515 Presents Dave Clarke + Alan Fitzpatrick - 26/11/10

515 tripod

POD + 515 Presents
DAVE CLARKE + Alan Fitzpatrick (Drumcode)
Fri 26th nov @ Tripod
Advance tickets ?20 inc booking fee
Advance Tickets from usual outlets. Phone/internet bookings subject to
extra service charges.
www.ticketmaster.ie /24hr Hotline 0818 719 300
More info www.pod.ie

Dave Clarke biog
?I have an unbridled passion for this,? he enthuses boyishly, ?Yes, I
suppose I?ve never grown up?.

Dave Clarke is holding forth as he drives back to his West Sussex home
from a photo-shoot in London, interrupted occasionally by the bland
feminine robot tones of the Satellite Navigation system offering
traffic tips. The make-up still visible round his eyes makes him look
a little like his post-punk musical heroes, while the futuristic
route-finder reminds of his ceaseless passion for new technology.

?I bought my first Damned album because I thought they sounded like
they?d be really evil,? he declares, ?and even now their album
?Machine Gun Etiquette? is one I keep coming back to. I like the
attitude, the free reign of it, and on an artistic level I see my
music as in the alternative genre rather than dance music. Techno and
electro is an alternative that happens to be on the peripheries of
dance music.?

Clarke has a well-deserved reputation as one of the best techno and
electro DJs in the world but he?s always been an outsider, from his
stormy childhood in the 1980s to his tempestuous relationship with the
media today.

?The school I was at was all about grooming you to be an accountant or
a lawyer or in the army,? he explains. ?I just saw that as breaking
the human spirit and constantly rebelled against it. I instinctively
felt it was wrong and pointless for me. I?ve always been very, very
bad at respecting authority.?

Clarke was born and raised in Brighton but was expelled from school a
number of times from an early age. The school always took him back but
he fully admits to being a thoroughly disruptive boy with a short
attention span. What started him on the road to where he his today was
his hijacking and combining his parents? hobbies.

?I started playing with my mother?s records and my father?s
technology,? he says, ?My mother had lots of old disco records by the
likes of Roy Ayers, Lonnie Liston Smith and the Crusaders, and my dad
was really into technology. He had disco lights in the front room,
record decks, reel-to-reels, reverb units, he even did a thing on BBC
Radio about quadrophonics. It?s pretty obvious where I get it all from
really.?

Clarke, his relationship with his family in teenage dissaray, borrowed
some his father?s equipment, including the disco lights and retreated
to the attic where he covered everything in aluminium foil and made a
sci-fi retreat for himself. Here he?d make tapes for his friends and
dismantle electronic equipment to see how it worked. He subsisted on a
musical diet of Visage, early hip hop, Pigbag and punk.

Clarke was advised by his school careers office to become a software
engineer but his parents had split and family life was unbearable so,
at 16, he ran away from home. He?d done it before but this time was
determined not to return. He ended up sleeping rough in car-parks
before a friend offered him temporary floorspace. Taking a temp job in
a shoe-shop, he rented himself a bedsit. The only thing that kept him
going was his love of music. From soul to the Psychedelic Furs, from
Devo to the nascent Chicago house sound, Clarke devoured it all
voraciously and blagged himself a DJ slot at a club called Toppers in
Brighton. The night he played became so successful that it worried a
young John Digweed (then known as DJ JD) whose club-night it was up
against. Soon such gigs provided Clarke with a meagre living, one
where he was left with a fiver a day to live on after buying records.

From there, however, his gradual rise began. In 1988 he played his
first foreign gig at the now-defunct Richters in Amsterdam,
kickstarting a global reputation that now runs from Brazil to
Singapore , from Reykjavik to Auckland, New Zealand. These days his DJ
diary is booked solid six months in advance and he often headlines on
the summer?s international festival circuit.

Clarke?s reputation was sealed at the start of the 1990s when he
produced a series of EPs with the collective name ?Red?. Signed to
de-Construction he received rave reviews for his 1996 debut album
?Archive 1? which dabbled in breakbeat and electronica, a novelty for
the puritanical techno scene of the time. Clarke, then as now, has no
time for techno purism.

The so-called intelligensia of the scene have done nothing but hold it
back,? he snorts dismissively, ?The trainspotters who don?t actually
dance to it have created a misleading impression of techno for the
public. It?s like when you used to go into techno record shops and
they?d look at you like a piece of **** if you didn?t know about it.
All those shops are closed now??

By the millennium many first generation techno DJs had fallen by the
wayside, drifting off up blind allies and sub-genres, but Clarke?s
sets, his extraordinary mixing skills mashing up techno, electro,
ghetto-tek, hip hop and even 1980s new wave numbers, remained in
constant demand. He put out a number of mix CDs including 2001?s first
?World Service? set which showcased his dual love for electro and
techno. He also signed to Skint Records, celebrating the event at Hove
Dog Track by presenting the prize for a race entitled ?The Dave Clarke
Inaugural Techno Dash?. This union resulted in ?Devil?s Advocate? in
2004, an album that reeked of dark gothic energy laced with hip hop?s
surly funk, and featured Chicks On Speed, DJ Rush and the MC Mr Lif.
Clarke toured the world performing live to promote the album, as well
as doing a session for his only DJ hero, John Peel.

?Some pretty heavy **** shook me up badly at the beginning of this
year,? Dave Clarke concludes, ?but music helped me through, Music has
always brought me through, even in times when I?ve had nothing. Music
has given me everything and I feel I have to give everything back. I
don?t know what I?d do without it, it?s in my blood and bones, the
only constant throughout the whole of my life.?
From Tones On Tail to Die Warzau, from Anthony Rother to the Sisters
of Mercy, from Terence Fixmer?s crunching techno to the filthy ?booty?
sound of Detroit, Clarke is still as enthused as a kid about it all.
Back in his Merc we?re nearing his home and he slams a series of CDs
into the car-stereo by everyone from fresh-faced guitar heroes Louis
IV to ?80s New York punk funkers Silicone Soul.

Alan Fitzpatrick biog

2009 was Alan Fitzpatrick?s year. Having enjoyed a rapid ascent from
new kid on the techno block to a highly respected and in-demand
producer, the last half
of 2009 saw Alan go from strength to strength with critical acclaim
for his productions and demand for his DJing coming from all corners
of the globe. Currently locked away in the studio writing his debut
album for Adam Beyer?s Drumcode label, this highly anticipated
long-player marks the culmination of a run of hot productions that led
to him being publically namechecked as a one of the most exciting
producers in
techno by Adam Beyer, Dubfire and Carl Cox and a BBC Radio 1 Essential
New Tune for his anthemic Reflections single on Bedrock. Such was his
dominance that at one point in September Alan had an amazing eight
tracks in Beatport?s techno Top 100.

Alan goes into the start of the new decade on a real high. Having
scored a prestigious Radio 1 Essential New Tune for his massive
?Reflections? track on Bedrock, Alan went on to dominate Beatport?s
techno Top 100 chart through the Autumn with releases on Drumcode,
Bedrock, Figure, Size, Sprout and Curfew. As if 2009 could not have
been any better, Alan rounded off the year with one of the best
received tracks from Adam Beyer?s epic Remainings III remix package to
follow his chart topping EP?s for Drumcode (Static and Face Of
Rejection) and fresh sounding and cutting edge remixes for Frankfurt
imprint Weave Music and Paolo Mojo?s Oosh Records. Already a firm
favourite of Adam Beyer, Len Faki, Dubfire, Fergie, Nic Fanciulli,
John Digweed, Carl Cox, Christian Smith, Steve Angell and Slam, Alan's
own skills behind the decks are first class. A skilled and dynamic
exponent with Abelton Live and Native Instrument?s Traktor software,
his bigroom

515 tripod

Some poster action:

themossinator

Any idea of the set-times? How long is Alan Fitzpatrick playing for? Thanks