7 Of The Best: Huntleys + Palmers

Glasgow based party reaches its 10th birthday...

The world was a different place in 2007.

(New) Labour was still in power, the banks appeared to be strong, and indie firmly ruled the mainstream.

Out on the margins, though, something was stirring. In Glasgow, Huntleys + Palmers kicked off a regular series of parties, spinning music with a truly global span.

Since then, things have really kicked off. Huntleys + Palmers – led by Andrew Thomson and Brian d'Souza/Auntie Flo – have become sought after names in club culture, a club-meets-labels experience that resides firmly on the cutting edge.

Toasting their 10th anniversary this year, the team have a slew of fantastic things planned.

Tonight (March 3rd) Huntleys + Palmers are set to play host at London club Corsica Studios, and the line up emphasises the sheer breadth of their approach.

Co-founder Andrew Thomson picks out some true Huntleys + Palmers anthems from ten years of musical expansion…

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Petter – 'Untight'

It’s no secret that James Holden and his Border Community label has been a big influence on shaping some of my own musical tastes and one of the key BC artists, Petter, has continued to be behind amazing music as one third of Studio Barnhus. I’ve been lucky to hear some forthcoming Pedrodollar material and it’s going to be well worth the wait.

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Axel Boman – 'My Dirty Laundry'

A week into me living in London, the Red Bull Music Academy started and one of my pals from Glasgow was a participant and I hung out with him and his fellow alumni, where I was introduced to this super-friendly Swedish guy called who had just signed a release on DJ Koze’s Pampa label. Over the ensuing years, I’ve watched Axel become the super-friendly Swedish guy of the people – no thanks to his outstanding productions.

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Auntie Flo – 'Highlife'

Back to where it all began! Having started doing a few parties together called Highlife, Brian sent me some new music he had been working on and it completely blew me away. I had been harbouring the notion of starting a label for a while and as soon as he sent his early work, things clicked into place and we started the H+P label to release these first tracks. Little did we know where it would end up..

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Mehmet Aslan – 'Mechanical Turk'

After a chance meeting with Mehmet in his hometown of Basel, he sent me a ton of edits of old Turkish songs that he had been working on and they were exactly what I was looking for in my life at that time. In the process of releasing a few of these edits on Highlife, he’d contacted a Romanian band called Karpov Not Kasparov about licensing a remix of one of their original tracks and the glorious snake-charming, Mechanical Turk was born!

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Kornel Kovacs – 'Baby Step'

Having felt a strong connection to the music they played on their Beats In Space show, I promptly set about booking the Studio Barnhus guys for a couple of dates in the UK. The London leg was a very memorable and rowdy affair at Dance Tunnel with the guys playing everything from Omar Suleiman to Sweet Female Attitude and instantly became my new favourite DJ’s. This was the first time I met Kornel and we’ve been exchanging music ever since, I was privileged to be one of the first to listen to his debut album and I’m proud that it’s just won a Swedish Grammy!

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CAIN – 'NAGAN'

I can remember the first time I heard this. I was wondering along Oxford Street, listening back to an H+P Rinse show hosted by Brian and this stopped me dead in my tracks. I text Brian straight away to ask him ‘WTF is this?’ – which turned out to be a track by his old uni friend, who as CAIN, is now easily one of my favourite producers. Watch this space for more..

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Auntie Flo ft. Anbuley – 'Waiting For A (Woman)' [The Revenge Rework | Dixon Beat Edit]

So the track with a long title, seems to be getting even longer as the months go on! I really love the whole story behind this. In short, we released the original on the ‘Theory Of Flo’ LP and had started to commission remixes for the entire album. The original was so beautiful and powerful, that I really didn’t want anyone to touch it as it I was worried that it might lose some of it’s shine.

Around the same time, The Revenge had gotten the parts for his own edit to play out and now with hindsight, he was just the man for the job as he created this very tasteful edit, leaving the original beauty intact. After that, we started to notice a lot of attention on this particular track and it traced back to Dixon caning it at every festival over the latter part of the year.

It transpires that Dixon had made his own edit of the rework and we’re very happy to be releasing this too. (via our Bandcamp). The reason I love this story is that it really goes to show that you don’t know what lies around the corner, anything can happen.

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Stay in touch with Huntleys + Palmers online HERE.

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