Events

For the first Bank holiday Sunday of 2012 Discovery are very please to announce that Mark E (Spectral/Merc) will be playing a 3hr set at the Horse & Groom Easter Sunday Party. Discovery Bank holiday Sunday’s have always been a wee bit special with guest including Trevor Jackson, It’s a Fine Line, The Revenge, I-Cube, Jamie Jones, Move D, Disco Deviance, Greg Wilson, Social Disco Club, Tornado Wallace to name a few. Online tickets can be purchased from RA for a bargain £5.

The music of Mark E is overwhelmingly deliberate, and in that sense it’s quintessential house—unswerving, mechanistic, intoxicatingly simple. And life imitates art: the Wolverhampton-reared, Birmingham-based DJ/producer has had a slow, steady ascension to his status as one of the genre’s most natural talents.
Mark E’s love affair with electronic dance music began began early, as an adolescent, when Manchester was Madchester and the irreverent attitude of rave culture swept through England. His first record? Bizarre Inc’s exuberant, piano-loaded “Playing With Knives,” a fortuitous introduction to the hypnotizing powers of house. As Mark got older, he dove headfirst into the surprisingly fertile Wolverhampton scene, tasting house at the hands of legends like John Kelly and Frankie Knuckles before a move to Birmingham for University also installed him in a larger club scene.
Mark’s first forays into production were, naturally, edits—warm, understated, and interestingly mellow, with tempos hovering somewhere between 105 and 115 BPM. (Or thereabouts.) Once “Scared,” a ten-minute rework of Womack & Womack’s “Baby, I’m Scared Of You,” found the ears of influential selector (and, more importantly, BBC radio DJ) Giles Peterson, it was on, and a solid string of memorable, vinyl-only releases introduced the world at
large to this humble, devoted househead. Slowly (again), Mark went beyond edits and into original production, starting his own label, MERC, and honing a sound that was uniquely blue collar and utilitarian—classic, almost industrial house, with a tinge of disco warmth. A stellar remix for Matthew Dear’s “Little People (Black City)” introduced him to the Ghostly/Spectral fold, who are now releasing his first artist album, Stone Breaker. It’s as defining as anything he’s done, a symbol of his unique spot in the global club music landscape, sounding simultaneously familiar and unique like few others can.

Hosting the upstairs will be The Boogie Cartel (NYC Downlow). The foursome's regular residents-only parties have been among the most intense disco get-downs of the past year, and have attracted the attention of DJs and clubbers alike. You simply won't find a more intense, sleazy disco party anywhere in East London. They've shared the decks with the likes of Greg Wilson, Yam Who? and Jacques Renault, they've produced mixes for the NYC Downlow and The Vintage Festival, as well as hitting the studio to flood dancefloors with their own productions very soon. Expect a combination of disco, 80s electro and Chicago house forming their signature 'neon boogie' sound, ensuring not a single speck of dust is allowed to settle on the dancefloor.