Heads up party people! Make sure you keep May 10 free… London promoters Launch are taking over Brixton’s Plan B with a killer line-up featuring Ulterior Motive, Paul T, Kred Handy, Lex TC, Mafs and a live performance from D&B songstress du jour Collette Warren.

Heads up party promoters! Launch have taken the time to share some insights into one of the industry’s murkiest games… If you’re keen on hosting a memorable party that keeps people coming back for more, you’d be wise to read on.

PLUS they’ve done us a mix and sorted out a cheeky little ticket giveaway. Read on for all the Launch goodies…

What are the golden rules for promoting a D&B night?

The most important aspect of promoting a D&B night is the venue and the sound system. Amazingly, London doesn’t have that many small venues with the type of sound required to host a good D&B night. We had a look at many venues around London to find something that fitted our needs for capacity, sound and location. This is one of the reasons we chose Plan B with its Funktion One system. It’s possibly one of the best systems for D&B on the market.

What’s the best thing about promoting?

We want to bring good vibes with our family of friends to come and party and have fun. Obviously we love all newcomers and we always make them feel welcome… There is nothing better than having a chat with some random raver during the night and they tell you what an awesome night they are having and how friendly everyone is. For a promoter it doesn’t get any better that, seeing the smiles on their faces and to see them return to our next event with an army of friends!

What’s the worst thing?

Possibly the hardest challenge is booking agents not wishing to budge on what they want to charge you for artists. I totally understand that artists make most of their money from playing gigs, but on the other hand they should consider the size of the venue. Quite a lot of our following are over the age of going to some of the bigger night clubs in London.

I was speaking to a very well-known producer about this recently. In a lot of cases he would get booked for a smaller event outside London in a small town with possibly 250-300 capacity club. It would be a sell-out and an absolutely amazing crowd that was properly down for the drums, with every tune tearing the roof off! You can quite easily lose this kind of vibe in some of the larger events as it ends up being judged on the last few nights in that particular establishment.

It’s a real shame that the super clubs seem to have taken over from the smaller events in London. They are making rules up for artists; if you’re booked at their venue then you can’t play at other venues in London two weeks either side so it’s an exclusive booking. I can understand the same night, but a month is a little ridiculous. Not every raver wants to be getting down with 2000+ crowd. I know of some really amazing nights have stopped purely because of this.

Wow. Insight vibes. So what advice do you have for budding promoters?

Do your homework!
Start off small and grow, know the crowd that you want to attract.
Give yourself time to promote it, at least eight weeks for a new night I would say, until you start to build up a following.
Promoting your night never stops. 24/7: post up mixes, articles about your DJs, and go out to every night you can to meet people and tell them to come along.
Do your sums. There’s no point spending thousands on DJs and only making hundreds on ticket sales (unless of course you have money to throw away) You’ll soon get a bad name from not being able pay your bills.

Anything else you want to say?

At the moment drum and bass is alive and kicking! I can’t remember a time when so many good tunes are available, a lot of new artists are bringing some fresh flavours and of course the more established artists are still coming with the freshness, too. I’m proud to be a part of something that is 20 years in the making and still getting stronger.

I’d just like to thank the rest of the Launch crew for the amazing hard work they are putting in to make this night a success, I would also like to thank Drum&BassArena for taking an interest in what we’re up to and hope to see all of you down to celebrate with our return.

We’ve put together a mix for you all to get a flavour of Launch!

Launch sessions Vol 1 by Dj Handy on Mixcloud