Pirate Copy 'Our teachers always said we would end up in Prison'

Image: Pirate Copy

For any in the know ravers who've been keeping tabs on the booming Manchester house movement over the past few years, Pirate Copy will certainly be a name you're acquainted with.

With club nights of every scale imaginable popping up all over the shop  it only seems to be the big names that people remember. But one brand that has defied that trend is Kaluki, a clubnight that has been flexing it's muscles amongst the big boys for some time now, laying on some monumental parties with colossal acts.

The Pirate Copy boys have been a permanent fixture on these billings, playing understudy to some of the industries elitists, not bad for a bunch of lads whose SoundCloud bio reads 'three mates from Manchester, a second hand turntable and some dodgy sampling'. 

However humble that may sound, it's not hard to see that the Pirate Copy collective have grown far beyond that, but it's admirable that they're keeping their feet firmly on the ground.

And with their latest escapades landing them at A Wing for Freeze on Saturday 1st November, a decommissioned cell block at Lancaster Castle, alongside the legendary Carl Craig (listen to his 'Darkness' below), we caught up with the Mancunian gatekeepers who let us in on their monumental rise over the past few years and what's to come in the future. 

Freeze at A Wing is not too far off now, what's it like to be playing under a Detroit legend like Carl Craig? 

Really amazing – Planet E tracks always seem to find a way into our sets, we’re huge fans!  

And then there's the venue as well, what do you make of playing in an abandoned prison, that must be proper mental?  

Haha! it is, have you seen the videos of the place (below)? It looks crazy! Really can’t wait to see it in real life, our teachers always said we would end up in prison, guess they were right.

What can we come to expect of you at Freeze, any curveballs in the locker? 

We always try and make a few edits to take along with us, but we’ll play it as we see it.. Our job on the night is to set the mood for Carl Craig so we’ll be showing the proper respect to him with our selections.

Your Soundcloud bio reads 'three mates from Manchester, a second hand turntable and some dodgy sampling' is it really as simple as that? 

All in all, yes. It’s basically a group of mates just fucking about. Some people like to go to the pub, others play for a football team, and we like to go to the studio.  But that’s what makes what we do good, and whatever success we have had stems from the freedom of just being able to go in and record and just enjoy the process of doing it.

We hope that you can hear that in the music.  We also don’t want to have this stupid long biography stating how we were “listening to classical music from an early age” or some contrived bullshit that was written as if somebody else wrote it... but in fact, we actually wrote it about ourselves, on our laptop, in our bedroom.

Kris Wadsworth reworked your track 'Talk Dat Pimp Shit' (below) earlier this year, how did working with Kris come about? 

We were trying to book him for a gig and ended up getting a remix instead, it was pure fluke!  But wow he can make music that guy, dark, complicated, weird noise! The fact that RA gave his album on Get Physical 2.5 is a scandal!

Your diaries looking pretty full at the moment, are you looking at packing as much as you can in, or will you be sitting down in the studio anytime soon? 

We’re never out of the studio haha! But it is getting to the point where it’s getting difficult to fit everything in, we have two remixes on the cards that we have barely touched but at the same time we have five or six tracks fairly near completion that we are really excited about!  We’ll get it all done somehow!

You're all over Manchester at the moment, what do you make of things in Manchester at the moment?

Manchester is great at the moment – Warehouse Project is back at Store Street, Albert Hall has put on some of the best shows in the country, Gorilla has really made its mark this year, Sankeys is open again minus that bubble wall, and the relatively smaller promotions have been putting on some insane parties throughout the summer!

We’ve been hearing some really great music come out of Manchester again as well, it’s a really exciting place to be at the moment.

And then there was Ibiza for you in the summer, what did you make of that, was that your first summer there together? 

We’ve been playing more and more in Ibiza for the past two or three years, I mean, what can you say about Ibiza? It’s just a crazy place. To be fair over the past five years its unbelievable how much it has actually changed, but there is still that ‘Ibiza feeling’ or whatever that’s always present.  Then you get home and come back to real life…  

There's talk that you have an album in the pipeline, is there any truth in that? If so, whats the thinking behind it? 

Yeah well we have been in the studio a heck of a lot and we have this collection of new music that we are kind of holding on to for now. But we have completely changed our way of working, see the whole idea behind Pirate Copy was that is was sample heavy and all about making re-edits.

We have been in working with different artists and session musicians from around Manchester, recording in as much as we could with the time we had with them, and kind of gluing it all together. The results are like, really slow-mo, warm sounding music that we are thinking of maybe putting more of a collective together and performing the material as a live show.  

The people we have worked with have all been incredibly talented musicians and vocalists so it may be what we do, but we have a stash of this music at the moment that we are sitting on and kind of scratching our heads over.  It’s a very good problem to have! 

Bit of a hypothetical one this, lets say you've got the prison to yourself for a good old fashioned rave up, apart from yourselves who'd you have on and why?

Hmm well we both have quite different opinions on this, James Holden playing his modular system live would be amazing, Phil Weeks, just because it's Phil Weeks, and Prince. If you’re playing ‘fantasy booking’, then you ALWAYS book Prince.

Catch Pirate Copy supporting Carl Craig for Freeze at A Wing by getting your tickets here.

Tickets are no longer available for this event