Photo from MIA's Myspace
Kliks – Brighton’s original stripped back techno night will be hosting an event at this year’s Beachdown Festival. Famed for bringing some of the main players of minimal techno to Brighton, they return with another stunning lineup. Started in 2003 by Brighton based journalist Lee Smith, Mark Lerman and Tom Ridsdale their events soon gained a level of notoriousness. Kliks started before the “minimal” media hype and wasn’t led by jumping on to trends.
In 2009 their concept and sound is often imitated but never pulled off with the same conviction. While other promoters and events have turned minimal in to a dirty soiled word, Kliks are the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s an odd sight when venues such as Audio put on nights aimed directly at a supposedly “in” market – from flyer design, music and concept it just doesn’t work as well as Kliks.
The Kliks event, along with Laurent Garnier Live are certainly the main things which make Beachdown festival worthwhile.
MIA (Biog from MySpace)
Mia, who left her old homebase Cologne in mid-2004 to resettle in Berlin, is neither to be confused with the most recent Grime hype from the UK, nor the popular german rock band. In the mid-90’s Mia first takes her place behind the turntables. She gets to minimal techno and the likes in Cologne quite quickly, and develops a great reputation for her emotional, spunky DJ sets inside the local underground, within just a few years.
Daniel Bell (Biog from Wikipedia)
Daniel Bell is an American minimal techno DJ. He was born in Sacramento, California, but grew up outside of Toronto, Canada, and later moved to Detroit where he collaborated with Richie Hawtin as Cybersonik for three years on Plus 8 records. In 1991, he started his own label, Accelerate, where he released a string of influential releases as DBX.
Bell was influenced primarily by Chicago House as well as the works of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. His productions are characterized by minimalist house grooves accented by blips and bleeps. Some tracks also feature bizarre voice effects and eerie atmospherics such as 1994’s delay driven “Losing Control”.
Alex Smoke (Biog from Soma)
Glaswegian based artist Alex Smoke recently released his second album, ‘Paradolia’ on Soma Records. Paradolia is defined as the human ability to creatively perceive coherent images in randomness. This is an unusual word by anyone’s standard but then Alex Menzies (aka Mr Smoke) is an artist very far from the usual. A Rorschach test this is not, more a sonic experiment that explores the parameters of Alex Smoke’s potent psyche.
A Guy Called Gerald (Biog from NME)
Gerald Simpson, 16 February 1967, England. Simpson’s solo career has failed to ignite as many predicted, although he remains a maverick and influential presence on the UK’s dance music scene. Simpson, who once sold copies of the left-wing newspaper Socialist Worker on the streets of Manchester, England, first recorded with the Scratchbeat Masters (who included Nicky Lockett, the future MC Tunes) before joining the Hit Squad. The latter mutated into the seminal 808 State, but Simpson left following a dispute over writing credits for what would prove to be the group’s breakthrough hit, “Pacific State”. His most notable contribution to the UK’s fledgling dance scene was “Voodoo Ray”, which reached number 55 in April 1989 before re-entering at number 12 two months later. Those statistics barely reflect the reverence with which it came to be regarded on the club scene.
Lee Smith (Biog from Kliks)
One of the UK’s foremost supporters of minimal house and techno, Lee has been DJing for 13 years. He founded Brighton’s notorious Hideout party in 1998, playing alongside guests including Dave Clarke, Ben Sims, Green Velvet, Funk D’Void, Richie Hawtin, Magda, Josh Wink, Layo & Bushwacka, Carl Craig, Derrick May, and many more, before forming Kliks in 2003. Kliks rapidly gained a reputation as a genuinely pioneering party, hosting the likes of Steve Bug, Alex Smoke, Kompakt records and numerous others, and is now regarded as one of the most important underground club nights in the UK.
Mark Lerman (Biog from Kliks)
Mark Lerman’s first forays into music began with his involvement with a clutch of punk bands in and around Leeds and Bradford during the early nineties, before relocating to London and promoting a host of underground techno parties at venues across the capital. Upon moving to Brighton, he gained a residency at Hideout, the town’s only dedicated night for techno at the time, and went on to help establish the club as one of the most important and long-running parties of its kind. Alongside Jack Gillies, he founded Hidden recordings, an outlet for his own twisted take on minimal techno, before starting Kliks with Lee Smith and Tom Ridsdale in 2003.
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