Ulster says yo!

To paraphrase Madonna; some clubs come and some clubs go but that’s alright by us. But Belfast’s Shine has, for seven-and-a-half years now, been a constant reminder of how a dance club should be run. Shunning fads and phases but keeping its finger on the pulse, it’s kept its policy of playing good, underground dance music without seeing a drop in numbers through the doors. It’s had just about every noteworthy guest you can name – from Carl Cox to LTJ Bukem to Deep Dish to Scratch Perverts – without ever forgetting local talent. Indeed, the Shine family has given us some of the best recorded dance material to come out of this isle; Slide, Mixmaster, the mighty Phil Kieran and now club boss Alan Simms.

And seven-and-a-half years is a lifetime in dance music. Sacred cows like Ministry and Cream have come and gone, while rumours abound of other leading brands heading for ‘financial difficulties’. So how has Shine managed to keep its head while all around are losing theirs – and still keep their door taxes ridiculously reasonable (£10 on average, rising to around £15 for the ‘mini-festival’ Supershines)?

“I think one of the reasons we’ve managed to keep doing what we’ve doing goes back to David Holmes,” says Simms. “I have to tip my hat to him for that. He was at the forefront of the Belfast scene at its inception. It could have gone a number of ways, but he, as we do now, pushed the music he liked, and it very much became a city that’s known for underground music. If you go outside Belfast, the biggest grossing music rules the roost. But that (Holmer and his Sugarsweet scene) gave us a good start – and we started small, then our audience grew with us.”

In many ways, Dublin and Belfast started off on the same lines – small clubs, dedicated crowds, open-minded music policy and a regular selection of quality guest DJs from abroad. But somewhere along the way, Dublin seems to have lost its way, relying completely on guests and a ‘tried and tested’ music formula that’s left the bigger clubs struggling if an A-lister isn’t in town, and the smaller clubs guarding their hard-won turf fiercly. To be honest, it ain’t pretty. Simms attributes this to two things: not making what he calls “booking mistakes” (“acts we like as people but who just don’t fit in with what we do”), and perhaps more pertinently, the lack of a regular venue to call home for some of the less commercially minded promoters.

“That, clubs not having an identity... booking the likes of Paul Van Dyk one week, and Jeff Mills the next was another nail in the coffin,” says Simms.

But onto brighter matters. The club has recently turned its hand to releasing records, starting two labels, Shine (with an emphasis on the main room sound) and Blackout (more low-key, DJ friendly 12”s with the odd surprise) (well, they don’t do things by halves).

“It wasn’t something we had contemplated for a while, it sort of came to us really,” says Simms. “It’s never going to be a big money maker for us – that wasn’t really what it was supposed to be about - but it’s covering itself even at this stage. We sell a good bit more than a lot of people that you would expect to sell more than us, given that we are such an underground label.”

The off-the-record sales figures are indeed impressive – putting many a magazine-advertised, major-backed 12” to shame.

The first release, by club stalwart Jon Carter, picked up support from just as wide a variety of club jocks as you could hope to achieve, while the recent release from Justin Robertson looks set to eclipse it. And with a 12” from Simms backed up by what will prove to be a rare 2003 remix from Slam up next, there’s no reason to suggest that form will be dipping.

“All the artists we worked with are delighted with the way it’s been received... and I think what’s happening with the majors is that the approach to marketing dance music is going to go, and you’ll have little indie labels maybe doing a lot better than the bigger boys with their video budgets. And the traditional press doesn’t matter as much as it used to with regards to breaking a record, it’s going back to a kid dropping the needle on the record in the shop...”

Underground to the end. Shine. It’s a national institution.