Steve Lawler’s Guide To Extended Sets

Legendary selector talks those all night performances...

DJ sets tend to follow a certain pattern, a defined way of doing things.

When time limits are extended, though, this tends to go out the window – and when all-night sets are introduced, all expectations are removed.

Steve Lawler is a child of the Acid House generation, a DJ and label owner whose predilection for taking things further and further has pushed him to the top of the game.

One of the hallmarks of the DJ's approach has been his appetite for extended sets. Digging ever deeper into the crates, Steve Lawler also has to draw upon his physical and mental reserves, always looking to keep the crowd moving.

A true expert at his trade, Steve Lawler agreed to pour over the finer details of extended sets for Clash.

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The best extended set I’ve ever played would have been New Year’s day at Twilo in New York.

On New Year’s Eve I’d played 5 sets around London, slept on a flight, and went straight to Twillo. I ended up playing into the afternoon of the 2nd of January, so it must have been around 14 hours – it was incredible. Twilo was one of those special clubs that leant itself to long sets. these kind of clubs weren’t made for DJs to go in and play two hours and smash it out, it was designed for people to come in there and get lost in the music.

I built my career around creating these kinds of soundscapes and these journeys, but these days DJ’s feel as though they need to turn up to a club going for glory, going all guns blaring – it wasn’t that pressured before.

Now I am happy to play as long as five or six hour sets. I actually started my career with 8 hour sets at Café Mambo, where you weren’t in it for the glory, but your skill.

Then I had my residency Harlem Nights at The End in London, the only party there that had a resident playing all night – I would go on around 12am and play until close, around 6 or 7am. I’d do that every month for seven years. Then I became so well known for it that everyone wanted me to play 10 hours… I said 'yes' to everything to begin with, but it got exhausting. My set times started getting shorter when Harlem Nights ended and my Space Ibiza career took off – everyone wanted to play on the Terrace at that point, so more guests started to get booked. Then I started to get booked for two hour sets to smash it, which suited me at that time because the extended sets had become exhausting.

I’d been inspired hugely by the likes of Danny Tenaglia, Sasha and Digweed, Carl Cox, Laurent Garner and Richie Hawtin; there were an elite few, and I’m sure a few other unsung heroes who did it. Junior Vasquez used to play for almost 24 hours – but he had a DJ booth with a curtain at the Sound Factory, so nobody could see who was playing – sometimes his friends would get up and play! I hear Marco Carola still does this – he did some crazy 24 hour set in Romania last year, so it does still happen every now and then it seems.

There are a few clubs still in existence that are good for those long sets – Berghain and Panorama Bar goes without saying. I played for about 6 hours there a couple of years ago, but I felt like I easily could have gone on for another six – it’s that kind of vibe and no pressure environment.

It’s an entirely different approach to playing your music – you have to structure your set in a way that you lead up to one record over the course of 4 or 5 other records; you lead up to something big and you steadily take it down after something big. The holding back and teasing brings the kind of climax that long sets is all about. You have to be a really skilled DJ and programmer to make it work.

When I started with the extended sets, my approach to music was different – I was still playing records that I’d bought months ago every week, because there wasn’t that much available. I would just go to a record shop and leave with 50 vinyls. I wasn’t just buying it because it was amazing, I was buying it because the B side would be a groove for seven minutes and I would see it as a tool for my DJ sets; it might help me transition from an uplifting moment to a dark moment over an hour for example.

I would organise my record boxes in advance to get me through the set: crate one would be the deeper music, crate two would be the next level – a bit more chunky, a bit more driving. Then crate three would be techno for the tougher moments and then the last crate would be end of the night music, a bit more of the experimental, alternative sort of stuff. You’ve only got 6 minutes to look for the next record, so I had to really prepare my record boxes well for these sorts of gigs. These days it would be more for your folders on your computers, but the same advice goes.

Other advice I’d give is you need to be patient. You need to have balls and not be afraid to be experimental. You also need to let go of your ego – if the crowd isn’t going wild every five minutes – don’t worry, because that is how they’re supposed to go. You just need to let go of the ego inside and control the room with music. You need to allow people to take their time, just as you are taking your time.

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Steve Lawler will play in Dolby Atmos for Nightowl at Ministry of Sound this Saturday (October 24th). For more info and tickets please visit HERE.

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