Episode 32 is a collection of blissed out house beats from the Manchester collective Phonix. Read our interview with founders Kings and Johnny below.
Hey Phonix, thanks for coming on the blog. Let’s start the interview with a bit of background on you guys and the club night. Who are the members of your collective, how did you all meet and when did you start throwing events?
K: Phonix is the creation of myself and my good pal Johnny, and between the two us we’ve been running the event for just over 2 years. Johnny and I actually met on my first night out ever in Manchester, surprisingly I think we first introduced ourselves to each other on the third floor of factory. I think that was the first and last time we ever found ourselves in there. After this we became pretty close as we both study medicine and both loved music! Having spent a lot of time talking about our similar music tastes and DJing together, we decided we had to start organising a party together. This was back in December 2016. Our first event was March 2017 at ‘Koh Tao’, now renamed CUBO and since that we’ve organised lots more parties all over Manchester. Despite the hard work and seemingly infinite stresses, I think we’d both agree that becoming promoters was one of the best decisions we have made at uni!
J : Yeah I think it was Kings who first had the idea, both of our brothers are also involved with promoting so it made a lot of sense for us to do it as well. It was actually a lot easier to get started than we initially thought but that’s not to say we haven’t had our struggles along the way! That being said it’s totally been worth it, especially seeing the night develop from the beginning where we were doing our event artwork on Microsoft paint to now where we’re lucky enough to be able to use some of our all-time favourite artists.
You’ve got a few big bookings under your belt. Has there been a specific event you’ve run that you’ve especially enjoyed?
K: Every night we’ve done has been a lot of fun when we can stop working as promoters and settle in to enjoy the experience. Obviously the Houseum Collaboration night was pretty huge for us, and having 4 of our favourite DJs down for one night was very surreal. But personally my favourite Phonix would have to be getting Big Miz down in the CUBO basement. It was our first ever booking so we really had no idea what we were doing, but Big Miz was an absolute dude and played one of the best sets I’ve ever heard at the venue. The atmosphere was unreal and the energy stayed until the very last second of the very last song.
J: The Houseum collaboration really stood out for me also. Houseum is one of the Youtube channels that really shaped my music taste over the years so to be able to put on a night with Grégoire, the owner, was a real honour. Also having Harrison BDP come back to ours for afters was quite something special and pretty surreal!
Running nights in the rainy city can be tough. What advice would you give budding collectives looking to throw their own parties in town?
K: Promoting is so so rough and so much of the time you have no idea why you are doing it because it comes with so much stress. But I have to say it is so worth it over time. In terms of advice, all I can say is that if you’re passionate about and music and the community you’re in then regardless of the attendance or popularity of your night you should see yourself as succeeding. If you’re not enjoying yourself then you shouldn’t be promoting!
J: Yeah I can only reiterate what Kingsley said, if the passion isn’t there then it will show in the nights you put on. Also a bit of monetary advice – keep on reinvesting your profits. You’ll quickly find that not every night is profitable and it’s super important to have a safety net if things don’t go to plan. Regardless, you shouldn’t be doing it for the money and if you are you’re in the wrong business.
Moving on to your mix. How did you approach your set? Do you tend to approach mixes like this with a theme or idea or do you prefer to just rock up to your turntables and throw down a mix on the fly?
K: Personally I don’t like to plan my mixes, I’m always downloading new stuff so when I record something I do tend to stick in my ‘Recently Added’ folder. But I usually always pick a starting track before the mix and then see where I go from there. It does mean that sometimes the transitions between the songs are a little off, but I don’t think I could ever prepare a mix beforehand or there would be no fun in recording it!
J: This mix was all Kingsley so all credit goes to him for this one. Nonetheless, I never pre-prepare my mixes but I do organise all my tracks by genre which is what I use to help me to decide what to play next. If I’m being honest I’m not really much of a DJ and don’t dedicate nearly as much time as I would like to it. As a result my mixes can be a bit rough around the edges but I try and keep in mind that at the end of the day the most important thing is track selection.
Are there any tracks in the mix you wouldn’t mind sharing with our readers?
K: Of course anyone who wants the track list for this mix I will happily give it to them. I’m very against not sharing your tracks with people because I don’t see the point in not letting someone else enjoy them! But I do understand for some DJs who spend lots of time digging for tracks that it can be irritating when people take those tracks from them with minimal effort.
Regardless, from this mix the opener is a real goody. It’s called ‘Pink Cigarettes’ by Brooks, and somehow I stumbled across the vinyl of it sat in a random charity shop down in Withington. An unreal find. Another one worth mentioning is the penultimate track, which is a new edit from Phonix residents, Harvington AKA my brother and I!
J: I’d love to but Kingsley won’t even tell me what they are!
Last but not least, what’s on the horizon for Phonix? Have you got any big parties in the pipeline you can tell us about?
J: I guess just carry on doing what we’re doing! We’re currently organising quite a few exciting things so keep your eyes peeled for more info on them soon!
K: We’ve been working hard trying to lock in dates and bookings for after summer over the last couple of weeks and we have just locked in a party which we are super happy with in September. I can’t say much about it yet but we have 2 of our favourite acts coming to play at a club we have never hosted a Phonix in before, which is all very exciting! As I mentioned before, both Johnny and I study medicine so we’ll be hanging around in Manchester for the next few years, so expect to see a lot more from Phonix!
Check out our guest mix from Tram22 if you want some more house sounds.
