Date- Saturday, 17 October 2009
Time- 8:00pm – 6:00am
Venue- Canvas / St Martin’s Square, Leicester
Cost- £6 / more after
MOTOR CITY DRUM ENSEMBLE
KRIS WADSWORTH
J Shez
Jonna
Ash Stevenson
City Fly is back to its spiritual home of Leicester, if only briefly, as they welcome two of the hottest acts of 2009 to Leicester’s newest most forward thinking venue, Canvas.
First up is Motor City Drum Ensemble, as his reputation continues to grow, releases on Rush Hour, 20/20 vision and his ‘Raw Cuts’ series have not left many DJ’s bag this year. Drawing early influence from Jazz, Soul, Funk, Hiphop and House before a transition to disco and Detroit/Chicago 90`s house that he is now more commonly known for; he should fit in perfectly to the City-Fly ethos for a Saturday night.
Kris Wadsworth is seemingly brand new to electronic music; however, he has been writing and producing tracks since he was fourteen years old. Raised in and around Detroit, he first heard the sounds of dance music from mix tapes his sibling would bring home from the local nightclubs. From age eleven he was studying blues and rock guitar, painting graffiti, listening to hip hop, jazz, and the dance sounds of Detroit, Chicago and New York. He luckily found electronic music to be his ultimate creative medium. Anyone could have guessed this kid would have been an artist from an early age. Now at age 24, he has numerous internationally acclaimed recordings to his credit and shows no sign of stopping. Kris is in this for the long haul, as it were, and his nostalgic, yet forward-thinking productions ought to spell that out loud and clear.
I took the time to catch up with a good friend of mine, City-Fly’s Jon Iliffe, (the dude who gave me my first shot on the one’s and two’s) to have a chat about this Saturday, reflect on good times past and what’s on the horizon for City-Fly in the new year..
How has the party evolved since it started?
Well, we now have the city fly radio show, the label is set to be launched in the New Year, we’re starting a residency @ 54 in Shoreditch next month and we also have parties lined up in Italy soon. The music policy is pretty much the same though, we’ve always had a passion for the deeper side of underground house and it seems at this present point in time the kind of music we’ve been pushing since day one with city fly is blowing up on the scene which helps and more people are taking notice.
Motor City Drum Ensemble and Kris Wadsworth on the same bill in Leicester; it’s a Line-up one would normally find in London, Leeds or Berlin- having switched venues from London, is it something that your conscious of??
Yes to be honest when we had to pull the event at the last minute i was pooing my pants, but I knew with the quality line up we have and a lot of hard work from myself and the boys we would give it our best shot to make it work in Leicester and things are looking good, the reaction has been better than any other city fly over the past 5 years which is always a good sign so we’re confident it will still be a success.
You’ve always stuck to your guns at City-Fly on your booking policy, combining local talent with a range of Leicester debutants- what’s been your favourite city-fly event over the years?
Ohhh that’s a tuff one… I’d have to say the launch night around 5 years ago @ Weavers. We were all about 20 years old and we booked the Inland Knights, we didn’t have a clue how it was going to turn out, we’d never promoted a night before and we didn’t even have enough money to cover any of the costs if it flopped, but fortunately it went amazing. The place was rammed, the music was ace, we had proven to ourselves we could host a respectable night and our balls were saved as we could afford to pay our DJ’s ha-ha!
What does City Fly have in store for the remainder of the year?
After the MCDE & Wadsworth event in Leicester, we Launch our new bi-monthly night @ 54 in Shoreditch with Lovebirds (OM / Freerange / Winding Road) who will be joining us from Hamburg, Rhythm Plate (Lost My Dog / Winding Road / DIY) who are old City Fly favourites, myself, j shez, ash stevenson & jay l. We will be hosting bi monthly 3rd weekends of the month in London so keep an eye out for future events and forward thinking DJ’s and music from around the globe.
absolutely gutted i couldn’t be there and hook up with old friends, and catch one of the best line ups around. big love for the city fly boys
Nice!!