Stompa Phunk moves to a Bi-Monthly slot

This week one of Brighton’s flagship nights, Stompa Phunk has announced it’s moving from a weekly spot to a bi-monthly position. A whiff of change is in the air. Competition in Brighton is currently fierce with Digital being a new kid on the scene, the Honey club always being rammed with MOS CD collecting retards, and the punters reaching out for new, different and cutting edge sounds. It’s a shame to see that such a well known Brighton night has caved in to the pressures of the market. It will be missed as a guaranteed weekend option by many. Maybe its time for Stompa Phunk to rethink their strategy, arm their guns and come back at us with a new and different formula. Consistent weekends without the option of Stompa Phunk are a real blow.

So why the change? SP’s bookings recently have not been as well sourced as in the past. Cagedbaby, Evil9, Phil Hartnol among others are names known for quality but lack to bring in the numbers as they seem to be repeats of previous bookings. Let’s think back to Ivan Smagghe, Laurent Garnier, Andrew Weatherall, Steve Bug, Green Velvet, Damian Lazarus, Josh Wink and many more. These guys along with the SP residents have created many a memorable party. Yet the people or Brighton often want new bookings and artists, this is hard to do when faced with falling numbers of punters and stiff competition. We could blame the people of Brighton for not abiding to loyalties or being drawn in by chequered shirts. At the same time we can not ignore the hightened popularity of Indie music. Every bus load of kids we get coming to our uni’s is a step away from the club scene and and skip in the direction of maskara and tight jeans. You only have to look at your local source magazine to see proof of this. Dance music is not dieing here, the more underground scene is just not as popular with the younger generation. Guitars are in, 1210’s are out. Club wise students seem to be more prone to go to DnB nights or commercial shite electro. It’s a shame as we cannot deny the income their presence brings to our local promoters is much needed.

Having successfully kept Brighton dancing for many years from free parties, the Funky Buddha through to recent years at Audio, we salute Stompa Phunk for their contribution and work.

On top of their Bi-monthly spot SP with be throwing some special parties, starting with Darren Emerson at the Concorde on the 25th Jan 2008.

Words: Marek the Czech