Eris Drew b2b Octo Octa @ WIRE

T4T LUV NRG is a record label which was created via romantic partners Octo Octa and Eris Drew in June 2019. They decided to tour their new creation worldwide throughout October and November.

The dates of the tour are as follows; 
October 6: De School, Amsterdam
October 18: Wire Club, Leeds
October 19: Shoot Your Shot, Glasgow (The Berkeley Suite)
October 27: House of Mince, Sydney (Universal Sydney)
November 8: East Palace West Palace, Beijing (Zhao Dai)
November 9: Medusa, Shanghai 

I found it very interesting to see that Leeds is the only place in England for the American DJ’s to visit, although as the event was in collaboration with Michael Upson’s “Love Muscle” and Leeds’ all female/non-cis DJ collective “Equaliser”-it made a lot of sense for the pair to grace this very LGBT+ friendly city. Equaliser put on a DJ workshop with the 2 DJ’s the day before to facilitate an advancement on 6 intermediate DJ’s skillsets. 

The couple have used music as a tool to channel self-discovery throughout their transitions and DJ careers. As both DJ’s are members of the trans community, LGBT+ attendees got a discount on tickets to promote an all-inclusive celebration of pride as well as a gender-neutral toilet policy for the night. They really brought a livelier party to Wire, as I’m used to seeing it as a deep dark techno dungeon (mostly) riddled with white heteronormative men. 

The club was saturated with people from all backgrounds and identities, love was in the air, feeling carefree in this judgement free zone. Everyone who came was there to have a good time, discover some new music and have a boogie. Four to the floor enchanted the audience and the sound system pierced through my soul inducing emotion to penetrate through your body. 

The sound system in wire really makes coming to events worth it, you can never feel the full effect of music through headphones or standard speakers, this really became apparent to me on this evening. 

The clubs sound system was punching me in the face with bass (which is 100% a good thing!) and as the couple were playing b2b, they were relentlessly dropping banger after banger, filling the dancefloor with movers and shakers. 

The event wasn’t expected to sell out but come 2am, you bet it had.

Chesca Henderson-Cox