Episode 35 is channeling some seriously summery sounds thanks to Surco mainstay Scott Forrest.
Catch AMF‘s interview with the Surco team below 🙂
Hey Surco Events, thanks for coming on the blog. Let’s start the interview with a bit of background. Can you tell me about your formation? How did you guys come together and what made you decide to start throwing parties?
The whole Surco brand came about very organically, a few mates who grew up together just wanting to throw a serious party for a solid circle of friends. Studying Events Management at MMU with 95% of our class being party lovers, gave us the platform to roll out our ideas and hit the ground running. We’ve expanded a little since then and changed formation a touch, however we remain a tight-knitted bunch which makes it a pleasure to work alongside.
Can you cite any other collective, club nights or DJ’s that you take a lot of inspiration from?
Well we try to bring our own vision and creations to our parties, the inspiration comes from around the world from places we’ve seen or visited, which I think reflects the designs we build. However we always admire the work from our local friends at You & Me, they’ve really been raising the bar in Manchester at the minute.
You were down at Parklife this year playing on the Beach Club stage. That must have been fun. What’s Parklife like from a DJ’s perspective?
I think being a Manchester born and bred collective WHP & Parklife are at the top of the food chain in our city, so to be recognised and invited to play was a massive opportunity and pleasure. Being able to attend Parklife as an artist and go behind the scenes was a great experience.
You’ve got A Guy Called Gerald coming up in August, that’s a really exciting booking. How did that party come about?
We’ve been carefully trying to grow the brand at a steady rate, so we’re constantly thinking of bigger artists, bigger concepts and better venues. With Gerald, we’ve worked with him on a project outside of the club so the relationship was already there.
Gerald’s agent was looking for promoters in Manchester to help host his 30 years of independence party. We jumped at the chance and felt it only right that we host him in Manchester’s original underground venue, a place he’s blown the roof off countless times before and we’re looking forward to him doing it again.
Moving on to your mix, how did you approach the set. Did you come at it with a theme or idea or did you just rock up to your turntables and throw it down from there?
I guess there was an idea already there. I wanted there to be some progression and never like sticking to one genre’s whatever the occasion. The mix starts off with some melodic sounds before moving onto some more up-beat disco, afrobeat and garage tracks.
Are there any standout tracks in the mix you wouldn’t mind sharing with our readers?
Well I had originally kicked off the mix with a Ross from friends track called Bootman, Super chilled but I wasn’t happy with the Lo-Fi style its been made with so the mix actually starts 3 minutes early. You’ll just here the vocals at the start. It’s worth checking out the full track though. First tracks Jon Gurd – After it all. I heard this being played in Vinyl Exchange and had to know what it was. The closing track is something I’m hooked on at the minute, Kornel Kovacs – Purple Skies.
Lastly, do you have any events coming up in the near future you can tell us about?
So besides A Guy Called Gerald’s 4 hour live set at South, we have 2 summer parties. We’ve just released our first one in a location that’s never been used before. Our second one’s at the newly opened space at Hatch. A couple weeks later see’s our 4th Birthday touchdown in our biggest venue to date – We have a huge build for this so we’re buzzing to get crafting.
Moving out of summer, we’ve come across a pretty secret space that we’re toying with doing a 2 day / 2 part party!
Want more tunes like this? Check out Liam Oiver’s Autumn mix.
