Where to start with the approaching and long-awaited season all music lovers set their sights on for the year…summer and FESTIVALS. Camping, wellies, warm beer, straw hats, the week-long recovery session afterwards; we love it all. Whether in the UK or abroad, we are beyond spoilt for choice when it comes to live music events, from indie/rock offerings in the city to the best in dance and electronic music on the beaches of Croatia, there’s something for everyone.

This year for DMM, we’re keen to go to as many festivals as possible (not just dance, electronic and house ones, but a whole variety of genres) and bring back with us plenty of mad stories and experiences to share, memories of seeing our favourite artists and DJs live, far too many photos and probably damaging our liver a bit too much. But that’s what it’s all about, so here’s our guide to the festivals we’ll be covering this year – if you’re going to any, we’ll be there at the front!

Live At Leeds: 4th May, Leeds

Celebrating “the best in upcoming local bands alongside more established national acts”, Live at Leeds 2013 will see some of the biggest names in indie/rock music take over Leeds for the day and well into the night. With a stormer of a line-up, including The 1975, Everything Everything, The Neighbourhood, Peace and Rudimental, we’re expecting to get our rock on, relish the indie vibe and immerse ourselves into everything the festival, now in its 6th year, has to offer.

Read more on DMM >>
www.dancemusicmanchester.co.uk/2013/live-at-leeds-2013-festival-rekindling-our-love-affair-with-indierock/

See who SpamellaB’s top 5 artists/bands are via Culture Vulture.

Live At Leeds / @LAL2013 / Facebook.com/Liveatleeds

We Are FSTVL: 25th May, Essex

The very first We Are FSTVL sees the Damyns Hall Aerodrome in Essex play host to over 70 of the hottest names in electronic dance music across 10 stages/arenas from 11am – 2.30am. With some of the world’s leading club brands and labels, including Cocoon, Crosstown Rebels, Defected In The House and Kehakuma, plus specially built areas within the venue including a beach arena, we’re predicting We Are FSTVL to be the first of many and a unique festival experience we won’t forget.

Read more on DMM > www.dancemusicmanchester.co.uk/2013/introducing-the-first-we-are-fstvl-festival-may-2013/

Check out our interview with the gorgeous Sam Divine, who will be playing in the Defected In The House arena >> www.dancemusicmanchester.co.uk/2013/dmm-inteview-defecteds-sam-divine-ahead-of-we-are-fstvl-in-may/

We Are FSTVL / @wearefstvl / Facebook.com/wearefstvl

Parklife Weekender: 8th – 9th June, Manchester

Possibly Manchester’s most well-known festival, summer would not be the same without a Parklife Weekender fix. Having grown in size and reputation since 2010, it has become a highlight of the festival calendar and continues to bring some of the biggest and well-known names to Heaton Park. Spread across seven arenas plus the huge open main stage, expect to see the likes of Julio Bashmore, Disclosure, Sub Focus, Bondax, Maceo Plex, Example and Eats Everything smash Manchester up over the weekend.

Read more on DMM >> www.dancemusicmanchester.co.uk/2013/from-manchester-with-love-parklife-2013-line-up-announced/

Parklife Weekender / @Parklifefest / Facebook.com/parklifefestival

Hideout Festival: 3rd – 5th July, Croatia

What more could you want from a festival: guaranteed sunshine and hot weather, beach and boat parties and a huge line-up offering an array of the biggest names in electronic, house and dance music… That’s where Hideout Festival comes in and ticks all the boxes. Located on Zcre Beach, Island of Pag in Croatia, be treated to the sounds of Chase & Status, Loco Dice, Modeselektor, SBTRKT, Seth Troxler and Skream & Benga plus many more!

Hideout Festival / @hideoutfestival / Facebook.com/HideoutFestival

Cocoon In The Park: 13th July, Leeds

What happens when you put Sven Väth, Richie Hawtin, Ricardo Villalobos and Craig Richards in a typically green Yorkshire landscape? The result is Cocoon In The Park, the official annual event for the UK’s techno music lovers in Temple Newsham, a gathering which will witness an impeccable sound system, creative visuals and performers – and of course, bringing the party-goers together for its 5th birthday!

We’re selling tickets! >> Make sure you follow us on Twitter @dancemusicmcr / Facebook.com/dancemusicmanchester to buy them.

Cocoon In The Park / @CocoonInThePark / Facebook.com/CocoonInThePark

Beacons Festival: 16th – 18th August, Skipton

Taking over Heslaker Farm in Skipton will be the annual Beacons Festival – as we see it, Yorkshire’s smaller-scale answer to Glastonbury but still offering huge names in the world of electronic, house and melodic music. From Django Django to John Talabot, Dutch Uncles to Ghost Poet and Eats Everything to Bondax, Beacons Festival isn’t just about the music. We’re looking forward to the chilled environment, sampling the Gourmet Street Food, pizza and whisky tasting, plus pop-up tea rooms too!

Beacons Festival / @BEACONSFEST / Facebook.com/BeaconsFestival

Creamfields: 23rd – 25th August, Cheshire

After last year’s chaotic end which saw the festival ending a day early, we’re hoping and praying this year’s Creamfields won’t be a wash-out! A firm DMM favourite, 2013 sees yet another incredible line-up, spoiling us with the biggest and the best names in dance, house and electronic music. There’s far too many to list, but think Duke Dumont, The Prodigy, Paul Oakenfold, Steve Angello and Porter Robinson, you’re on the right lines.

Creamfields / @Creamfields / Facebook.com/Creamfields

Mint Festival: 21st September, Leeds

The very first Mint Festival at Lotherton Hall last year was one of our highlights of 2012, most noticeably the Bitch arena and we can’t wait for its return this year. Bringing together some of the world’s biggest DJs in house, techno, dance and drum’n’bass (official lineup and details to be announced), Mint Festival is the perfect end to the festival season.

Read more on DMM >> www.dancemusicmanchester.co.uk/2012/our-highlight-of-2012-so-far-mint-festival-leeds/

Mint Festival / @Mint_Festival / Facebook.com/MintFestival

The BassJockeys, also known as Darren Leasley and James Bullows, are good friends of ours who are always game for anything that involves music. Whether it’s raving hard at a festival or club night, smashing out the tunes on their weekly show on Manchester Global Radio or DJing at one of Manchester’s top venues, these lads not only know how to party but know their music in a big way.

So we decided to take some time out and get to know the REAL BassJockeys. How they came about, what inspires them and where the bloody hell they get all their energy from. As well of course, to see where they hope 2013 and beyond take them; we know they are destined for BIG things. We hope you enjoy reading what they had to say as much as we did! #BassDMM

The Beginning

So Darren and James, how did you two guys meet?
Hi guys! Well we first met in our first year of senior school when Bullows got us both into trouble for playing noughts & crosses in a maths lesson, both at fault but Bullows more so for suggesting we play it in the most boring of maths lessons. The first thing we both remember is doing detention together and Darren thinking, ‘I hate this kid’.

Tell us how you both got into DJing in the first place and ‘BassJockeys’ came about?
BassJockeys came about through our mutual love of dance, house and trance music. We used to be out raving together every week and Darren bought a Tiesto Live in Concert DVD one weekend. We watched it and decided, ‘This is what I have to do’. So he then bought his first decks (a terrible all-in-one system) and eventually taught himself how to DJ.

Over the next few weeks Bullows learnt the art of not trainwrecking and before you knew it, we both could mix and we had our first residency in a club in Oldham. To this day it remains a special memory as we had countless nights of fun there, playing 9pm -1am every week and playing ridiculously hard tunes for the club it was. There were times when we played 170pm hardcore tunes while people were finishing their evening meals and there were times we put Ferry Corsten – Brainbox on, left the decks and went to rave in the middle of the dancefloor. Throughout these nights Bullows come up with our name and The BassJockeys were born.

Do you both have similar music tastes or do they ever clash? How do you bring them together?
Yes we both love anything you can rave to. Anything house, electro, trance, techno, tech house, dubstep, drum’n’bass and so on. We don’t really have any musical differences at all apart from Bullows is quite partial to a bit of Justin Bieber. We always try and incorporate as many sounds and styles in our sets and shows as possible. [We suspect a hint of sarcasm here, but whatever floats your boat Bullows, we try not to judge!]

When did you first start getting into house, techno, trance & electro? First CD/album you bought?
We’ve always liked it. Going back as early as we can remember the more upbeat the tunes, the better. Back in the day we were only hearing commercial songs on the radio as kids, tracks like Mr Vain, No Limits, It’s My Life stand out as being the ones we both used to like running around in school discos as children.

In school we started to like more of the trance sounds; William Orbit’s Adagio For Strings, Gouryella, Tenshi, PPK – Resurrection, System F – Out Of The Blue, anything Tiesto and of course the obvious ones like Daft Punk – One More Time, Zombie Nation – Kernkraft 400, Underworld – Born Slippy. First CD’s are hard to remember it most probably one of the ‘Now’s’ or the single could have been Suggs – Cecilia.

Tell us how you got your show on Manchester Global Radio and how you’ve developed your show into what it is now…
Our good friends Lempo and Carr already had a show on there which we used to listen to a lot and they phoned us up saying a slot had become available and they both had recommended us to fill it. We were delighted to fill it and that’s how it started. We always liked the idea of sharing our favourite tracks and DJs with as many people as possible so the idea of the show has always been the same… we pick some of the biggest and best from clubland that week and also our personal favourite tune of the week and end with one of our all time favourites, the classic of the week.

You’ve previously had guest mixes from the likes of dance music legends Michael Woods, Kryder, Hardwell, Deniz Koyu and Chicane. How did you get such big names on your show? Any particular favourites?
That’s right, we’re very privileged to have many of our idols and some of the world’s biggest DJs on our show. We got them by either speaking to their management or speaking to them direct and asking if they would like to appear on the show with a guest mix. Some DJs, like Kryder who we get on well with, it is quite simple; others we have to arrange certain dates and wait around for the guests to finish work on a new track so they can play it, etc.

As you can see, it can become quite tedious but we’re very happy with every guest we’ve had on the show and it is worth the hard work for us to share their sounds that we love so much on our show to thousands of listeners each week. There’s no better pleasure for any DJ than to share their favourite tracks/artists with others.

Our favourite guests so far have been two of our long time idols, The Cut Boys. We were blown away by their mix they did for us as were a lot of the listeners. Their creativity and imagination is, in our opinion, unmatched anywhere in clubland. They’re also incredibly nice guys to get on with and their mix had it all,  all genres, massive bombs, filth, classics and surprises. We couldn’t have asked for much more.

Who would be your dream guest on the show who you’ve not had on yet?
Simple, our dream guest would be the man who started it all off for us, Tiesto. We have enquired and spoke to his team a lot. Fingers crossed, hopefully we can get him on in the future.

Let’s talk about festivals and music events – what were the highlights for you in 2012 as ravers?
As ravers our highlights would be The Warehouse Project re-opening, Creamfields as a whole, Porter Robison at Sankeys, Chemical Brothers at WHP, Feed Me at WHP, Avicii at O2 Arena, Carl Cox at WHP, Mint Festival as a whole, Qulinez at Creamfields, Deniz Koyu at Mint Warehouse and John Dahlback at Sankeys. There were plenty more amazing raves we went to but these are the ones that stand out.

What about as DJs? You played some pretty high profile nights, such as The Warehouse Project on the Skrillex night – surely that was one?
Yeah we’ve been lucky enough to play at some massive gigs last year. Every gig we love as much as the last, as long as we’re mixing on a loud system, we’re happy. But yes, Skrillex at WHP was one of our fave gigs; the atmosphere was unreal, the room was the busiest we’ve seen that room and 99% of the people in there were jumping none stop with us. Darren remembers looking over at the bar staff and even they were bouncing.

It was an amazing gig because a lot of our close friends were there too and for us, playing, having a good rave with our good friends… it doesn’t get better. When we played on the WHP re-opening with Axwell and Eric Prydz, that was a similar atmosphere and one of the highlights was one of the ravers showing us his phone and had typed out “You guys are the best thing I’ve heard EVER! I would s**g you two it’s that good” … We take that as a compliment!

What’s one of your all-time favourite tracks you play which always guarantee your listeners going mental?
We have so many all time favourites all you have to do is listen to our Classic of the Week each week on the show. We always like to keep the crowd going and never stopping so it’s hard to name one. A few of the ones that will always cause chaos are Maurizio Gubellini – 5 Seconds, Knife Party – Rage Valley, Eric Prydz remix of Midnight City, J-Trick – I’m So Hot, Albin Myers’ Hells Bells. Over the years we’ve been DJing, one guaranteed crowd favourite is Operation Blade by Public Domain no matter what remix or bootleg we play.

What are your future plans then as Bass Jockeys? Realistic or fantasy…
We will be setting up our own record label in the near future once our productions take off and maybe branching out to a few labels. We also see ourselves in a few years playing at all of the big festivals worldwide and eventually would love to run our own agency in which we showcase up and coming DJ talent to the world. If we were to get signed to Spinnin’ Records (our favourite label) that would be a dream come true. For the time being with them goals in mind we’re going to be concentrating on our own productions, our podcast and our show.

Also, tell us more about these podcasts, Bassment, we’ve seen you tweet about
Bassment is a new monthly Podcast we’ll be doing, which will be showcasing some of the best underground tracks from our favourite genres – electro, trance, techno, tech house and dubstep. We get a lot of amazing promo tracks each month too and we will also be featuring a lot of them on the Podcast. To sum Bassment up, it will be two hours of nonstop best in underground rave.

In your opinion, where are the best places or nights to go for a good rave in Manchester?
The best places to go for a rave in Manchester are The Warehouse Project, Sankeys, Sound Control, Joshua Brooks and Mint Lounge for sure but there are lots of little venues with really good nights on here all the time too. We love checking out new venues/nights and luckily enough we live in Manchester where ‘rave’ was founded. There are so many amazing new nights and venues it’s nonstop. To quote the Chemical Brothers – “What happens in Manchester today, happens in the rest of the world tomorrow”.

Describe what the BassJockeys are about in 5 words…
Rave, fun, chaos causers, party. [We could not agree more, guys!]

Finally, give us a heads-up on new music we should listen out for – we heard it here first!
There’s so much good music out there, there’s always revolutionary new sounds styles and what’s good is that all the genres are effectively coming together. You can listen to a Skrillex set and hear techno and R’n’B just as we did at WHP, you can listen to Eric Prydz and hear deep house and filthy electro. Everything in clubland is coming together now and we all shouldn’t really genre-rise music anyone, we tend not to, if the track is good it’s good regardless of genre or artist. Some of the artists to look out for and whom we’ll be hearing more from in the future are: Joey Suki, Popeska, Madeon, Walden, Feenixpawl, ThreeSixty, Dzeko & Torres, Will Sparks, J-Trick, Mikkas, Sick Individuals, Disfunktion, Deorro and Torro Torro to name a few.

Check out more of the BassJockeys

Twitter: twitter.com/BassJockeys
Facebook: www.facebook.com/BassJockeys
SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/bassjockeys
MixCloud: www.mixcloud.com/BassJockeys
PHOTOGRAPHY: Eddy Gosht / Oh My Gosht Photography

The Creamfields team have announced that the sale of early bird tickets will close on Friday 2nd March and that the lineup will finally be announced for this years return of the award winning dance music festival.

In true Creamfields style, the lineup has been kept as a closely guarded secret but is being billed as the biggest and best festival yet. We have no doubts however that the usual crowd will be returning from trance legends Tiesto and Van Buuren, to Deadmau5, Pete Tong to Eddie Halliwell to the legends (and now unbelievably popular) trio from Sweden, that form the Swedish House Mafia  of Axwell, Seb Ingrosso and DMM favourite Steve Angello.

Will grammy award winning Skrillex be headlining in 2012? Will Deadmau5 be donning the infamous mau5 head in the Warrington rain? Will Kissy Sell Out be rocking the strongbow tent once again? Who would you like to see in an ideal line up? Comment below or on our Facebook page!

AN21 live from Creamfields 2011, aired on Pete Tong’s Radio One show on 2nd September. Listen online for free at Soundcloud.

AN21 (younger brother to Steve Angello, from the Swedish House Mafia) is already a crowd favourite and a definite star in the Dance Music Manchester offices. Following a similar styling to the SHM, with a twist of filthy basslines that his older brother is famous for on his Size Matters label, if you haven’t heard this guys name yet, you will soon.

AN21 live from the SIZE MATTERS Arena @ Creamfields 2011, Saturday 27th August

Tracklist:
-AN21 & Max Vangeli vs. Swanky Tunes – Mystery W/ Jus Jack — That Sound (AN21 & Max Vangeli remix) & Where You Are Acapella
-AN21 & Max Vangeli – Fresh Start vs Swanky Tunes — United w/ Together Acapella
-Adele — Set fire to the rain (Thomas Gold remix)
-Sander Van Doorn – Koko W/ Pressure acapella, w/ Coldplay Fix you W/ Starkillers & Alex kenji & Nadia Ali — Pressure (Alesso remix)

AN21 Live At Creamfields 2011

So Creamfields is our favourite weekend of the year, we won’t deny that. So to celebrate another fantastic festival, we are building a collection of sets from across the dance festival weekend, from all varieties of DJ’s. If you have any more links, please email them to info@dancemusicmanchester.co.uk.

Creamfields 2011 Free Set Download Collection

• Judge Jules Creamfields Set Download
• Eddie Halliwell Creamfields 2011 Set Download
• Magnetic Man Creamfields 2011 Set Download
• Danny Byrd Creamfields 2011 Set Download
• MistaJam  Creamfields 2011 Set Download
• Caspa  Creamfields 2011 Set Download
• Eric Prydz Creamfields 2011 Set Download