The most unlikely scene: how Uber somehow put Carlisle on the clubbing map

Image: Annie Mac (C) Danny Fowler

Eight years and counting, Uber continue to defy the odds by bringing some of the greatest DJ talent to the border county. They have given Carlisle debuts to the likes of Pete Tong, Carl Craig, Justin Martin, Calvin Harris, Annie Mac, Derrick Carter, James Zabiela, Danny Rampling, Kenny Dope, Josh Wink and Nic Fanciulli, and their next line up is their most outrageous yet.

Saturday 24th August sees them bring MK, James Zabiela, Todd Terry and Riva Starr all performing under one roof in The Venue in Carlisle... and it's made us wonder, how on earth has all this been possible? In a quest to find out, we speak to the man behind it all, Matt Tyson.

Are you surprised that Uber has come this far?

I think I always saw it had potential. I guess there were points in the past with the odd quiet night where I thought, 'this is going nowhere', but I think really it's one of those where if you hang around long enough, the thing you’ve always liked becomes cool again - I think it's a classic case of that.

It's come good for us now partly because the interest is huge in dance music at the moment. I guess if you have a real passion for something that shines through.
 
So you think now that there's more dance music in the charts than in previous years?

There's more than at almost any time I can remember, other than maybe that Cream superclub kinda era in the late 90s… all the trance, Daft Punk, big house tunes etc. but now you see more band/act-led stuff like Disclosure as well.

It's not that we book that many people who are outright commercial, although we will have bigger events like the last one with people like Annie Mac and Shadow Child, but the current culture of young people understanding DJs and electronic acts is good for us.
 
So where can you go now? What can you do to better this last year?

I guess it's just trying to get more exciting acts that we haven't had already. The August Bank Holiday is a massive event that gives us the opportunity to be able to afford a bigger line up than we normally would, but the 8th birthday on December 6th will be back to basics, back to the roots of what Uber is about.
 
And how would you define your 'roots', your philosophy?

Well it's not as narrow a field as a lot of others, because we don't have the luxury of being in a city that has a house night, a techno night, a tech house night etc. We cover all the genres of dance music; well, all the good genres anyway!

I guess it's house and tech house predominantly. When we started doing nights all those years ago we wanted to make a night big enough to book people like Todd Terry and Danny Rampling, which we ended up doing a number of times, but the night's gradually moved with the times from that point.

So if you look at our next line up, we've got Todd Terry back but we've also got a current commercial big hitter in MK, as well as the up and coming Tom Flynn (who's remixed a recent track by Uber's own Ki Creighton and Jamie Roy below).

It's not always easy staying true to your own roots but at the same time, keeping things relevant to people younger than we are, but if you make sure you stay in credible genres, it is easier to get the balance right.
 
But is it fair to say that someone like Todd Terry is an act that you are really about at heart, i.e. a US-based sound?

Well I guess that's my personal taste, but it's not just me who chooses because there's a good team behind Uber. Everyone has their say, everyone has their own opinion and likes… we try and take a bit from everybody. For me, yeah, Derrick Carter, DJ Sneak, Todd Terry, all day long. But you can't just keep going back to all that.

My partner Ki is a lot more tech house and techno influenced so his influence got people like Yousef, Joris Voorn and Nic Fanciulli involved. 

Carlisle is a city of about 100,000 people. The quality of the nights you have on are way beyond any other city of that size that I'm aware of… why do you think Uber punches above its weight like this?

There's the longevity - the fact that Uber's been going eight years and the other nights I've been involved with takes us back about twelve years - so from that you build up a really good reputation with agents, managers and the DJs themselves.

We don't rely on having to make a profit to keep the thing stable - often this has been funded just for the love - so it means that we can actually pay the DJs, which doesn't half help! And we look after them, take them out for dinner etc.
 
Yeah, that's key. It's amazing how few promoters actually bother with this.

Yep. All those little touches make a big difference. I guess also it's the industry contacts we've built up. In all the time we've been at it, we haven't just been sitting here doing nights, we've been out in the field at clubs, festivals etc. Ki's been out there DJing at other nights, releasing music on labels, A & R-ing… so we've been well looked after by industry folk.

People like Jim Mawdsley from Shindig, Serg at Club Class and Circus obviously with Yousef. If we didn't have the backing of people like that, we wouldn't have got close to some of the acts we've put on.
 
Yousef's probably been the DJ who's played the most for you - how did this come about?

Ki, our main resident, met him on the dance floor at Cream in the 90s and they became best mates. Ki used to buy equipment in my DJ shop so that's how we got talking. A friend of mine from school, Ben, came back from London and had started DJing down there with a really good house DJ called Stel P, and between all of us that's how it all started.

So Yousef was the first proper name we had. At that time he wasn't the worldwide name he is today, but he'd just won the Muzik Magazine Bedroom Bedlam competition (see that mix below) and he'd been playing a bit at Ministry of Sound, and as he went huge we've stayed loyal to each other. 

I think he actually played for us every year for ten years consecutively, and he's always looked after us - if any agents or managers need a reference, we normally send them to him.

So you'd say that word-of-mouth recommendation is fundamental to your success?

Absolutely. Carlisle's a long way away from most places, it doesn't have loads of posh hotels and it doesn't have a massive choice of venues, so we have to go that extra mile to look after the people we put on. Once one act from an agency has a good night here, it's a lot easier to book other acts from the same roster.
 
Do you find that acts drop their prices for you in order to support what you're doing? You've had a lot of names on in small venues down the years.

Yes, a lot of them have been really good. A lot more so in the past though, because we were only about small venues, but obviously now when we do a night in a bigger venue, we can't exactly work that angle. We're still very grateful to people like Yousef and Danny Rampling and many others who have seen beyond the money and have just supported what we do.
 
Are there any DJs that have eluded you, that you're desperate for, that you think 'if I book these guys, I could retire'?

It would never really be the case of retiring because of any financial gains, but I guess it's got to be Danny Tenaglia, Carl Cox and Laurent Garnier. We're not a million miles off those kind of names to be honest, but these guys are in serious demand so you've just got to be patient.

So other than the acts, how else would you like to move the night forward?

I'd like to do something large, on a larger scale than something we're doing even now. I'd like to do something outside of a club environment, like in a castle, or something of architectural interest - an interesting space.

The other thing I'd like to do is just cement what we're doing in The Venue, because at last we've found somewhere that is big enough and good enough for us to make a big effort with production. That's one of the things that's brought us up a level in the last year, so we want more of the same there, like three or four events, and then one or two wildcards.

I really enjoyed putting some DJs on in the prison at A-Wing in Lancaster, and after the success of those nights I hope they’ll announce more dates later this year, so that's something to look forward to.
 
And I guess the other thing I want to do is completely the opposite - do a few nights in 200 capacity venues like the old days, with acts like, say, Mark Farina and Phil Weeks. We're in the early stages of tying up a venue for that, so hopefully we can announce something soon.
 
It's your eighth birthday in December; can you see Uber living on for another eight years?

I can certainly see me doing it for another few years. Beyond that I think it would need somebody else to take the reins and me to have more of a back seat, but there's a load of people working with me at the moment who have enough passion and knowledge, so I think there's plenty left in the tank, but who knows?

It isn't the easiest thing to balance with a family and a life outside of clubs, which is why we only do four or five nights a year, but to be honest, I think the city only needs it four or five times a year anyway.
 
What actually inspired you to get off your arse start doing nights?

To be honest, me and my school friend Ben thought it would be a good way of getting girls! And I got one within about two weeks; he's still playing the field now - there wasn't a massive intent to educate people. We were too young to think of ourselves as musical educators, but some of the early musical decisions we made helped earn us long-term respect.
 
I guess we were partly influenced by a night in Carlisle called Perfect which was slowing down at that point, which historically had booked some US house acts but the sound had moved towards a harder, proggy and trancey sound which we didn't really like… so we'd heard some good music there and also on the odd trip to Shindig in Newcastle.

Then as we started going to Shindig more it showed us what was possible, and it then just became about trying to bring that vibe and that sound to Carlisle. Then the goal became to do a night that was of national quality.
 
Do you think that because Carlisle doesn't have that big a scene historically, that has actually helped, i.e. the crowd is more up for it because it's a bit more of a special occasion than in other cities?

Yes, definitely. If you look at Leeds - and Leeds has great crowds and nights, I'm not knocking it in any way - but the public there are spoilt for choice. You can see Magda on a Thursday night, Garnier on a Friday and Luciano on a Saturday; and I'm sure that with choice like that, people could become blase about buying tickets in advance, getting to the club early and so on, because they've got seven or eight great nights and venues.

In Carlisle you've got about five chances a year to listen to good house music from big acts. What we do in our own niche up here is special to a lot of people, and that's why they always go bonkers!

For more information on the Uber Night and Day party on Saturday 24th August head here.

Tickets are no longer available for this event