CLUBS

The highly eclectic How Come... series continues with Manchester-based record hoarding obsessive Andy Votel. Jordan Minnesota gets down on his knees to dig in the crates.

Pretty much anything promoted by Bristolian titans of the globally challenging, Qu Junktions, can be relied on to cover a few bases. Their latest night is going to plant its flag in so many territories you may forget which one you’re ensconced in. Its de facto headliner, one of the UK’s most eminent crate-diggers, Andy Votel, will do a lot of this legwork himself: as the most recent archival releases on his Finders Keepers label attest, he has found himself looking beyond Western Europe and even beyond the first world.

“When I'm abroad I usually dedicate about 30 minutes to the local language,” says Andy, who’s just returned from a weekend DJing in Turkey, a prime zone for crazy ’n’ collectable prog and psychedelia. “I think the ability to show respect to people’s culture via music is a great asset which isn’t always possible through other mediums.”

Continental crate-digging was not how Andy originally made his name. After a mid-to-late-90s tenure in the Manchester hip-hop scene – “I learnt how to make tape loops when I was about 10 and simultaneously began to hear hip-hop on the radio. That led to a long quest for unusual sounds on records” – Andy set up the Twisted Nerve label. Responsible for the first few releases by Badly Drawn Boy, among many less commercially viable nuggets from the Lancastrian leftfield, Twisted Nerve’s release schedule has been less prolific in the last few years, albeit only out of pragmatism.

“The artists on the label are my absolute favourite bands in the world, but this doesn’t mean that they'll be the most profitable bands in the world.” Andy admits. “It’s becoming harder to recoup an investment in modern pop music.”

Twisted Nerve’s current roster does, however, include rickety Bristolian post-punkers The Liftmen (“my favourite live band at the moment”), who also feature at How Come..., alongside United Vibrations and Zea, a side-project of inspirational Dutch cosmo-punks The Ex.

The common message of all on board, and of Andy’s DJ sets in general – in fact, it’s pretty much the founding ethos behind the B-Music DJ nights which he and pals started in Manchester and have taken round the world – is that obscurity needn’t equal inaccessibility. “Trying to play amazing songs that people don't yet know has become a driving criteria,” he explains. “I’ve always stood by the theory that every DJ should have their own set.”

HOW COME... WAS AT THE CROFT, BRISTOL ON FRI 28 JAN. FFI: WWW.MYSPACE.COM/ANDYVOTEL
 

Copyright Jordan Minnesota 2011

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