The blogs pushing double figures. Carrying the shows over the threshold and into the teens is Cult founder Josh De Silva. Known for his eclectic sets and prolific radio presence around Manchester Josh has constructed a pulsating, powerhouse of a mix for episode 10. AMF caught up with him at Cottonopolis to chat about Manchester’s creative scene, longevity in dance music and always making sure you put one garage track in your mix.
Cult has recently turned three. What has that journey looked like? And what would you ascribe your success to?
So first of all Cult started off with me and Jeremy, one of the other Cult members, met through DJ’ing at another night. We did that for a while and we thought why don’t we do this ourselves. We both wanted to play more and we thought we could do a better job.
We started of doing events at Koh Tao as a lot of people do when they’re finding their feet. And at first it was just getting a lot of our mates together and residents. We eventually started booking DJ’s and i think our bookings have progressed a lot and our music tastes have changed a lot since we started.
We’ve learned a lot from them first parties and I feel our events have just got better and better. Financially we’ve had some ups and downs as any event does. But from September we’re going to move to Soup Kitchen and do a monthly event there on a Thursday. Basically we got tired of doing the bigger shows, our third birthday was the biggest one we’ve ever done. It was great but it was a lot of stress, a lot of work and a lot of money.
So we wanna take a step to more regular nights and keep it a bit more simple. Soup Kitchen is probably our favourite venue so we’re really excited to get in there and make a success of it.
Also me and Kitty (Resident at B.L.O.O.M) are planning on doing a similar thing in London. And maybe alternate cities on a monthly basis. Do an event in London then the next month come back up to Manchester. So yeah we’ll see how it goes.
But yeah the plan is to keep it consistent, scale it back a bit and i think that’ll give us room to do some more exciting booking which we’re more into at the moment.
During your three year run has there been one stand out party or booking that’s made you really excited. Something that you’ll look back on and say yeah that was sick.
There’s been a lot of them that have been great but the one that stands out for me is the event we did with Ossia we booked BjØrn Torske and Telephones at Soup Kitchen and it was busy but didn’t sell out. It was a really nice crowd and really nice vibe.
Both artists got in really early in the morning we spent all day with them. Bjorn came for a fry up at my student flat, he was a really lovely guy. We hung out with them, went record shopping. They were both the nicest blokes ever. They played back to back all night and it was one of the best sets I’ve ever seen. Then again the next day they left really late, so we all chilled out a bit more.
Meeting guys like that who are so into music and are so intelligent and knowledgeable about it, yet they’re so laid back and the easiest people to talk to. That was definitely a ‘this is why i do it’ moment.
If there’s any readers reading this who are looking to start their own parties, events etc. What advice would you give them?
One big thing I’d say, especially in Manchester, the community of creators is so tight-knit and everyone is so friendly that you can just ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask, if you don’t know something or you’re nervous about something just ask. People will happily give you advice and help out.
Certainly in the last year or so, we’ve got a lot closer to other promoters, some of them are my best friends now. Get involved, obviously the nature of the beast means there is competition, but, everyone kind of does their best to make sure things don’t clash and help each other out. So yeah, work with other events and get involved with the Manchester dance community.
Is longevity in dance music something you worry about? I believe that yourself and Cult have built formidable brands that thrive because you aren’t reliant on big names to pull in punters.
But if we look around Manchester to draw some comparisons. High Hoops for example, have also just turned three and they’ve put out a Go-fund me page and are speaking about longevity at AVA festival. Do you think longevity is an industry wide problem or do you have to take it on a case by case basis.
I think it definitely is a massive problem. For us funding has always been an issue. A lot of our shows have lost money. I don’t know its probably one in three or four that actually turn a profit for us anyway and I think it’s the same for a lot of people. It’s hard to get that balance right but what’s helped us is the fact we do so much around the events. We have three radio shows on Limbo, Reform & MCR Live we play at a lot of other people’s parties too.
We try and keep ourselves as busy as possible and i think that gets us to a point where we’re not just throwing parties but they’re playing music because they’re passionate about it. That always comes across well. We’ve got a Facebook group called ‘The Cult’ we set up as kind of a platform for people to share music and questions.
We’ve made so many friends from that who now just come to our parties so we have branched out and i think that’s very important.
There’s a massive difference as well between a business and then promoting a night. A lot of people see it as a business but then also a lot of people do it solely because they enjoy doing it. They have that passion for it and i think if you go to a night where the promoters are just doing it to make money. You can tell straight away. It makes a big difference if you’re truly in it for the right reasons.
Moving on to your mix. How did you approach the hour? Was there a theme behind the selection or was it more the case of rocking up to the turntables and seeing what happened?
Usually the way i do mixes or sets when i’m playing out is i’ll prep a playlist or folder and I’ll just whack maybe 200 songs on it that I think are i might play. And then when it comes to it maybe have an opening track, or opening couple of tracks which sort of man out the direction i want to go in. But i won’t meticulously plan out a set.
I generally play a lot of stuff, i play a lot of bar gigs so i’ve got a good selection of funk and disco. And the sets I play when I play out aren’t normally peak times because at our parties we warm up for the headline act.
The mix is pretty slow for me I usually play things which are a bit faster. I was in the mood for a few slow chuggy tracks. It was, for me anyway, a very housy mix and I always like to throw in a bit of garage somewhere.
Coming up in near future are the monthly nights at Soup Kitchen I mentioned and we’re looking at doing some more Mayday parties next year. So keep’em peeled.
Check out episode 8 if you want some more heavy duty vibes. Plastic Fruit were at the helm and put down 2 hours of mind bending tunes.
