Hard Times, the pioneering house club has left its home in Leeds, and is giving dance music a final farewell in the Temple Theatre in Dublin. Its residents, Elliot Eastwick and Miles Holloway can be credited with bringing quality deep house and garage to the masses in the North of England and introducing English clubbers to the undoubted talents of Roger Sanchez, Masters at Work and Todd Terry. We caught up with Miles shortly before the last Hard Times gig and found out why the club is no longer in existence.
You can put it down to musical diferences between us and NATO (the venue where HT was based), but we haven t fallen out, comes the answer over the phone. Musical differences, the old rock n roll cliche? Well, the club wanted to stick with the formula of bringing over the same US house and garage Djs. It might have been fresh two years ago, but we were trying to push towards bringing over new faces.
Unfortunately for Elliot and Miles, their attempts to give the punters something new at Hard Times was eventually thwarted by the brutal world of economics. NATO is a big club, and to fill it you ve got to be safe. Anyway, a lot of people who go to superclubs don t want to hear anything radical. The club wasn t filling up recently, and I though Hard Times reputation would suffer. We want to do something on our own terms, and NATO are quite happy to get on with their own stuff.
Rising from the ashes of HT is Miles and Elliot s new night, Sonic Tonic. In contrast to Hard Times the night will be a non-guest thing with a 400 capacity, and will give us the scope to play stuff that we couldn t do at Hard Times. This year also saw Holloway and Eastwick opening Robodisco, a monthly mid-weeker in the boys hometown, Manchester, that flys in the face of the local beatz obsession. Miles believes that there are still people who want to hear a 120 bpm groove without listening to house all night. Robodisco really works, and we ve had guests like Weatherall, Heller and Angel Moraes over to play for us recently.
However, before Eastwick and Holloway can move on, they must bury the body of their former club. That the last night will be held in Dublin is, according to Miles, a coincidence , but ask him about playing Ireland, and his tone of voice changes. Ireland s probably my favourite place to play. For example, whenever I play the Kitchen (at Andi Mackin s Diskoakimbo) , there s not much money involved, but I don t care, because it s a good night. The crowds over there are so immense! They re so uncynical and they re dead young, which makes a break from the clubs in England where I play, which are usually full of old bastards! Dublin, get ready for the last chapter in the Hard Times story! n
Honey presents Hard Times at the Temple Theatre, Dublin on April 26th.