in words and sounds and there is still more work to be done, especially in cataloging the records. At some point I also need to add the Church story. There is a series of basic to basics mixes which is a good place to listen to the changing sounds of the club over the years, if you’re interested. There is also a four part vinyl compilation series called ‘back to basics - rare classics’ which includes some sought after tracks from the club.

And finally, here’s my last set from back to basics...

Ralph Lawson

Ralph Lawson

Blog

Ralph Lawson

Resident DJ

Clear

back to basics

daft punk are playing at my house

America

Legends

London town

Warehouse music

Manchester vibes in the area

A different space

Cosmic

da funk

Wild Pitch

Subculture

fabric

Homegrown

Resident DJs

Parties with a purpose

An ending

Thank You…

basic vision

Dedicated to resident DJs all over the world.

Reading List

Ralph Lawson

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