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YuriNondual

Venues to play Psybient/Downtempo/Chill

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Hello all.

Recently I've been trying to organise a small ambient party here in London. I was going to spend around £600 - £700 for a venue, but I found it very problematic to find one. It's either too expensive or they don't want to host chill party on Saturday night as this is not their format.

I would like to use this topic to discuss some Venue ideas, reviews and recommendations.

The ideal venue if I had unlimitted supply of cash for me is a Dome, something like a planetarium, where you could project video on 360 ceiling. With some comfy pillows and rugs to sit on, and many varieties of teas and snacks for sale. I can organise teas and snucks and even a sitting area myself, but the venue is problematic :(

Please share your best venue experiences in UK or outside of it. :)

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hm i feel you my friend!

 

looking for good locations is so difficult...

long time ago i visited the brussels planetarium, for a biosphere gig. thas just awesome.

nightsky projections 360, comfy seats...

next week is there a new venue. you can check out there FB page here: https://www.facebook.com/CosmicNightsBelgium

it looks very cool, but i doubt that a budget of 600 pounds wil be enough...

(if you want i'll send them a mail to ask what they ask).

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Yeah I don't think I can spend more. 

Say a venue is 600
3 uk artists about 200 - 300 each for a set = ~700

logistics + flyers + sitting space = 100
If Venue doesn't have PA that's another expense.

So roughly £2k to organise a small party, fine.. But I doubt I can get more that 200 people to come. That's £10 each = £2k and I am even. Well fine, I can go even if party is great, and everyone is happy, but it just feels like a broken model..
 

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i'm not an expert in organising parties (but i thought about it very often).

your financial sum looks logical to me.

 

but maybe, i'm just thinking out loud here, we could cut costs on artists. say we could ask some folkz we know from this forum (plenty of DJ's here) :)

maybe a few do it for free, who knows :)

hell, we could make it some kind of psybient.org-venue! :)

and we flyer only digital (facebook, twitter and what not), that way we have no printed flyers (= less costs).

you can tell me if i'm dreaming here, but i just wanted to put it out here!

 

anyway, i'll send the planetarium a mail and see wat they say, and just maybe we can start from there.

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Sounds like a lovely plan, Yuri. And financially I think you're being realistic. At least if you have to book venues yourself.

 

The way I do it here in Copenhagen is that I found a place (international student's cafe) that was interested in the cultural aspect of doing an ambient night. They let me have a saturday every month or two (providing it didn't cost them too much money) and I could book for around £200 a night. Not a lot, but enough to give the musicians a little beer money. Also allowed me to hire a deco team and a visual artists if I wanted.

I definitely think I was lucky on that one as I have no money of my own in the pot, but then again, if there's a profit I won't see a dime of it. 

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Yuri,

 

i hope your project succeed.

 

I have made my events in Paris in three type of locations:

- bars 

- night clubs

- squats

 

bars don't like to have payed entrance, so it is hard to get the money back if you pay to artist.

night clubs are usually interested in "crowd that drink".

squats are fun but risky, as you never know what can happen and who will come.

 

for 200 people with payed entrance you probably shall do a "club", me I was visiting a lot of nightclubs (the one that are not open regularly and the one that change a lot music program), and managed to get a "co-production" deals. 

 

The last one was following, party was on Sunday Afternoon 4pm-12am, so it was easier to negotiate the deal. It was a night club in a hostel and occasionally they mad parties there :

- venue was free for us (there was a minimum amount to be spent in bar, otherwise there was a fixed "rent" but was not very high, 500-600 eu)

- we share ticket entrances 

- they take all the bar

 

it ended up pretty well, we had 150-200 people and they were drinking correctly. And actually we had to add our own "subs" to make it sound better.

 

The one before it was Saturday Night, but the "psy" crowd didn't drink enouph, so they didn't wanted to work with us again, but results were good for us:

  • i managed to pay artist and not loose money
  • we had great time

 

Some advises:

  • do some small events, so you have few 100 pounds to invest in future events and get your crowd ready. 
  • find venues that are not "hype"
  • become friends with folks with equipment to borrow you :)
  • be confident that you will bring crowd when you present you project to owners.
  • get support from local organisers, you will need promo support to make an event.
  • dream and make it happen ! you will see happy eyes of people.

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I can see how the psy crowd not drinking enough would be an issue! This is likely why so many festivals are now integrating more mainstream music stages and combining them with bars. 

 

The only alternative would be to host an illegal house/loft party, and charge admittance - but that is risky both financially and security-wise.

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There is one nice place in London wich organise (among other things) chill parties already but they do it themself  or in cooperation with some other groups as well - I mean Inspiral Lounge  http://www.inspiral.co/events

 

 

You can contact them if you are interested, maybe you can do something together ;)

 

Inspiral Events Team   Phone:020 7428 5875

 

 

Other option is to join some other organiser`s group which have regular parties in some club ( as residents) and propose them to create chillout / chaishop room ( alternative  to main scene) - I know this idea from Poland where groups of friends organise parties together - eg. Psylesia ( for main room - psytrance) with Ashoka ( for chillout room)

 

http://www.ashoka.com.pl/?page_id=2394

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So any news on this Yuri? Did it happen or is it going to happen?

 

We have some chill parties in Athens from time to time but the most consistent ones have been Fishimself's events which he holds at his own venue, It (the Place). He manages to continue putting up psybient shows by holding all kinds of very cheap or even free events all weekend, nearly every weekend, with local DJs. However, most of them are urban, techno or progressive. I think he makes money mainly from drinks at those events. He keeps entrance to psybient parties quite reasonable, no more than 15€, usually 10. The venue is quite small, I doubt it can hold more than 200 people and it's only full for a short period whenever I've been. The only way to learn about these events is his Facebook pages, both his own and It's.

 

I reckon that the most important thing is to make some sort of circle of people who will support you by coming to the event without expecting free drinks ;) Facebook is your best bet.

 

I would like to hear how things went if it's happened/happening, hopefully with a few photos if that's at all possible. :)

 

And make sure you upload Matt Hillier's set in its entirety on YT  :D  :P 

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Hello there !

 

Hope this hasn't been discussed yet. I was just thinking that, since our community more or less seems to go worldwide, it could be practical to share our networks in order to help us finding places to play psybient !

 

 

Whether it is a specific venue, or just a location in the world where psy-chilling is a popular activity, or some hidden (or not) festival lacking psybient DJs in their line-up, or even maybe some valiant hearts of ours who want to create small or large events based on this musical mood...

Don't know about you but here in Paris, apart from (much too) rare events from Iurii's team and some others, this scene seems almost non-existent at a professional scale, at least compared to what I've seen in Russia, Australia, Croatia, United States and more.

 

 

So let's share our knowledge and maybe we can all benefit from it by making it easier to dedicate the greatest part of one's life to psybient music :)

 

 

zenjoy

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Hello there !

 

Hope this hasn't been discussed yet. I was just thinking that, since our community more or less seems to go worldwide, it could be practical to share our networks in order to help us finding places to play psybient !

 

 

 

Hi,  yes it has been already discussed. Check this topic ;)   http://forum.psybient.org/index.php/topic/338-venues-for-chill-parties/      

 

Greetings :)  

 

 

Anyway ....... e.g.   next week in Krakow (Poland)  - Klub  Fabryka   https://www.facebook.com/events/556808344470552/

Edited by Gagarin
merged with previous topic

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I missed out on their events, but The BigChill managed to step up from bar gigs by picking unusual venues/times. Did they start on a Sunday avo/eve at Union chapel in London? +1 to the call for spacey planetarium styles too (there's a lush I:Cube album from a gig at one - was that in Paris? via versatile recs anyway) I've seen Scanner at an art gallery and Biosphere in a university concert room. Those last two had arts council funding to allow artists to travel overseas.

 

Relying on psytrance parties is a bit problematic, with ambience often pushed out of a second room in favour of beats, or else the chill space is full of sound spill from t other rigs...So is some sort of 'virtual' event possible, like the record label name suggests?

 

So, we all get comfy at home with snacks and treats and then turn on...but until we have full wall projection screens at home, the potential is a bit limited - visual element is part of our scene but I'm not convinced by the idea of just sat watching a box, rather than a sort of soft fascination with images - like catching sunlight on t waves, raindrop ripples in a puddle, autumn leaves or whatever. Hmm, so it's all the set-up of the venue (along with chances to make friends etc) that home listening misses out on. But, we can DIY our own chill-out spaces with lights, art, lava lamps etc...and 'connect' a bit online? Except I reckon Facebook is properly bogus - twice now they've done a nasty social experiment on users without informed consent and I don't like how it's full of adverts too so I don't participate. Genre forums I struggle with because ithey always seems to miss out a massive chunk of music I love. Online streams so far seem either glitchy or at best tied to an online world that doesn't seem like part of an appropriate 'set & setting'. Grrr, even Twitter has ads - but if there was a way we could know each other more somehow - like are we 0.1% of the general population? so we might pass each other by mostly...How about badges/patches to wear sent via the post with CD/online/USB-hand-to-hand/cassette-tapes(?) distribution of music? That way, we can spot another chiller. I think the Shpongle app was all set to flag up other listeners nearby as a way to catch up. I dunno tho, some folk are understandably in stealth mode rather than flying freak flag waiting to be arrested or heckled by straights.

 

Or, what if ambient music makers made dance music too, then their fans could catch up at those gigs? I guess we'd need a network of possible venues, with residents to pull in locals and info sharing about it all. NewZealand had a mag called LowHum that featured lots of venue ideas and travel logistics like fans with spare couches etc

 

Busking? could it work, hypothetically, for an artist to set off on a bicycle tour to meet fans en route to a festival? SteveHillage writes that artists should try really hard never to give away content for free because it devalues the broader scene (I like DJ set downloads but I prefer paid for mixes so the artists can consent and even get a drink out of the deal) But an artist could release tunes via something that collected emails for a mailing list and then email out details. Then the, realistically, 3 or so fans from each town could lurk around at a street performance of ambience and buy exclusive tracks, chit-chat etc. That might be nice especially for summer - in parks - even with a little portable (solar?) rig for a mini chill-nic sort of thing

 

Really, I want a booze-free, friendly chill space in my high street. That's open 24hrs a day for late night disco-dancing and afternoon lounging. Like an Amsterdam coffee shop - so I guess it's all a little bit in the future for now. Seems like there'll be legal pot soon tho from artic circle of Alaska and Canada, down thru California, Mexico and much of South America past the Tropic of Capricorn. Meanwhile, Ireland looks set to do a Portugal with hope of Scotland joining in, plus decriminalisation movements in Belgium, CzechR, Croatia, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Lithuania, Malta, Russia, Slovenia, Ukraine, etc. Wow legal pot for all in Spain already too, I'd missed that news - in fact UK media seems mostly hopelessly biased. It's tomorrow already - we're the people we've been waiting for - diy ravolution-a-go-go. Thanks heaps to all the folk that work so hard to make events, art/music, scenes - hope to actively participate a little more again some other time/place.

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one option re artists (and this requires trust) is to say, look i'll cover your travel and if the night makes money then we'll share profits. 

Ok money is important, and I am not rich, but in this case money is not even a problem. It's just a lack of decent venues, and if there's a decent venue they won't allow me to organize anything on weekend as I don't have any track record for organizing parties

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My parameters are:
 

Capacity: ~200ppl
Location: London
Sound System: preferably has one in place
Budget: £200 - £700 (Depending on venue and soundsystem/facilities in place)
Time: 6pm - 12am
Date: 22 or 23 of April 2016
Event type: Psychedelic Ambient. Conteprorary electronica. IDM. Projection Mapping.
Bar/License: Not neccessary required

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