Layo talks to endclub.com
With the 10th Birthday approaching, we chatted to Layo...
As The End celebrates 10 years, we at Endclub.com sat down for a chat with club co-founder Layo about the Explore festival, The End's 10th year parties, and plans for the coming months...
Endclub.com: For the Explore festival celebrating The End's 10th year, you've put together a whole week of parties. What are you looking forward to most about the festival?
Layo: Many things - it's the culmination of many different events that The End has put on over time, yet also reflects a lot of what's happening at the club now. On a personal level I'm really looking forward to playing at the 10th Anniversary on Saturday, it's very exciting and a chance for me to party as well as DJ! I'm also going to be going to every single other event at Explore, so I'll report back to endclub.com...!
The line ups for the weekend events are absolutely massive. How did Marky vs Laurent Garnier come about on Friday? It's an interesting night for D&B.
Marky has been doing his parties here all year, and the next night was due just before The End's 10th anniversary party. Then I heard from Laurent Garnier that he'd played a D&B set in Paris with Marky, and started thinking about putting the two together. These are two of arguably the best DJs in the world; both technically brilliant.
You and Bushwacka! are playing at the Saturday night 10th Anniversary with Tania Vulcano. What can the crowds in AKA expect on the night?
AKA will have an Ibizan terrace style vibe, so Tania is the perfect guest, as she's resident at DC10 on the island. The music will move from quite alternative stuff to, by the morning, classics from the last 10 years. But bascially it will be an intense electronic house workout from ourselves and Tania.
You're going to be giving out copies of The End Biography at Explore. It's pretty unusual for a club to produce a magazine, what made you decide to do a club biography?
It would have been easy to just do parties, but we wanted to create something that was a marker for the time, that captured all the highs and lows, all the people, all the passion. We also wanted to create something stylish and artistic as we've got a great team here, who are very creative, and the fanzine pulled that all together. The finished biography really adds weight to our 10th year events.
Exhibitionism, the visual retrospective from 10 years at The End is now showing in AKA until the end of the year, and will be up throughout the festival. How did you pull all the images and artwork together?
There were some classic photos that just had to go into the exhibition, but looking through the archive we also found photos from the past that had an added poignancy with time, and chose those. Obviously there are certain criteria for what images will look good in an exhibition so we made a selection on that basis too.
The End Studios as part of the Creative Centre at the Roundhouse are a great new project for The End. How did that come about?
For our 10th year we wanted to do something different and also give back to the community. We did look into setting up some studios near a school in Camden but there was a lot of red tape involved. Then we were introduced to the work of the Roundhouse and had a few meetings with them. It's a major new Creative Centre, they're running the project very professionally and it's got a great history.
As someone who is now helping to invest in the music of the future, what advice would you give to people aiming to forge careers in club promotion / DJing / music production?
Be completely dedicated to what you want to do and understand that a huge part of your life's focus, interest and passion is going to be directed towards your work. There is no such thing as an overnight success. Anyone you see who has made it has spent years working towards that point. There's the saying 'genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration', and it's entirely true. There's the initial spark, and the rest is simply hard work. So be prepared to do that.
Tell us about your latest album which is due out next year.
Our new album, 'Feels Closer', has been two years in the making. The title represents the fact that for us, the album gives a more cohesive view of our work together. It's our third album and a more profound piece of work for us, we're really happy with it... We recorded the album in New York, Brazil and London; it has a lot of live music, as well as electronic, there are Latin influences and many more diverse vocal led tracks. The album is going to be released on Olmeto our new label, on Monday 6 March 2006.
What will you be doing after Explore, for Christmas, NYE etc?
For NYE I'm playing North Brazil on a beach in Bahia, while Matt's going to be playing in Italy. On New Year's Day you can catch Matt at The End for the Circo Loco party with Steve Bug, Loco Dice, Clive Henry, and more.
What can we expect from The End in 2006?
All Night Long is morphing into Olmeto, Timo Maas is starting a new night, Cocoon is joining with Sven Vath, Danny Howells is becoming resident...joining Laurent Garnier, Derrick Carter, Darren Emerson, Ben Watt, Steve Lawler, Marky, Andy C as well as some special one-offs...
Finally, as a known Arsenal fan, how do you fancy the team's chances this season?
Well we had a shaky start, losing our captain, but it's slowly coming together. We've got a very exciting attacking force, though we need a stronger squad. But if you love your team, you love your team.
Published: 1/12/2005
