All Hands On Deck are on the platters that matter this episode. Sophie, Rosa, Anna & Ash went b2b2b2b on this mix bringing in sounds from across the musical spectrum. Catch AMF‘s interview with the team below.
Great to have All Hands on Deck on the blog. I’d like to start this interview a bit differently from my others. Your collective is the first all-female & non-binary outfit I’ve had guests on the show in its year run.
If we take this blog as a microcosm for the wider dance community what have I failed to do as a promoter, deliberate or otherwise, to ensure women get equal representation when people are considering bookings and how can promoters fix this?
Just book womxn and non-binary people. It sounds very simple because it is – there are lots of great womxn/nb DJs out there. In Manchester alone, we’ve got Afrodeutsche, Anz, Clemency, Sofie K, Hesska, LOFT… to name only a few. It’s not difficult to find talented womxn because we’re surrounded by them. We think promoters are just very complacent and more willing to book the same boring white guys that have been playing at every single festival for the past 5 years rather than newer womxn DJs that bring really interesting sounds to the foreground.
Ciel, one of our favourite DJs/producers at the moment, recently tweeted that promoters should be willing to take risks so that they can create platforms for emerging artists. The same could be applied to DJs from underrepresented groups. How can we expect the music scene to be diverse when opportunities aren’t given to those who deserve it? Equal representation can only be achieved when equal opportunities are given and that’s something we really try by building our collective, having open deck parties and organising DJ workshops.
How should individuals tackle this bias when we see it happening in events around the country?
Individuals could call promoters out but we’re unsure whether this would bring about actual change. TRSMT Festival in Glasgow got lots of criticism for hardly having any womxn on their line up, let alone as headliners. They came up with a piss poor excuse saying that not having womxn as headliners is about developing them to become headliners. Are you really trying to tell us that there aren’t any womxn that are headline-worthy? Bullshit. Primavera Sound in Barcelona recently came out with a line-up that had a brilliant gender split and this is what big promoters should be aiming for.
When you look at discussions about how to make scenes more representative of non-male artists, there will always be someone who says that this discussion is too political; that it’s about the music. How then is it that a scene can skew so heavily towards men for years and nobody is bothered about that and that’s not political, but when others on the gender spectrum are mentioned, it suddenly becomes divisive? We want to be able to have constructive talks about progress in this area, to help people realise what the reasons behind needing change actually are.
I think from our perspective, the best way to tackle this bias would be to create your own space and give opportunities within it. Not all of the work should fall to us and we need help from male DJs and promoters who can see there’s an area to be improved. At the same time, we clearly can’t rely on men to provide diverse spaces or else we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now. This is why we decided to create All Hands On Deck – we wanted to build an environment in which we can support womxn and non-binary people who would like to give DJing a go.
Other club nights all across the country, like OH141 in Glasgow, Equaliser in Leeds and Pxssy Palace in London, also show how spaces can become more representative when womxn, non-binary people and QPOC set the narrative. We think that this would tackle the bias because those who are underrepresented would be placed at the forefront instead of being an afterthought.
You’re close collaborators with Partisan Collective and have thrown many parties there. What is it about the space and their approach to clubbing that you really like?
The thing that’s so great about Partisan Collective is that everyone behind it really strives to create a great community space. Helping a space like that develop naturally leads to you bumping into brilliant people – you all have similar objectives. We all met by being active members as well, which meant that we had the chance to have a say about the type of events we would like to see at Partisan. You could say that All Hands On Deck taking place there happened naturally, to be honest. We’re involved and we wanted to see more diverse events so we just decided to bring it there!
You can really notice that Partisan is collectively run when you go there. This is because the people who work at the bar, and run the events aren’t just there because it’s their job, or they are trying to make money out of music as promoters or something… It’s because most of the people running the club nights are all volunteers; they are the people invested in making the space a success. Whether that’s for the reason of ensuring the space itself can continue to be viable and allow provide free/ reduced meeting space for social justice organisations during the week, or even just that they want to support a sick and diverse DIY arts scene within their city. We share both of these motives.
The space itself and the crowd also make a big difference. People are always friendly and the space is accommodating to your needs. There’s always enough space to dance which really gives people to express themselves on the dancefloor. The Microdosing events that happen upstairs during club nights allows you to relax whenever you need to as well, which is so important! We really love that these things are possible and you could say that’s what draws us back to Partisan every time we run an event.
You’re collective is quite large now and you’ve passed over the mixing duties for this show to several of your members. Can you tell us a bit about who put the show together and found All Hands On Deck?
The mix was recorded by residents Sophie, Rosa, Anna and one of our ace collective members, Ash. This is Ash’s first full length mix so we’re honoured to have been part of that.
Backtracking slightly can you give us a rundown of how All Hand On Deck formed? Who are you’re founding members and what spurred you into forming the collective?
Our founding members are Rosa, Anna, Tracy and Sophie. It all kicked off when Sophie, Anna and Tracy were asked to play at a fundraiser for Rojava at the Old Abbey Taphouse. We had so much fun playing there and the vibe was amazing. The crowd were really respondent to the tracks we were playing which made us feel dead supported.
Anna mentioned before the event that she’d like to see an open deck party in Manchester because she’d heard about one in Bristol called Mix Nights. A combination of drinks and playing really fun set at Old Abbey led to us deciding to run one as well. Tracy came up with the name a bit later on when we were at Partisan. Rosa joined us a few weeks later on when Anna told her about All Hands On Deck on the bus to Freerotation. Once she joined, planning for our first club night was set in motion.
As mentioned before, we all knew each other from Partisan beforehand but All Hands On Deck really brought us closer together. We were all relative beginners when we started AHOD and we were really supportive of each other’s development. We wanted spread this supportive energy with other womxn who might’ve been in the same boat as us, which is why we decided to create a collective as well. It’s been growing loads ever since our first party and you can really see people’s confidence growing and new friendship being made. It’s so lovely to know that we’ve played a role in that.
Moving on to your mix can you tell a bit about its composition, are these track that really represent the All Hands on Deck ethos? Are these similar track you play when you’re in a club or have you picked out some lesser played gems for the mix?
With regards to the mix, we recorded this on the Friday night after our first beginner DJ workshop in January. Sophie, Anna and Rosa were all free to do it, but as Tracy sadly couldn’t make it we thought we’d put an open call out to our (now even bigger) DJ collective, to see if anyone wanted to come along to record something with us.
Ash, who had just joined the collective from coming to that workshop was up for it so we told her to come along the next day and bring some tunes, as we thought it would be a great opportunity to practice.
What you’re hearing here is a learning process and also how we practise. It’s not flawless; you can hear us feeling each other out. B2bing is a skill in itself, and B2b2b2bing is a next level, truly collaborative exercise that you don’t hear that often at all – possibly actually because of that collaborative element and the juggling that it requires – but that we end up doing a lot as a collective. This is a bit different to a lot of mixes in that sense and that’s the element that really does capture our ethos.
In regards to the tracks that feature, we think this represents us in lots of ways, as to be honest we are all into loads of different types of music individually. It means that together the net of what we could end up playing gets cast pretty wide!
In here we go from a gentle opener, to some older more industrial kind of tracks, then some wonky bits, UKG, grime, and house. The start is a little slow but we get there! Keep with us.
Finally, what’s coming up for All Hands On Deck in the near future? Are there any events or parties you can share with us?
We have soooo much stuff going on – individually and as a collective! We’re doing a sick party with Limbo Radio for International Women’s Day on 9th March. There will be panel discussion, open decks and DJ sets from AHOD residents and Limbo Radio resident. And curry!!! It’s honestly gonna be a good one so come along!
We also have a couple of residencies across the city. We’re at Common every first Thursday of the month and the Deaf Institute every third Thursday of the month.
On top of that, we’ve got a couple of radio shows lined up. We’re gonna be on Limbo on 18th March so you can bop your heads from your couches. Residents Tracy and Anna will be warming up our International Women’s Day celebration on 2nd March on MCR Live. We’re booked and BUSY!
