Having a blast

“Luke Unabomber is gasping for breath. He’s just run up a few flights of stairs to his apartment to talk to hotpress about his second mix CD, Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and his steadily building DJ profile.

Hailing from Yorkshire, Luke and partner Justin are the brains behind Manchester’s Electric Chair night. In a city where music is a vital, integral part of daily life – “It’s the rain, it may sound like a cliché, but it means we’re always indoors”, Luke maintains, the unassuming duo are the latest instalment in Manchester’s ongoing association with dance music, lining up with New Order, Happy Mondays, The Hacienda and more recently Bugged Out. However, as Luke explains, during the mid ’90s when the duo set up Electric Chair, the rainy city’s club landscape only offered bleak propositions.

“The club started in 1995 at a time when Manchester was in the doldrums,” Luke explains, pausing only to catch his breath. “The city’s clubs were full of bad cocaine, gangsters and people posing in the latest Dolce & Gabanna gear. Manchester’s house vibe was ruined so we thought, ‘Sod this, instead of moaning about the situation let’s find a shitty little club with sticky carpet where the shiny suits and gangsters won’t bother going to’. When we started, it wasn’t a big thing, we didn’t have any big aim, it was just people playing records in a rock club. The only place left to play our music was in small, crappy clubs.”

Although Luke is adamant that the duo’s DJ name – which they share with America’s most notorious terrorist – wasn’t chosen to turn heads, their heady mixture of soulful music, everything from r’n’b through to techno, soon began to attract the city’s clubbers.

“In the beginning, we were using ‘rent-a-crowd’,” Luke laughs. “The club was full of friends, family and work mates, but by the fifth event (Electric Chair is monthly), there were queues around the block. It was like all the disenfranchised people of Manchester had turned up and it all snowballed from there.”

Unlike the super clubs, The Unabombers had no business plan or financial projections – “not that there’s anything wrong with the big clubs: both scenes can co-exist and have their place”, but, by 1998 found that their original base was too small and moved to equally dank, albeit larger 900 capacity venue.

“The best clubs are always the ones with low ceilings, big sound systems and full of people who love music” Luke maintains. “Without trying to sound like a PC liberal type, our club attracts all kinds of people, with their heads down, in the groove.”

After five successful years and, having played host to occasional guest spots from DJs like Francois K., Joe Clausell, Ashley Beedle and Derrick May, Electric Chair and The Unabombers finally did what most residents would have done sooner and released a mix CD. However, Luke is careful to stress that the mix wasn’t a money making venture nor did it mean they had ‘sold out’.

“It was natural for us to release a mix CD, but we didn’t want to release it on a major label,” he explains. “We believe that the corporate world has put a strangle hold on dance music - that’s why it’s so hard for young DJs to get gigs, but we’re also wary of the ‘underground’ term because it has been so badly misused. Underground means doing it for yourself and playing music you believe in. At Electric Chair you’ll hear everything from Aretha Franklin to Underground Resistance. We’re not like the archetypal bunch of lads who sit around a pub discuss their Detroit white labels and create an image for themselves. That’s not what we’re about.”

Listening to Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, it’s clear that the duo are merely about soulful, sexy music, irrespective of what genre it emanates from. Hip-hop/electro classics like Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam’s ‘Let The Beat Hit Em’ are segued into long lost disco classics from Kool & The Gang, Kaori’s new soulful version of ‘Good Life’ and Derrick Carter’s bumpy house funk. In short, it’s a celebratory, uplifting ride through dance music’s more soulful side. As Luke puts it, “The second CD is more reflective of what we play and, though eclectic is a terrible term, it sums up what we do.” Indeed, with dates in Europe and even a tour of Australia planned, Luke and his partner are happy that they’ve done it their way.

“I’m glad we’re based in Manchester. If we were based in London, we might have lasted a year and a half before the hype killed us. We don’t want to change the world or make a lot of money, “ he concludes, “but as long as my fridge is full, I can buy records and connect with people and make them happy, this beats having a shit job.”