Global Gathering's North/ South Divide (July 31)
Author: Jonty Skrufff
Saturday, July 24, 2004
"People in London are a lot more open-minded to different styles of music whereas northern people can be very brutal at cutting things down, before revisiting a style a couple of years later and re-inventing it'," he chuckled.
"Though having said that, and in defence of northerners; once you leave London and head north, I believe you truly find the heartland of UK clubland."
The Midlands promoter said he's expecting increasing numbers of Londoners to attend the Stratford-Upon Avon Middle England event which includes for the first time a breaks arena hosted by Capital Radio/ Fabric jock Ali B as well as Strongbow's electro-based space headlined by Nag Nag Nag's Jo Jo De Freq.
However, Neil stressed the event's musical core will remain the house, trance and techno that they continue to purvey at their Code headquarters in Birmingham.
"We've always got a backbone of arenas for the line-up; Godskitchen is there, as is Bedrock, Babushka, Breaks, Polysexual and Accelerated Culture; the only additions to the festival that we don't have at our own club are the Strongbow Rooms and Hed Kandi," said Neil.
"Breaks has worked well at the club this year and we felt that a second 'dance/ trance' arena was unnecessary, that it was about time that we offered a different style of music," he added.
He also remains extremely optimistic about filling next weekend's 35,000 capacity event, declaring 'our festival will sell out without a doubt and people will be able to judge for themselves by seeing how many people are there on the day.'
He's equally positive about the overall health of dance culture, suggesting media stories declaring dance music as dead being rooted in ignorance.
A lot of the recent bad publicity about dance music has been written by a diminishing press who've maybe lost touch with their readers," he claimed.
"Magazines like Mixmag, Muzik and Ministry saw their numbers (circulations) all going into decline because their content was no longer appealing," he claimed (both Muzik and Ministry failed last year).
"They left their core market and went down another road."
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