Ahead of secretsundaze’s New Year’s Eve Party, their resident DJ attempts to recall his favourite parties and shares a live mix.
If you’ve ever seen Giles and James command a dancefloor it’s a sight to behold, t-shirts off, arms in the hair, surrounded by a rapturous crowd, the secretsundaze boys certainly know how to bring the party. We’ve been treated to wild times on rooftops in London, beaches in Croatia and can safely say you can leave yourself in secretsundaze’s hands for a New Year’s Eve night to remember.
This year’s party will take over the Bussey Building in Peckham with two-rooms of great music and we are particularly excited about headliner DJ Dez Andrés whose set will be sure to blow the roof off. Expect house, hip hop, funk and soul but with Martyn and Trevino and Chicago based Amir Alexander recently added to the bill, there won’t be a dull moment.
We caught up with Giles and asked him to recall his favourite New Year’s Eve as well as share his tips for new music talent for 2013. Giles has also made us a mix to warm your cockles and burn off some of those sprouts before you see the New Year in. Look right, hit play and read on…
Can you recall your greatest New Year’s Eve? As clichéd as it sounds it is a bit of a blur! I hope people appreciate my honesty and say that it wasn’t at a secretsundaze party as, as much as I love throwing parties and see them go off, you never quite switch off yourself when running your own party and want to make sure everyone else is having a good time. So to answer the question, I do have a super ecstasy induced blurry vision of a memory of a very early Basement Jaxx party in the late 90′s in Brixton in a pub way before they exploded and crossed over and being with a small bunch of my very closest friends and having the time of my life. Having said that, I would’t be anywhere else than secretsundaze this new years eve if I happened to find myself in rainy cold London and not on some sun drenched beach in South America.
Do you prefer summer festivals or winter raving? Well for me it’s summer daytime time parties as opposed to festivals which is still the core of what we do at secretsundaze. I enjoy festivals, they are fun and social but they can be quite transient in terms of people connecting with the music and lack the intensity and intimate vibe of a single dance floor where it’s focused on one artist with like-minded people that have chosen to come to that party over any other. Of course I love going to dark night nightclubs or warehouses in the winter too which is fortunate as it’s where I find myself playing records most weekends.
How do you see the secretsundaze brand moving forward and what do you have planned for 2013? Musically it’s constantly in a state of flux and that’s a good thing. Although we have a core sound that people might associate with US house and techno from Detroit or Chicago we’re far from died in the wool deep house / techno heads and are inspired by so many artists. We have welcomed diverse artists to secretsundaze from Shed to Ben UFO to San Proper to Andres who is of course one of our guests for NYE who regularly drops hip hop and funk, soul rare groove and disco along with house. I just feel that we have very high quality control and integrity and don’t follow every fad, fashion or hype like many promoters which I feel is one of the reasons for our long term success. So in some ways just to keep on doing what we have always done. There are of course plans…. we are developing our Go Bang! concept which has a more diverse palette of sounds from the electronic sphere; we are ramping up and pushing the 12′ label with many releases lined up for 2012 with the next few months seeing releases from BLM and YouandEwan to name a few land last but not least building our booking agency The Secret Agency which now has a team looking after 35 artist from across the globe with artists as diverse as Chez Damier, Delano Smith, Flako, DJRum, October, YouandEwan, Wbeeza, Citizen and another guest appearing on NYE, Amir Alexander from Chicago.
How do you keep yourself inspired musically and you have you discovered any exciting new artists recently? I don’t have to do much to keep myself inspired when’s there’s such amazing new music being released every week. You need to scratch beneath the surface to find new exciting stuff i.e not looking Beatport Top 20 or RA monthly Top 50. That won’t get you very far. Go to a record store, spend some time surfing on youtube, sound cloud. Its all there. I can genuinely say that every time I’m record shopping in the great stores like Phonica in London, Hardwax or Spacehall in Berlin or Disc Union or Technique in Tokyo i feel like a little kid in a sweet shop. This is a constant source of inspiration.
I’m probably biased but for me we have some of the best young guns on the planet with John Heckle, Antony Naples, October, Brawther, YouandEwan all very individual, unique music with great integrity and character. Outside of the agency, A Sagitattariun is definitely one of my artists of the year and has killing it with his releases on Elastic Dreams particularly the 4th release. Although not new artists i love what Joey Anderson, Aybee, Shed, Trevino, Andres and some of the Dutch guys like Dexter and Alden Tyrell have been doing over the last 12 months.
soundcloud.com/gilessmith
soundcloud.com/two-armadillos
soundcloud.com/secretsundaze
www.secretsundaze.net/
Text: Laura Hinson
Images: Top courtesy of Anamalous Visuals. Bottom courtesy of secretsundaze.
