A few days ago we stumbled across a night in the South; providing the darkest, and murkiest drum and bass that we’ve heard in a while. We spoke with Thor Sutherland, the co-founder, about how two 17 year-olds from Reading started Nu:Motion.
“It started about a year and a half ago, me and my mate Danny decided to put on one event to see how it went. The event went really well and we decided it was something we should keep doing, and ever since the event it’s grown more and more.”
The drum and bass night started off in their home town of Reading, but they are looking to expand across the South. Thor continued: “At the moment we’re doing Reading, Bristol and we’re planning a London Launch. The London Launch will be coming up at some point in early 2018.
“Yeah we’ve got quite a lot of events coming up in Bristol next year, we’ve got one at Blue Mountain, we’ve also got a secret event which is going to be in a secret location, in some tunnels underneath Bristol. And then we’re looking to do Brighton as well next year, Southampton and Oxford as well so we’re looking to really push it out then.”
The move from Reading to Bristol seems to be massively dependent on the music scene and the audience that’s there, Thor told us: “There’s a massive difference compared to the scene in Reading, Reading seem to love jump up. It’s really, really hard to make a night successful in Reading because you spend all the money on a big artist and not many people are really into that sort of scene.
“Whereas Bristol everyone’s really there to party, everyone there loves music. So yeah that’s why I think we’re looking to stop putting on events in Reading and push out to Bristol and London really.”
The event shows its diversity by playing new DJs at the majority of their shows, always supporting up and coming DJs across the UK. Thor said: “The DJs we use at quite a lot of our events, I mean you could call them residents, but we mainly try and keep it fresh for every event. But we do have regular DJs that we use.”
Thor mentioned how drum and bass is their main focus, however it won’t stop them from mixing up the genres from time to time: “We’ve got a Christmas party next Friday and we’ve actually got 24 hour garage girls coming down; so a mixture of bassline, drum and bass and a little bit of hiphop. Nu:Motion in itself is drum and bass, but I mean we might incorporate the odd takeover like garage girls and that sort of thing.”
There’s so much planning and organising to do before an event in order to make it a success, Thor talked me through an average day for him: “I mean, it’s busy. It’s getting more and more busy as time goes on really. I work in London as well and do Nu:Motion on the side, it’s lots of calls and emails and booking artists and speaking to other promoters and designers, it’s a lot of joining the dots together.”
Their love for music and partying was the driving force for starting Nu:Motion, Thor explained: “We both just love music and partying, so we thought it would be a good laugh to throw our own party. We were both 17 at the time, so yeah we arranged a party and booked a small headliner.
“Yeah I guess you could say we wanted to bring through another scene to Reading, because jump up is the main scene, but we thought we might as well start, or create another scene as well.”
Thor continued to say who is involved in bringing the night all together: “It’s just me and my best mate Danny. We’ve both loved music for years, so it’s just us two that run it. Obviously we have designers that work for us and different reps, we’ve got some people helping us work on the venue and production for this one in the tunnels underneath Bristol. It’s just us two who run it predominately but then there’s also people who get involved in other things as well.”
As we edge closer and closer into 2018, Thor is excited for what’s to come: “2018 is going to be a big year, and as I’ve said I’ve gotten a new job recently so they’re going to help me sort of push through Nu:Motion. We want to get a mini festival off the ground in 2018, we want to get involved in some bigger events as well, we’d also love to host a stage at a few festivals, so we’re really looking to push it as hard as we can this year.”
Big up Nu:Motion, Thor and the crew!!