Page 28 - Zone Magazine Issue 030 - Lexicon Avenue

Where are you guys from?
We hail from Blackburn & Darwen, Lancashire, near Manchester .
What music did you guys like growing up?
Joe:
The music I listened to growing up was a bit of a mixture. As it was an area that was once massive for the illegal rave scene in the 90s we always listened to the Old Skool House tunes along with bits of rap from people like Eminem. But as the years went on I grew into the new house music scene and slowly grown a full passion for techno.
Jenno: As Joe has said what was once a booming area in the 90’s, the folks round here were still holding onto the music that was once played, featuring 90’s trance, hip-hop & old school piano genres.
Can you remember your first dance track?
Joe:
One of my favourite first dance tracks growing up has to be: Rui Da Silva - Touch Me. It still does the business now when it comes on everyone’s on the same vibe, it’s great!
Jenno: I remember when I was at school id save all the dinner money my mum & dad gave me during the week then on Fridays head down to a local vinyl shop in blackburn market called Reedy’s. I think one of the first vinyls I
bought was a dance remix of Kelly Clarkson’s - “Because of you”.
How did you guys get into dance music
DJ'ing / production?
Joe:
As we started out separate we met through and engineering work place from a young age and Jenno introduced me to the, what was once great, tech house scene. After many talks of the raves he had been to he took me and I got a feel for the underground style music. As he had already had previous experience on the technics and midi controller Jenno had a very good understanding of the DJ’ing art and passed on his knowledge to me for us to both eventually come together as one.
Jenno: I remember back in the early school days going to a friends house & his older brother and his mates were blasting out tunes in the back room. I asked my mate what was going on and he took me in to show me the lads had some decks set up spinning a few tracks. I had to have a go!! After that I asked my parents for some Numark direct drive decks for Christmas & never looked back!
What was your first clubbing experience?
Joe: As the local scene had died from the old skool raves there wasn’t much to do. That’s when Jenno brought me along to the famous Mint Club in Leeds which has sadly been knocked down! After spending a night in a very small intimate and dingy club listening to Darius Syrossian I instantly knew there was something great about all this. Jenno: The first club I also went to was ‘Mint Club Leeds!’ It was a Thursday night for an event called “Teknicolor” which used to host tech house events there every Thursday for the
students. Thats when my attention fully switched to the tech house scene, I knew it was for me! After going there I looked for venues closer to home & found ’Sankeys Manchester!’ Both clubs have sadly been shut down but will forever hold a special place in my heart as they were the drive in my passion for music.
How did you get your first break and why
is it so hard for young - up and coming
guys to make it?
Our first major mark on the scene was setting up our own event in the local area. As we mentioned the scene had massively died down from the very famous 90’s warehouse raves we thought we had to do something to revive it. This was the creation of Symposium.
But all this stemmed from one of our good friends, we planned to build a studio with and start getting stuck in to it. But sadly he died in a motorbike accident at 21. So as we thought of things we can do to remember him, we started with hosting our night for his birthday at a local club in Blackburn called the Cellar Bar. After building it up from the bottom with our own DJ’s and brining in some very talented bigger DJ’s we slowly started to take off.
Along with many other events coming up we feel our biggest booking so far is becoming residents for Oc & Verde’s record label, Ampersand. This is a
massive boost in the direction we want to be heading and gave us many ideas for us to work on and start to perfect our skills.
We feel these breaks have been extremely important in our growth and forever thankful for these opportunities but we feel people without opportunities likes their own event and being noticed quite early, they can struggle to progress as their is so much competition.
Tell us about the scene at the time.
The local scene at the time was completely dead in Blackburn and Darwen, especially for House & Techno and other dance events. After starting our event, Symposium, and bringing in some big crowds and providing banging nights everyone started to get involved and we started to revive the scene. Now there is many events in the area and we have introduced lots of people to new techno music and have been building up a big reputation in the area.
Have you guys ever held a residency?
Well as we started our own event we cemented our local residency there at Symposium along with adding a residency to the new record label Ampersand from Oc & Verde.
Tell us about your latest project.
Well we have been DJ’ing together for around 3 years now. And after taking that time to build up a good enough name to work on now we have decided to be fully focused on the production side. After working with
some top class DJ’s in the house and techno scene to perfect our production we are planning to have some tracks ready in the next few months.
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