Rich Furness Interview: people need to understand a club isn't Spotify

One of the pillars of Liverpool’s diverse and vibrant dance music scene, Rich Furness has been a fixture in the city for well over a decade. Although known by many for his residencies at Chibuku Shake Shake and Abandon Silence, his previous form as a promoter helped establish dubstep as a genre in the city as well as fostering a following for a series of other unheard genres.

With Rich returning to the promotion fold with Go over the Spring Bank Holiday weekend, we caught up with him for what we thought was a quick chat about the new night. It turned into a lengthy analysis of house ravers being worried about their snapback positioning, broadcasting for John Peel day and getting James Blake to play 'Purple Rain'.

So tell us about this new night of yours then Rich and why Liverpool needs it?

It’s focusing on vocal and instrumental Grime accompanied by classic Dubstep and older, darker instrumental Garage. I've been a massive fan of Grime for years, I'm fascinated with its history and I think it’s the last truly British dance music genre alongside Jungle. Liverpool's had a few proper Grime moments; Logan Sama at Abandon Silence; the Rinse night at Chibuku last year, but not enough, and I've always wondered why there wasn't more Grime focused nights considering we have so many talented up and coming MC's. 

The idea was in my head for a couple of years after doing a Grime set in a studio with Miss Stylie. She is another reason I've started it up, I basically just want to DJ with her on the mic more often! When I thought about doing my own night there was only one person I had in mind for the first booking which was Youngstar. He's recently had tracks featured on FabricLive CD's by Oneman, Digital Soundboy and Four Tet, so more people are noticing the influence and the impact he has made.

Booking him along with Slackk and the venue being available just fell into place. Drop The Dumbells is amazing, it’s like a cross between a warehouse and an exhibition space and we are so excited to be using it in this kind of capacity for the first time. It’s the perfect space for what we want to achieve. So yeah the idea was there for ages it just took a couple of catalysts to make me do something about it.

What catalysts were those?

I play a lot of House and it’s been on blistering form the past two years, but it’s heading for overload. I had 9 months where I was almost constantly listening to and playing it, then at the start of March I went to DMZ's 8^th Birthday in London. It was the first time I'd listened to Dubstep all night for a good while, and it blew me away and reminded me why I fell in love with that music in the first place; the rewinds, the skanking, the jumping about into people and generally losing your shit. I'd missed it.

 A few weeks later I was at a House night and I've never seen so many people in a club with so little atmosphere. It was dire. Some people going to House nights are more concerned with looking cool and following the crowd, and have no real passion for the music, which is why its getting harder to get reactions from new music.  

I read a review of the last Abandon Silence and the reviewer wrote 'it’s such a shame Mosca didn't play Bax', and I'm the opposite of that view. I've got more respect for Mosca because he didn't play Bax and played what the fuck he wanted to. Some people need to understand a club isn't Spotify. You can’t just have your favourite tune on demand. How are DJs going to generate new anthems if all people want to hear is old ones?

I'm always keen to hear stuff I don't know, people forget that every tune they love they once hadn't heard. Coming from a rave background the best nights out for me are when you get home looking a mess with dirt covering you, feeling like you've been battered through dancing so much and wondering 'what was that tune?' Not when you come home and your snapback is still perfectly placed at a 90 degree angle on your head, your trabs are gleaming and the highlight of your night was hearing 'Show Me Love'. 

People might think I'm hating on House but I'm not, I genuinely love the music. It’s just something I've observed in the past year or so that the more people getting into it the less it’s actually going off, and sometimes in a club it fails to produce the liveliness and rowdiness that 140bpm music can create. At DMZ I realized I'd missed all that energy and realized I was getting a bit bored of doing pointy fingers to the ceiling dancing. 

 What’s your previous experience of promoting in the city?

 I started a night called Jasbof in an old man's pub on a Saturday afternoon in 2002 which ran off and on for about 7 years in various venues. We had an anything goes music policy but focused on crazy stuff like Breakcore and Hardcore Techno, booking people like Venetian Snares, Drop The Lime, Shitmat and Hellfish. We started booking dubstep acts in 2005 and gave Liverpool debuts to people like Shackleton and Rustie who've gone on to do amazing things. We also achieved stuff like going live on Radio 1 for John Peel day in 2005 which was bizarre as we were just so small and low budget. Lots of things happened by accident and fell into place, and some nights worked and some flopped, but it was all a learning curve.

The last couple of years I've missed promoting and there's so many new people I want to see DJ that other nights probably won't book any time soon, so it feels like the right time to get something going again.

 You’re also playing at the Mixmag Live event at the newly launched East Village Arts Club. Have you been to the club yet and how does it compare to the Masque?

 I haven't had a chance to get in there yet. I like the name change and I've seen a few pictures and it looks sweet. I've seen the venue change a lot over the past ten years and always got used to the overhauls. It's always going to be a world class venue and one of the best in the city. I hear the new system is absolutely on point, which is bad news for my ears.

 You’ve been a resident for both Chibuku and Abandon Silence in recent times. Tell us some more about both of those parties and what they represent to you? We heard you got a bit excited playing Purple Rain to close an event at the latter!

 They're both really different. I didn't expect to still be DJ'ing at Chibuku six years after I started and I think they took a bit of risk with me back then as I was not your archetypal Chibuku DJ. I think playing there definitely made people notice me a lot more. I've loved every minute and I still have the same enthusiasm and passion for sharing new music as I did back in 2007. I'm two off playing 50 sets at Chibuku now so it’s been a major part of my life.

The team there are a great bunch of lads and have showed enormous faith in me over the years and I'm hugely thankful for the opportunities I've had. The main thing I've learnt from Chibuku is how to build a room up. I'm better known for playing heavy music at Chibuku but I play a lot of deeper stuff that people don't really hear in the calm before the storm while the rooms filling up.

 Abandon Silence is different as I've played there since their very first gig. I've only missed about four of forty plus events in the last three years, so I've watched the night grow into the monster it is now. Andy has mentioned it was an interview between him and me in 2010 that made him start it, so it’s nice to think I've played a part in its inception. Chibuku had a long line of amazing residents in the 7 years before I started there, so to be resident at a night since its birth and still be there 3 years later with the health it is in feels special. It’s definitely the only night where I've been forced to rewind Alice Deejay. 

That Prince moment wasn't me playing it, it was James Blake. He actually asked me 'do you think I should play Purple Rain last', like 'no' would ever be an answer, and I sort of forced him to play the full seven and a half minutes. I was disappointed that he didn't have the 18 minute version to be honest. It did get pretty emotional during the end of it, a lot of man hugs going on.

As someone who was an instrumental figure in the explosion of Dubstep in Liverpool, can you see another form of electronic music making such a big impression again? Or is that it now for musical ingenuity?

 To be completely honest I can't. It’s stagnated. A lot of new producers just try and sound like other producers now, which leads to 'revivals' like the recent 90's House one. In terms of musical revolution, how’s anybody going to innovate when all everyone wants to do is recreate? Copying sounds and structures isn't experimenting, it's reanimating, and it worries me no new sounds or subgenres have made me really sit up and get excited since 2010 when I discovered Juke and Shangaan, which were both too fast and too hectic to ever make a real impact. 

 There was such an explosion of new sounds and interesting rhythms and structures being generated between 2009 and 2011 with the whole 'post Dubstep' thing, and then everything since 2011 has slowed down a little and stalled. We are getting ourselves stuck in a constant state of cyclical recycling. I'm not saying there's no good music being made, there's shitloads, but it’s all from familiar genres.
Because of this, I'm more interested in reviving long lost music at the minute. There's so many massively overlooked old Garage and Grime tunes. The same classics keep getting rinsed, so I've been doing loads of digging the past two years for slept on tunes, discovering stuff no one’s really picked up on yet even ten years later. I'm addicted to Discogs and have been buying excessive amounts of vinyl lately.

 Having been a part of the Liverpool scene then for over a decade, can you let us in on what makes the city tick musically?

 I'm just glad we've finally caught up with other cities in terms of nights being on the week and the amount of nights on. A lot of newcomers to the city won't realize it wasn't always like this! I've got massive respect for people like Freeze who are just constantly trying to take things next level. We've also got a stream of new musical talent as well and producers like Lohi, SPD, John Heckle, Lucent and Ghostchant give me great hope for where the cities heading.

 What else have you got lined up for the summer? And any forages into production as well you can discuss?

 I'm fairly busy DJ'ing until the end of June. I'll be plotting Go! 002 & 003 over the summer, I already have the bookings lined up and they will be continuing in the 'UK Bass' legends vein. Production wise, it’s never going to happen. I'm far too self-critical. I said earlier sounding like other people isn't innovative but I want my music at least sonically on a par with other producers, but I find it hard.

There's enough lacklustre , uninspired, badly produced music around at the minute and I don't need to add to it. People get into producing to try and further their DJ career but I'm not making music for that reason. Saying that, I've been making a lot of really harsh Techno lately which I'm quite happy with, I find it easier when using distortion to make things sound horrible and abrasive, and I've finally made a couple of tunes I'm actually happy with and might send out. 

And finally, dream situation time. You can go back to any period in clubland history, and play at any club. Who would you have playing alongside you and what tune would you drop that would define the evening?

I should say something really cool like The Hacienda, Paradise Garage, Rage or Shoom or something, but in all honesty it would be 1998 and I'd be back to back with Mark EG playing hard trance in The Rollers at Helter Skelter in Milton Keynes. That or at Quadrant Park in 1990.

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