Clubs

Urban festival? Multi-venue mash-up? Indie-rockin’ electro rave? Stag and Dagger on Thursday is all of these and more, but the easiest way to describe it is to call it the Shoreditch Crawl. Like the Camden Crawl it takes place in (at least) 15 venues which are all within walking distance of each other. The event also boasts many big name DJs and bands playing in relatively tiny venues. Unlike the Camden Crawl’s bloated and musically-predictable guitar-band pub crawl, however, Stag and Dagger makes a virtue of diversity, freshness and aural adventures. Just as importantly, at £15 for an advance ticket it delivers more than 100 bands, DJs and performers for the price of admission to a weekend club night.

Stag and Dagger is, in fact, a giant Adventures In The Beetroot Field (AITBF) event, for it is AITBF who’ve teamed up with Vice magazine and event organisers Margaret to co-ordinate a night which features guest labels including Moshi Moshi, Modular, Ed Banger, Warp and Young & Lost hosting their own spaces. When it started in spring 2005, AITBF aimed to ‘appeal to people who like a heavy kick-drum with their guitars,’ but they were soon so successful that their genre-blurring parties spawned a host of imitators.
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‘Stag and Dagger initially came about as Adventures able to operate on a grander scale than is possible within four walls,’ explains AITBF’s Crispin Dior, who’s excited that the line-up encompasses turntablist DJ champion A-Trak through to Canadian acoustic singer-songwriter Jill Barber. ‘It’s about being as diverse as possible,’ he says, ‘while allowing a window of opportunity for smaller, unsigned artists to get on a larger platform.’ He name-checks one particular up-and-coming artist, Edward J Hicks. ‘He’s amazing, like a young Tom Waits. I’m just hoping and praying that somebody signs him after seeing him at Stag and Dagger. It’s great to give people the exposure their talent deserves.’

He admits that some of the bookings are more ‘obvious’, like SebastiAn and Label boss Busy P from the ubiquitous French imprint Ed Banger, who’ll be occupying the bijou Electricity Showrooms. Surely that’s too small?

‘Absolutely!’ laughs Dior. ‘That’s what’s exciting about it. It’s almost like having a house party where you squeeze into someone’s sitting room and you’ve got SebastiAn and Busy P DJing and then you go up to the ‘bedroom’ and The Glimmers are playing. It’s going to be hilarious.’

There may be plenty more examples of fish-too-large-for-its-bowl syndrome with bands like the hotly-tipped Australian new-wave quintet Operator Please playing in The Macbeth pub, or The Duke Spirit and Atlas Sound performing in St Leonard’s Church. The latter are two of the acts Dior looks forward to seeing: ‘Telepathe from the States will be exciting at the Hoxton Square Bar & Grill (and Diplo and Micachu are there too). The Mae Shi and Zombie Zombie are big favourites, and they’ll both be playing on the Moshi Moshi bill in Favela Chic.’

Dior has been helped by enlisting co-promoters like Kill ’Em All, Moshi Moshi, Burga Sauce (who regularly host Hoxton Square Bar & Grill), Young & Lost (co-promoters at Saturday’s Push) and Casper C of Fluokids. Likewise, many venues will be hosted by labels or club promoters – Warp are at the T Bar, Allez Allez take on East Village and Modular bring the Bang Gang DJs and Bumblebeez to Cargo – so their fans will be confident that they can view these places as their base.

That’s one way of doing it, but wandering almost randomly between the Shoreditch venues could be just as much fun. At least it was at the last multi-venue festival walkabout in these parts – Hung Drawn & Quartered in October 2003. Since then Shoreditch has rapidly changed with more boutiques, coffee shops and hotels, notes Dior, who used to live there before rent hikes forced him out. ‘I think Shoreditch has been crying out for this for years.’

Stag and Dagger is at 15 venues in Shoreditch on Thursday May 15. See www.staganddagger.com for details.