Thanks for taking the time to open Lubrikant, my one-stop reliquary for sharing a lifetime of musical experiences, well-worn clubland anecdotes and… who knows what else? It will be the place to keep up with new mixes, including my regular Through The Wreckage mixtape series, and any additional navel-gazing that takes my fancy.

This instalment will offer a quick introduction, for those that know me less well or have chosen to forget the distant annals. I have been professionally and not-so-professionally involved in music ever since I moved to London in early 2006, shuffling my focus between writing, promoting, DJing and making music. Writing and DJing for seminal french music-blog, Fluokids led onto a job booking and promoting the legendary Lock Tavern in Camden, hosting my own Blogger’s Delight events there, co-promoting Adventures In The Beetroot Field (with Crispin Dior) at Fabric and elsewhere and becoming a fully-fledged partner in Field Day festival between 2007-2019. We even had our own late-night Glastonbury tent at the time, long before Block 9 et al were an apple in Emily Eavis’ eye.

This was a time when involvement in a popular music blog, along with the help of a well-constructed Myspace profile, could lead to all manner of opportunities to DJ at home and abroad. I cut my teeth locally at the likes of Trailer Trash, Adventures Close To Home, Kill Em All, Wet Yourself and, of course Bugged Out which would offer the opening and closing slots to local up-and-comers. I don’t think we realised how lucky we were playing from 4:30-7 in the main room of The End, often following our heroes of the time like Erol Alkan, Miss Kittin, Tiga and Ivan Smagghe. Before long I was playing all over the UK and at international institutions like Trouw in Amsterdam, Paris Social Club and Razzmatazz in Barcelona, whilst becoming a regular at Fabric under the tutelage of the late Shaun Roberts who the London club scene sorely misses. These heady days, of which I will be sharing plenty of recollections in future newsletters, were my introduction to a life of DJing, promoting and generally exploring and sharing my enthusiasms in any way that I could.

Subsequently, from 2008, I ran the weekly High Horse residency at legendary Shoreditch den of iniquity, The T Bar alongside Matt Walsh (of later Clouded Vision fame) and Alex Egan & Benedict Bull (then known as Skull Juice). I chose the name as a nod to the fact that we were playing supposedly more tasteful or underground house & techno, as opposed to the faintly maligned ‘blog-house’ sounds that we’d become associated with by this point. By 2009, we were offering London debuts to the likes of Steffi and Tama Sumo, as well as hosting an eclectic array of guest DJs, such as JD Twitch (Optimo), Arto Mwambe, Appleblim, Mark E, Tony Lionni and In Flagranti, to name but a few.

In late 2010, I set up BleeD as a solo journey through the increasingly diverse and experimental music that I was exploring at the time, strongly inspired my my first visit to Unsound in Poland. My first BleeD event held at the then new and, it’s easy to forget, tastefully programmed XOYO set in place a pretty effective template for what was to come over the next few years with headliners Oneohtrix Point Never and Oni Ayhun (Olof Dreijer from the Knife, a London debut performance), alongside Minimal Wave’s Veronica Vasicka and a live performance from Teengirl Fantasy. Over the years, I developed a close working relationship with labels like Blackest Ever Black, Diagonal, Downwards, PAN, Opal Tapes, Spectrum Spools and several more, and was proud to do my bit to help out some great artists at or near the beginning of their journeys. Some favourites would include Laurel Halo, Raime, Holly Herndon, Helena Hauff, Morphosis, Demdike Stare, Lee Gamble, Holy Other, Bee Mask and Container. Myself and Rory Gibb also hosted a fairly long-running BleeD show on Rinse, where I hosted exclusive guest mixes from Lee Gamble, D’Marc Cantu, Powell, Vester Koza and others.

It was a painfully poorly-attended club event in 2014 that encouraged me to promote a bit less, and finally try to involve myself in the process of making some music of my own. Volte-Face became my outlet for the deep and atmospheric techno sound that I was infatuated with at the time. All of my productions were realised in cooperation with the studio talents of Manni Dee, who has gone onto further success of his own as well as co-producing for the likes of Daniel Avery (my good friend, former colleague and collaborator as Rote) amongst others. I enjoyed a few years of relative success as Volte-Face, supported most notably by Berghain, Khidi (probably the most impressive nightclub I’ve ever played at), Fabric and Rex Club in Paris and releasing music/remixes on labels such as Semantica, Phantasy and Phorma on top of 3 solo EPs and 2 Rote EP’s via my own BleeD imprint.

It all came crashing down (once and for all) in 2019 when, following a gig at Herrensauna at Tresor, I experienced a drug-induced psychosis which ultimately culminated in a hellish month-long stay at Homerton Hospital. Ironically, the experience was akin to living in a nightclub, with music blared out of the common-room TV all day long, and never less than a few patients cutting shapes on the ‘dancefloor’ at any given time. I spent the pandemic convalescing by spending more time than not in the beautifully immersive world of Red Dead Redemption 2, but sadly I experienced a fresh psychosis over the new year of 2021 which it took me a long-time to recover from. These experiences (including my first psychosis, at Glastonbury in 2004), will be discussed (as light-heartedly as possible) in future mailouts, as I have a lot of weird and wonderful memories of these times.

Which leads us to the present day. After an extended hiatus, I’ve found my way back to music again and, in many ways, it feels like being right back at the beginning again. Collecting for pure love and joy, making mixtapes for my own personal pleasure and, as of two weeks ago, playing the occasional gig at my mate’s pub (although to describe The Gun as merely a ‘pub’ would be to do it a disservice!). Run by Nick Stephens, who managed the Lock Tavern at the same time that I worked there, it’s been my local watering-hole for over a decade, and yet I’ve only just DJed there for the first times in my life (supporting Lena Willikens alongside Nick, and then playing all night solo this past Saturday). It’s a pub that has a very distinct sound in my head (Gun regular Jean Young coined the term ‘music without joy’, which goes some way to explaining it), and it felt extremely liberating to play the whole night there. I’ve also been enjoying playing on the radio again whenever I’ve had the chance, mostly alongside or covering for Nick or another former colleague, Psych Milligan on Netil Radio. Watch this space for my next show in a few weeks time.

For now, I’ll leave you with the full recording from my all-nighter at The Gun, which I hope you’ll enjoy. I really don’t think there’s another set of mine which I’ve ever enjoyed listening back to so much. A friend asked me a few months ago if I ever missed DJing, or thought I would ever do it again. I was adamant that my headphones were hung-up for good, which might give you a window into why I felt Volte-Face was such a fitting artist name in the first place.

Thanks for indulging me, and please watch this space for the next instalment of Lubrikant. Rest assured, I will aim for less of a charity-shop memoir vibe going forwards. I’m interested to see exactly what form it will take.

Until next time,

Casper

Casper Clark at The Gun, September 2024