Something 4 The Weekend will be our mid-weekly blog post where we recommend an event coming up in a few days time. First up is a new night called Variance. For their first event on Saturday October 17th they're bringing in Fanu (pictured) for his first ever London gig, we spoke to promoter Biorhythm to find out more...

Why have you started Variance?

We saw Fanu DJing in Bristol a while back and, no disrespect to the promoters, but it didn't seem very well organised. Fanu was barely given an hour to play and the security was pretty slack, so we were left with the feeling that we could do better. Then Hannah, my girlfriend, emailed Fanu about it and he was really disappointed with the way he'd been treated so she offered to book him to come and play in London. We didn't have a club for the gig or even a name, but we decided to go for it and Variance was born.
 
What's the night all about?

I DJ and produce both dubstep and drum and bass as Biorhythm so I wanted the night to be a real crossover between those two genres. Not just having one room for each, but having both in the main room. Artists like Amit and more recently Kryptic Minds, have been blurring the line between dubstep and dnb so much that I wanted the night to be a celebration of where things are at in 2009.

We also want the night to be a way to bring different groups of people together to educate them about different  styles of music. There's Technicality for the choppage fans, Therapy for the darkstep fans, Swerve for the liquid fans, FWD and many others for dubstep fans, but there isn't really anything that tries to include something for everyone. We want Variance to be the first night that will appeal to all these groups of people and more, which is why the first event has quite a random line-up. If we do well and put on another party then that will definitely continue, and you can expect to see lots more unusual and adventurous line-ups in the future.

In your press release you say that Fanu will be playing in London for the first time, is this really true?

Unbelievably it is true, yes. We couldn't believe an artist of Fanu's stature had not come to London before either, so instead of waiting indefinitely for an established promoter to book him we just thought we'd do it ourselves. We really hope people will come out to see him as he really is amazing. And if people don't know about him, or have heard the name but not the music, then this is the perfect opportunity to experience his sounds.

How regular will these events be?

That entirely depends on the success of the first night really. We've put a lot of our hard earned cash into doing this event and if it flops then it'll be hard to raise the cash and the enthusiasm to do another one. We really hope that wont be the case though, as we're both so passionate about music and want to give back to the scene as much as possible. We're certainly not doing this to make a profit, we just want to be able to bring quality music into people's lives and if the night goes well we will definitely continue to do so, maybe four or five times a year or so. It's really hard work!

What are your plans for the future?

The sky's the limit really. If it all goes well and we break even on the night then we'll start planning the next one straight away. I've got a massive list of artists I'd like to book in the future ranging from people like Loefah and Ital Tek to SPL and Current Value. There are so many quality artists out there making great music, that we want Variance to start breaking down the barriers between sub-genres and to promote good music in all its forms.

Anything else you'd like to tell us about?

Just that the first event is taking place this Saturday (17th October) at the Rhythm Factory in east London and you can buy tickets now for a very reasonable £6 here. You can expect to hear deep dubwise sounds from our dubstep forum competition winner MB, dubstep and dnb from myself, beats and breaks from Fracture & Neptune and Fanu and some seriously darkside dnb from Seid. We hope you can all make it down.

 

• Fanu

Related Links:

• Free Fanu Track Download
• Extalgic Festival 2011
• Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop
• Looking Back Looking Forward: Fanu
• Badman Ting Promoter Profile

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