Esko Closes

Late night Leicester venue Esko has unexpectedly closed. A popular haunt for the more debauched of Leicester's clubbing fraternity, this little corner of Humberstone Gate will be sorely missed.

The first I heard about it was through seeing a group appear on Facebook, pleading for 'One more night', followed by a status update from the owner, Ben Hunt, saying: "Wishes to thank everyone for the past 3 yrs at esko. I had some of the best nights of my life. Djs, promoters, customers and all staff. Thankyou xxx."

Not long after, the official Facebook group for Esko, updated its news page saying not much more than another warmly felt ‘thank you’.

I've no idea why it has shut, nor do I really want to speculate too much. Maybe it's the recession? I don't know, but the last few times I've been there it's been absolutely heaving. I notice many posts seem to be people saying "If only I'd known it was the last night I'd have come", so maybe it wasn't always that busy? Either way, it's a sad loss.

The venue started out three years ago as a members only club, but soon gave up the closed door policy to welcome all and sundry. Despite the shift in policy, Esko always retained its 'secret' charm. Tucked away down a dilapidated, ruined and long forgotten street, just beyond the corporate monstrosity that's Life and behind a nondescript door in the wall, it was hard to gauge what was going on inside.

That was, until the smoking ban hit and an excited babble of revellers began populating the paving stones immediately beside the door. The little smoking area was like a little window on the club itself; animated, delightful chit chat, happy vibes, and the occasional burst of music whenever the door swung open. Esko was delightfully lost in its own reverie. Life was only a few doors away, spilling out mutton-dressed-as-lamb underage girls and an equal splattering of horny adolescent boys and pervy old men, drunkenly swaying to the tiresome chart r’n’b that afflicts so many city centres in England today.

Esko just got on with it, you’d forget Life was even that close. It was an anthropologist – nay - physicist’s dream - two parallel universes sat side by side. Inside Esko, everybody was one happy family, shirking the need to look the part as is the prevailing trend in today's clubland. There was never any trouble, the music policy shifted each week, from the adam’s apple bashing bass of the Biscuit Tin Soundsystem to the cratedigging eclecticism of Jon Kennedy, a joyous celebration of all things funky.

Occasionally, the ponces and pansies from that culturally devoid melting pot of brain dead, drug fuelled hedonism, Sophbeck, would find their way into the nurturing womb of Esko, but even this sorry subculture was tempered and curtailed by the great spirit of Esko. It was a sorely needed venue in Leicester’s electronic scene and will be much missed.

RIP Esko.

The Charlotte: Just not cool?

So The Charlotte in Leicester may have closed its doors for the last time after the venue ceased trading and called in administrators. The licensee pulled the plug after it no longer became financially viable to keep it running, because of a fall in numbers so I’ve been reliably informed. The venue owners, Punch Taverns, have expressed their interest in keeping it open as a live venue but are yet to make any decision.

It’s a place I hold dear in my heart, where many a good night was had in the company of some fantastic acts and people. It’s a venue that needs no introduction, having been right at the centre of Leicester’s music scene for many a year – if you come from the area and don’t know The Charlotte, quite frankly you don’t know about music.

The fact that it doesn’t require an introduction is indicative of how engrained in the Leicester scene this great venue is. I frequented it many a time but actually have little idea of its history. All I know is that when I arrived in Leicester it was The Charlotte that people talked about in the bars and online, like they were talking about an old friend and that's how I soon came to view it too.

It doesn’t boast about itself or its history, its flyers are simple monochrome jobs listing upcoming gigs and its website is pretty prehistoric. It doesn’t have to come to the fan because the fan goes to it, a strange kind of relationship in today’s market driven music industry and as such you kind of take the place for granted.

It simply exists and you subconsciously check out what’s happening there because with near daily gigs there is always something to suit your tastes. I’ve heard ska, dub, breakbeat, hip-hop, indie, drum’n’bass, math-rock, punk, prog, blues, a whole lot more and also probably missed God knows what else.

This is why it is so loved, because it gives everything and everyone a chance to be heard. The likes of Oasis and Radiohead all played here in their formative years and many of those bands have returned since making it big – there’s not many venues where superstars can share the stage with first timers.

Musically, I live by a general rule of thumb, that the rawer the venue, the better it is. Nowadays too much comes in a sterile, soulless veneer that doesn’t really let the music breathe. The Charlotte delightfully ignores all this for a filth ridden shell and nothing more. It’s just beautifully simple. Everything inside is painted black, no doubt to hide the filth, there’s no shiny plastic or fancy sound system, the crowd are crammed into a low ceiling room and bands have to squeeze all their equipment on a stage right next to the women’s toilet.

On a busy night The Charlotte absolutely rocks. It’s a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare, being stood shoulder to shoulder in a touchy feely, boiler room atmosphere. Before the smoking ban you could barely breathe at times and on busy nights there’d be beer everywhere. As for the toilets, they’re undoubtedly disgusting. I lost track of how often the men’s sink was blocked with vomit or I had to trudge through piss, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

The Leicester music scene without The Charlotte is like The Beatles minus Lennon. It’s a place where being cool counts for nothing, unlike many other venues in Leicester and further afield it’s all about the music and the connection between fans and the artists.

Note how I’ve talked about it in the present tense. It may have ‘ceased trading’ but so do banks on bank holidays, hell, even some Tescos cease trading on Christmas Day. There’s hope yet that it will reopen, although with little being heard it’s only a faint glimmer of hope we can see, because maybe within its success lies the problem.

Because it’s a place where cool doesn’t exist, it’s no longer a cool venue and today, nothing seems to matter in music more than being cool, especially amongst the youth in Leicester. Although there is a bubbling house and techno scene in the city, the more serious stuff shall we say, few young student types bother. Instead, they’re attracted to the electro and ‘urban’ spectrum, which to be fair is producing some cracking music but is unfortunately overshadowed by a crowd obsessed with being cool and being seen at particular venues and events.

It’s a trend I’ve noticed more generally in dance music mainly, where my heart lies the most. Dance music culture always seems to be plagued by trends. And I mean cultural trends as opposed to musical trends. I started DJing towards the end of the superclub era, when a clubbers backlash against being force-fed the same music, same DJs week in, week out in the same superclubs at the same super expensive prices ushered in a new era that returned to the underground. This soon morphed into a more welcome and open minded view of what is acceptable for DJs to play, leading to somewhat more ‘eclectic’ sets and music policies in the clubs.

Today, the prevailing trend seems to be about being cool. Coolness has always existed but now in Leicester particularly it appears more prominent than ever before. Everyone has suddenly become shallow. Before, going to a club was about enjoying the music and having fun regardless of any other expectations; simply being oneself.

Now we see people wearing ridiculous outfits and adopting equally ridiculous personas in a blatantly transparent effort to draw attention to themselves, indulging in cocaine and mandy to achieve parity with their pickled peers whilst enslaved by scenes which are incredibly cliquey and/or image centric such as Justice and their whole live bollocks; a snapshot of youth culture so brilliantly predicted by Chris Morris’ Nathan Barley a few years ago.

It first hit home at a gig at The Charlotte about 18 months ago, where two cunts in front of me sporting shades with floppy fringes and a wardrobe straight out of Shoreditch spent the entire gig photographing each other poncing around the dancefloor. They clearly had no desire to pay any attention but simply record their time at the gig, no doubt for the benefit of their Facebook friends to coo over them seeing whichever band it was playing that night.

Point is, it was completely out of place at The Charlotte, because The Charlotte isn’t a ‘cool’ place. Ironically, it actually is cool, probably the coolest venue in town because it doesn’t in fact try to be cool, a fact that is lost on these drug addled prats who share more in common with a Topman mannequin than an actual cognitive being.

Rather, in Leicester, the ‘in’ place to be has shifted. Weekend revellers must now go somewhere the rest of the ‘in’ crowd end up, which tends to be Sophbeck and Superfly or occasionally Esko. Everything seems to gravitate towards the shit infested Sophbeck. Even many ‘genuine’ music fans have been sucked in by its inexplicable allure, either fully converting to the cool or at least embracing their inner sheep, flocking to Sophbeck where the cool runs riot and the dancefloor is populated by the kind of people who thought Nathan Barley was actually a documentary.

Unfortunately for The Charlotte, this means that many people now forgo the smaller gigs from local or lesser known bands for a night getting trolleyed with their fellow cunts at Sophbeck. Apart from the bigger gigs from the bigger bands, it would seem people have forgotten The Charlotte, which can’t even think about diversifying because of the monopoly on cool held by Sophbeck and Superfly further in town, not that it should have to.

Leicester is in thrall of image and being known. In a way it’s too small for its own good as access to the inner circles of the trend set (an overstatement since they do little of anything original) is easy if one if willing to divulge oneself of any facet of a personality, thus perpetuating the cool zeitgeist and sucking the lifeblood from the young scene. This is by no means an all encompassing reason for the decline of The Charlotte, but I reckon it can explain a lot and quite frankly – it’s saddening.

Fair enough, the sound and facilities in The Charlotte aren’t top notch and I don’t want to sound like I’m clinging to tradition and shying away from innovation, but there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of filth now and then. Sometimes all music needs is a space for people to come together and enjoy the beats and bass and riffs and hooks and forget about everything else, just let the music do the talking and provide a blank canvas for personalities to meet and clash and spark off each other like the crowds in The Charlotte used to, which unfortunately seems to be an ideal antithetical to what much of Leicester craves today.

Evil Nine Interview

So Evil Nine will be playing at Superfly on New Year's Eve - here's an interview I did with half of the outfit last time they played in Leicester, two years ago:

For someone who cuts such a slight figure, it’s hard to believe Tom Beaufoy is one half of Evil Nine, a production outfit responsible for producing some of the most perverse and snarling breakbeats in recent years, and a DJ duo capable of destroying dancefloors around the world with their filthy electro-charged party sets.

Alongside Pat Pardy, their productions have mixed low slung breaks, growling guitars and insanely catchy raps from the likes of Aesop Rock and Juice Aleem to devastating effect, sounding like nothing else in the world of dance music.

They also recently released a Fabric mix CD, taking in the rocky aspects of their own productions and combining it with some of the most exciting electro around to wallop the listener around the head and leave you begging for more.

Despite this clear musical diversity, they’re commonly associated with the breakbeat scene, after all it was fellow Brighton resident Adam Freeland who first signed them to his Marine Parade label, but Tom doesn’t consider themselves as breaks DJs.

“What people class as breakbeat isn’t what I really thought of it when I started getting into it. Id play a bit of electro, a bit of techno… I’d just take wicked tunes from different areas. At the beginning it seemed like it embodied all those qualities and it doesn’t necessarily do that anymore but our philosophy is still the same.

“DJs I always loved when I grew up were people like Laurent Garnier, who used to take you into different areas and it was exciting when he dropped something unexpected and I like that kind of DJing, a bit haphazard and all over the place.”

Unlike many big name DJs who claim to be eclectic, Evil Nine quite evidently are, with a background and taste in music that's quite encyclopaedic.

“I like all kinds of music and I think all kinds of music have something to offer you. Every kind of music influences us because we listen to so much of it such as The Cure, Joy Division, Queens of the Stone Age, Nirvana, Pixies… I even like folk music!”

It’s all these influences that help them come up with such tunes as ‘Crooked’ and ‘Pearl Shot’, which on paper shouldn’t work but somehow their evil fingers work miracles in the studio. Earlier this year they took this brand of rock influenced dance music to the festivals, including a little known appearance at Leeds in August, the memory of which visibly excites Tom.

“We played in the Duracell tent and that actually was amazing, just crazy, that was the only thing that was open on the whole site that night and it was just rammed and they were all so young, just kids and they were screaming and chanting, it was just mad!”

The small but loud Duracell tent was one of the highlights of Leeds festival this year, with the breaks and electro DJs going down well with the traditional rock crowd and Krafty Kuts played a blinding set to an equally packed arena the next evening.

Although this particular gig seems to rank quite highly with Tom, it turns out they’ve played even better ones on their travels around the world. Tom’s face lights up further: “There’s obviously been a few amazing times we’ve played and different countries do different things.

“We played an incredible gig in Hong Kong seven stories up in this apartment building overlooking the whole city and we had about 700 Chinese people singing the words to ‘Crooked’.”

So we’ve established that their musical influences are far ranging and their touring habits are equally varied, but just where does that name come from?

“To be honest it doesn’t come from anywhere,” says Tom. “It’s just a name that Pat thought up and I said yes. We need a name for a demo and it’s lucky because we were gonna call ourselves DJ Wheels and Cheekomendoza, which isn’t quite as catchy!” Quite…

“People have theories but the real answer is there is no reason. At one point Adam [Freeland] thought it might alienate people but I think once people start liking your music the name transcends the meaning anyway.”

Whatever they had called themselves, their music would have found its way into our world eventually and one must thank Adam Freeland for finding them when he did.

New album "They Live" is out now. I'll review it soon as I get my pesky hands on it..