The first mix of the New Year comes Courtesy of Family Tree and Bombard Groove in the first of their two part mix series they’re putting together for AMF.
You can catch AMF’s interview with Family Tree below. An chat with Bombard Groove will be coming in the second part of the series.
Hey Spencer, thanks for putting together this mix with Bombard Groove. It’s a real lovely mix perfect for listening to on winter days. It also sums up the Family Tree sound really well. Could you give us a run down of how Family Tree got started. Where and why did you start putting on events?
Hey All My Friends! Thanks for asking us to get involved! So Family Tree consists of myself (Spencer) and Hiren, we both did the same course at uni and bonded over a lot of music in first year. We both learnt to DJ together in our second year, and after lots of bedroom sessions got real lucky and managed to get regular nights at Antwerp where we held Futurebeats. This was such an amazing place for us to start, since we played back to back from 10-3 every event, we got to really experiment with a lot of different music, had the freedom to curate a night that we wanted and managed to grow together as DJs.
You’ve put on events with massive names such as Detroit Swindle, Maurice Fulton & Hidden Spheres. Has there been a particular event out of them which holds a special place in your heart. One that really teared the roof off.
All our guests have been incredible, but I think we had the most fun at our Tom Blip/Hubie Davison night. Those guys were an absolute joy to be with, and the atmosphere that night was amazing; everybody was super friendly and having a good time, and the DJs were jumping around a huge variety of genres playing some amazing music.
You work a lot with Off Beat and, as we’ve already mentioned, you’ve done this mix with Bombard Groove. How essential do you feel collaboration is when trying to run an event in Manchester?
I don’t know if it’s essential per se, but it’s something we really enjoy doing. There are so many talented people putting on events in Manchester, and putting these events on with your friends who can also bring so much to the table is a lot of fun. Something we really love in regard to other promoters in Manchester is that things rarely feel like a competition, we’ve gotten lots of help over the past couple of years and people are always eager to collaborate and put on parties together.
If there’s any readers reading this who are looking to start their own parties, events etc. What advice would you give them?
I guess some advice would be to just throw events that you would want to go too, and to play music that you would want to listen too; find something that you enjoy, that you think is unique to you and go down that route.
Tell us abit about the mix. How did you select the tracks, are these songs you’ve got on repeat at the moment or did you do a bit of digging and pull out some tried and tested gems for the episode.
This mix is a bit of an experiment really, me and Finn from Bombard Groove are in the early stages of planning some future events, and this mix was sort of us throwing out some ideas to see what we liked. Most of these tracks are tracks we just wanted to show each other, or recent finds that we’re loving at the moment.
Are there any standout tracks for you in the mix that you wouldn’t mind sharing with us?
We played 2 songs each, me starting off, and I absolutely love the first two tracks I played. Particularly No Limit by Jean Terrell, I adore soul music with a bit of a dancey edge so this song fits that perfectly. I also really dug a song Finn played – Nisyan by Ahmed Fakroun. I hadn’t heard this one before but since recording the mix it’s been on repeat nonstop.
Finally, what’s next for Family Tree have you got any plans in the new Year you could tell us about?
We have a couple of things in the works for the new year. Like I mentioned before we are planning some things with Finn from Bombard Groove, along with having more plans with the Off Beat guys. We have our eye on a few bookings we’d like to get sorted too, so we will have to see how the new year pans out, but we have plenty in the works!
For similar sounds check of regular family tree collaborators, Off Beat.
