Good Vib-Rations

“We started doing occasional charity shows,” remembers Conor Feeney of Big Dish Go’s beginnings in 2005. “We felt a bit out of our league when the opportunities came knocking. Like true promoters, we pretended to be pros. We had to learn our trade pretty fast!”

Which they did, with Conor, his brother Gavin and Robbie Ryan quickly establishing themselves in Dublin as quality club runners. They had success after success at their regular haunt of Kennedy’s, Nassau Street, and eventually built up to a slot at the 2008 Dublin Electronic Arts Festival, where they unleashed UK electronica don Luke Vibert, now headlining their forthcoming birthday party on February 11 in The Button Factory.
“I remember that gig well. It was insane,” recalls Luke, fresh from a morning getting his hands dirty going through stacks of vinyl for his upcoming DJ tour.
“Ireland is definitely one of my favourite places to play. Certainly better than the pretentious likes of, say, London or worse, Paris. I played Paris recently and all I got was people staring at me thinking, ‘Who does that c**t think he is?’”
It’s a question you could reasonably – if a bit more politely – ask Luke, as he records under a bewildering string of aliases (eight at the last count). He’s returned to his most well-known moniker, Wagon Christ, for Toomorrow, released next month. The album sticks to familiar Wagon Christ soundscapes – described by Luke as “what was originally known as trip-hop but basically less clubby, mellower stuff.”
Wagon Christ’s success in the mid 1990s got Luke’s foot in the door. Since then his name has been spray-painted onto the back catalogues of leftfield electronica’s legendary labels: Warp, Ninja Tunes, u-Ziq and Rephlex, the label owned by the genre’s biggest name, and fellow Cornwall native, Aphex Twin.
“If I hadn’t been sent to boarding school, Richard (Aphex) and I would have been school-friends,” recalls Luke. “Which is just as well, because I’m sure he would have bullied me. I was in a Stone Roses, baggy-style band in 1990 when I first started to hear him play in local clubs and raves. Immediately he inspired me to make simple, one-man electronic music.”
There was something in the sea air as, in a few years’ time, not only was Luke releasing on Rephlex, but both of them were pairing up for occasional live collaborations with Aphex eventually naming his Analord chapter of EPs after one of Luke’s tracks. But where Richard D. James hasn’t treated his disciples to an album in over five years, Luke is almost manically prolific, averaging an LP every 12 months.
“It’s something I have to do really, music,” reflects Luke. “Next to family and friends, it’s the most important thing to me and I just having to keep making it constantly and getting it out there.”
“If I don’t,” he laughs, “I turn a bit nasty. I’m like this really nasty guy, horrible to my kids.”
Not that you’d blame him, as Luke’s nippers are heading for a sweeping brush to the ceiling with their music taste. “They’re getting to an age, eight and 10,” he complains, “where they’re playing me their music and..it’s grim stuff to be honest. Seems all you need for pop music these days is a few computers and an auto-tune and Bob’s your uncle.” He pauses. “I guess I am turning into a typical old dad.”
You’re highly unlikely to find any chart hits peppering Luke’s DJ set in The Button Factory, which is likely to veer from super-fly funk and hip-hop to psychotic drum ‘n’ bass with many genres caught up in the crossfire.
“It’s the main reason why we’re delighted to have him headline our birthday,” enthuses Conor. “Our ethos, like Luke’s, is to never pin ourselves down to one sound. I don’t think it would have worked and we wouldn’t be still around today. For instance, the second leg of the birthday party next month we’ll have Andrew Weatherall and Ivan Smagghe together – the Holy Grail of techno as far as we’re concerned – but if we’d stuck to that kind of techno all along, it wouldn’t have been fun for us and it would have got boring pretty quickly.”
Another part of the ethos of Big Dish Go is to keep it in the family. Alongside Robbie, Conor works closely with older brother (and Hot Press alumnus) Gavin Feeney. “His experience really helped in the beginning when I was still new to promoting, and it’s worked quite well so far. There’s a lot of brotherly love there.” So, no Gallagher brothers fist-fights behind the decks then? “A bit of squabbling, the odd bump and bruise here and there but, in five years,” he concludes, “nothing to report to my mother.”

Luke Vibert headlines Big Dish Go’s Fifth Birthday Party at The Button Factory, Dublin on February 11, joined by Nathan Fake and Donal Dineen.
His album Toomorrow (as Wagon Christ) is released by Ninja Tunes on
March 11.