Photo: Stephen Daniels
On 13th November, Leeds mourned the loss of a favoured intimate venue, The Garage. Affecting not only a whole population of partygoers, the sudden closure has had implications on nights like Bigger Than Barry, Back to Basics and the up-and-coming underground night, Less is More.
It’s been a while since Less is More’s second event in October, but pulling in South London Ordnance, Tessela and Randomer, who could forget it? The Garage was packed, energy was high and the music was outstanding. The night was a seamless blend of techno beats, infused with softer tech-house. Each DJ was technically brilliant, with track selection to match. Impressed with such a well put-together event, and interested about its future after The Garage, I spoke to Less is More curator, Ben Szalecki.
What made you want to create your own night in Leeds? What were your initial ideas?
Basically me and two of my mates, Tom and Sam Carrick had been going to a lot of nights in Leeds and especially at The Garage and wanted to have a go at launching our own. We wanted to go for a Techno/ UK Bass sort of vibe with some House and Garage too; that’s why we chose a pretty varied line up for our launch night on the 22nd April with Synkro, Pale, Tanka, Thieves, Johnbear and Bria.
What made you choose The Garage as your original venue?
It was without a doubt the best intimate venue in Leeds, it’s just had a great feel to it and always pulled in a good crowd.
How do you feel about the Garage’s sudden closure, will you continue to work with them when they reopen?
We’re absolutely gutted, it’s where we started and it’s definitely our favourite club in Leeds. We’ll definitely be running nights at the new venue, as long as it’s half as good as the last.
Have you heard any news about the re-opening?
All we’ve heard is that it should be opening before Christmas, which isn’t long at all, and for now Back to Basics has moved to Beaver Works so that should be sick.
“Be prepared to lose money”
What do you consider your most successful event so far?
Definitely our last night at The Garage with SLO, Randomer, and Tessela. That night had a lot of hype about it and it had a huge turn out.
What is the next event you’ll be putting on and where will it be?
Our next night is at Wire with Addison Groove on the 11th of December. We’ve teamed up with our mates who run MIST for this one, our residents will be going b2b against theirs and we’ve got Hijinkx supporting Addison so it should be a good’n. We’ve been asked to host room 3 at the Brotherhood Winter Warmer, the line up is huge and we love Beaver Works so we can’t wait for that one. Also we’ve got a big night coming up at a new venue, the venue is really, really nice and our line up is even nicer so stay tuned for that one.
How do you go about booking DJs for your events, are you quite specific about what artists you want?
We just book who we like and who we’d wanna see. At the moment we’re mainly booking underground dj’s who have a real hype around them, like Randomer and Tessela who have just been nominated for this year’s DJ Mag awards.
What would be your advice to other people who want to start curating nights, have you found it easy?
Be prepared to lose money haha, and yeah it’s not that hard as long as you’re dedicated it doesn’t take long to know what you’re doing.
Harriet Shepherd
Tickets for Less is More with Addison Groove are available HERE