Nite School has put together episode 6. The four-man collective comprising of Callum, Chris, David & Richie formed last year. They’re already making waves in the Manchester club scene with four well-crafted mixes under their belts and their second club night happening next week (4th May)
Callum was on mixing duties for this episode and has put together a stomper of a house mix. Drawing on both old-school influences and more current house tunes. He’s condensed the Nite School sound into an hour for your listening pleasure.
All My Friends caught up with the team last week to chat about dance music. They debated whether ‘Our house really is your house’ and spoke at length about birthday parties, branding, and Boomslang snakes.
‘Nite School’ is a collection of 4 friends, how did you guys get together? And when did you start putting on parties?
Richie: I think it’s been a thought since we all finished university, all of us have said we really want to do a night but getting us all together at the same time was a bit difficult. We were all over the place doing other things. We just wanted to get ourselves to the point where we were comfortable in what we were doing so we have this free time where we could build a great club night.
Chris: Me and Rich did a night a long time ago at university and I think it’s cool to come back now and we know what we’re doing a bit more, we can put the resources into it. It was very student-esque. You know you put on nights cos you wanted to play music but we didn’t know too much about the industry and how things work.
Callum: And we weren’t very coherent as a group of people. There was a couple of guys playing jungle and garage, and we were playing house and it was kind of a mash-up of genres and I don’t think we really sat down and decided what type of direction we wanted to take that night in. This night I think we’re all very likeminded in what we want to do, I think we all have a common love for Disco and House type stuff.
David: I wanna say it kind of had its genesis when we did a birthday party in August for Cal and all four of us Dj’ed at that night. We all came away from that night thinking we should do an event. We got the downstairs of the Whiskey Jar so it kind of felt like a club night already but it was a private party and we felt we should open this up to other people who are outside of our friendship group.
Each of us looked back on that night and felt the mixing was really tight, it was a really good night and everyone had a good time. The feedback we got back from our friends is that we need to do that more often. So we said yeah let’s do it and that’s where Nite School was born.
Where did the name come from ‘Nite School’? It certainly makes an impression. Was the name a collective decision?
Richie: Dave was the guy who came up with the name of the night. We all knew that the branding would be important so we spent about three days brainstorming ideas.
Chris: But the name came instantly. It wasn’t like past projects where we just searching the dictionary for random words. We once thought up ‘Rafeekee’ (A lot a laughter) and there was another name we came up with which meant some sort of snake or something, oh boomslang! Believe it or not, there’s already a night called boomslang. Sounds like a very dub-steppy night though. But with Nite School, we all instantly liked the name.
David: We wanted the name to be catchy, punchy and memorable and I just threw out Nite School. We liked it because it suggested a musical education but without being pompous. And it sounds quite old school as well. I’m an avid vinyl collector so we rummaged through my record collection looking for some inspiration for the logo. It’s (the logo) an amalgamation of different vinyl sleeves that I pulled out. I was pulling out sleeve after sleeve saying I like this idea and that idea and we all worked together to flesh out the design.
Chris: That process was very seamless as well. I think we just all work well and gel well together when we get together and sort of brainstorm I guess. We’re pretty efficient.
David: The decision making is always a collective process. There isn’t one person who leads the group and generally when someone puts something forward I think 95% of the time we’re all in agreement. And that other 5% it’s just small tweaks. We’re all on the same page.
Richie: It’s very democratic the way we decide things and the way that we arrange our nights. Putting together the mix for ‘All My Friends’ we put it to the floor and asked who really wants to do it, and Cal stepped up and said he would do that.
Callum: We tend to cycle our sets on our residents nights. We change up who’s playing when and it pushes each of us out of our comfort zone a little bit. I really like disco and old school house and playing at the end of the night I still wanna draw from those influences but I need to make it more driving and energetic so it sort of keeps the vibe going and the energy going.
You’ve thrown a free party at Aatma and you’ve got another one in the works. You seem to love a free party could you say that’s representative of the night school ethos?
Chris: We decided to go down the free party route as we wanted to build a feeling of inclusivity into the Nite School events. We felt that if the events were free it would feel like we were playing for out mates instead of putting on a night. That vibe was something we really want to capture, especially in our first few outings. We also wanted to give people the opportunity to come down and see what we were about without paying an extortionate amount.
David: Without stealing from a very famous house label ‘Our house is your house’ come along, you know that classic spirit of house music. Everyone comes along, everyone’s equal, that’s what we wanted to do. We’re not in this to make money we’re in it because we enjoy it.
Richie: We do want to book DJ’s for future events and when we do they’re going to be ticketed events. But obviously, if we did make any money it would go straight back into Nite School. Better DJ’s, better venues, basically it’ll all be going back into the event to make it better.
Callum: We didn’t want to go down the road of just booking big DJ’s all the time. For us, it’s more about building a reputation and an organic following of people who are here to listen to the type of music we would be playing anyway.
Chris: There’s a lot of night I notice nowadays where the guest headliner takes up most of the poster. You don’t see the branding, you don’t see the name of the night. It’s not like ‘oh I’m going to this night’ people say ‘oh I’m going to watch this DJ tonight’.
It is difficult in Manchester though where it is so saturated to put on a night with just residence and expect people to come when around the corner you can go and watch whoever. But we believe that after a while of putting on solid events that won’t matter anymore because we will have nurtured a solid following around our vibe and approach to parties.
So, you put your first party on at Aatma and you’re going to be staying there for the next one. There’s a lot of Manchester clubs closing at the moment so it’s nice to see that this one has re-opened. What do you think of the Manchester club scene at the moment?
Richie: You have got a lot of clubs closing down but also a lot of places that have realised they need to move with the times, a renaming and rebranding I think is the way to do it. If a club goes somewhere else will take its place. That seems to be how it’s progressed. We’ve lost places like Venue but then there’s white hotel which is literally a phenomenal space.
Chris: I’ll tell you what though, as promoters you do struggle for viable space. Certainly, if you’re looking for a small to mid capacity venues say from 100 to 250 people you’re quite limited. You’ve got Joshua Brooks and Soup Kitchen and they’re booked up for half a year. So we had to think outside the box. Even stage & Radio and Whiskey Jar are busy so we went with Aatma as it was somewhere we didn’t know too much about. We went to check it out and we were so surprised. It reminded us of Roadhouse. When we walked in and it was covered in the sweat and beer from the night before. That’s the atmosphere we like to get from a club. And sound system in there is amazing.
Callum: I’ve noticed as well over the past few months a lot of other nights have been popping up at Aatma. It’s just raw isn’t it, it’s got the sofa’s, the beams on the ceiling, the nice wooden floors, it’s just bare bones and that’s all we wanted. We pay a lot of attention to detail and the aesthetic and visual side of things too so we just want a place that’s raw and ready for us to kind of do our thing. The staff are also very open to helping you and a really great team.
Moving on briefly to the mix, was there a theme behind it? How did you put it together? Is there any standout tracks you wouldn’t mind sharing with us?
Callum: I tried to capture the atmosphere and vibe of what are nights would probably be coming into the peak time so it’s quite a high energy mix. There are some big tunes in there. My personal favorite is probably Kerri Chandler – atmosphere. I wanted to go for some classics but also some newer raw sounding house tracks too so that’s where I was heading with it.
Lastly, what are Nite Schools plans for the future? Any details you could share with us about upcoming events?
Chris: So our next event is on the 4th of May, which is again another free party more of the same. Hopefully bigger and better than the last one. We’re super excited for that. Going forward, as we’ve said, we are looking at booking a DJ’s for our third event. That’s still in the works at the moment as we’re trying to secure a venue for it which is slightly bigger than Aatma for that. So watch this space.
(NB No Boomslangs were hurt in the making of this post)
If you wanna check out more mixes for All My Friends try out Lloyd’s afro house mix.
