Interview: The Blast

With their huge bookings and eclectic lineups, The Blast has been one of the Bristol party scene’s great success stories of the last decade. July 23 sees the debut of Sequences, an ambitious new outdoor festival in association with Critical Music and Deep Medi. We caught up with promoter Tom Hoyle to find out more.

Who are the people behind The Blast? What do you do when you’re not organising massive parties?

The core team is myself (Tom), Rob (TS2W), and Kane. Rob and I started The Blast with a friend called Ollie but he eventually escaped the UK for sunnier climes. We don’t really do much apart from organise parties. We’re lucky enough to have somehow managed to make it a full time thing.

Redlight, Toddla T and Plastician have all described The Blast as being among their favourite UK club nights. What are you doing right?

It’s great to have that positive feedback from artists. There’s not really a masterplan. We just try and keep the lineups fresh, interesting and fun. We always try and remember to get the DJs really drunk so they usually leave at least thinking they had a good time.

When The Blast started most club nights were dedicated to a single genre but you programmed a wide range of music from day one. Was that about broadening the night’s appeal?

There were three of us involved, and we all had slightly different tastes. Ollie was mainly into hip-hop and house, Rob and I were more into drum & bass and breakbeats…we also used to go to a lot of free parties where the music policy was eclectic. We wanted to take a bit of that ethos into a club setting where a group of friends could come together even if they weren’t into exactly the same sounds.

That multi-genre approach is more common today. Has The Blast been influential in that respect?

I’d like to think so. A lot of people say it was one of the first nights they came to where the programming was so varied. As you say it’s become quite the norm nowadays to have multi-genre nights, but I think that’s come with a tendency for some promoters to throw everything at their lineup a bit carelessly. It might look good on a poster but that doesn’t mean it will flow smoothly and coherently on the night.

You’ve used most of the club spaces in Bristol. Where’s the best place to put on parties?

It depends on what kind of party you want to create. Any space can be the best if it’s right for the vibe you’re aiming at. Big spaces like Motion are brilliant for shows with big name DJs and big production, but I’ve always got a soft spot for small, dark, sweaty spaces too. The events we used to do at Arc Bar and Dojos back in the day were some of the most fun I’ve ever had.

Your July event, Sequences, is an outdoor session at Motion. How different will it be from the Blast parties we’ve seen in the past?

We’ve been thinking about doing something larger and a bit different for a while. We’ve combined with two of our favourite labels (drum & Bass trailblazers Critical Music and dubstep godfather Mala’s Deep Medi). We’ve given each of them their own stage to showcase their sound. We’re also working with three world class soundsystems to make sure we do the music justice.

The lineup is incredible: Mala, Noisia, Novelist, Machinedrum, Levelz…who are you looking forward to seeing on the day?

All of them! There’s literally not a single act on the lineup that I’m not looking forward to seeing, and that’s what makes this event so exciting for us. We feel we’ve not compromised in any way with the bookings and it’s a great feeling. The only sad thing is that as I’ll be working on the day I’ll probably end up missing everything while running around!

Is Sequences going to be a one-off event, or would you like to make it an annual thing?

I’m not going to say too much just yet but we’d definitely like to explore the format again – maybe on a larger site.  Maybe with more stages and brands. Who knows? Watch this space!

Sequences is at Motion, Sat July 23. For more information and tickets visit www.motionbristol.com

Read more: Introducing Levelz