Numbers is 10 years old

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This winter, the Scottish collective Numbers turns ten years old.

I know, right? If you’re a Scottish clubber, how old do you feel right now? Ancient probably, since Numbers have been throwing parties, releasing records and generally “causin’ it” for ages now. Since the then-teenage Jackmaster & co started DJing in burger bars and hotel basements, they’ve honed their craft and become one of the most recognisable electronic music crews working today. And I mean working, because their output is crazy.

Since merging three separate labels – Jackmaster’s b-more homage Dress 2 Sweat, Richard Chater’s off-kilter Stuffrecords and Calum’s techno effort Wireblock – into one Numbers super-label, this close crew of friends have built an aesthetic that goes beyond their original home of Glasgow and onto an international stage. After becoming a regular fixture at the notorious off-Sonar parties in Barcelona and hosting their Pleasure Principle festival, Numbers have made a name for themselves as serious party-starters. So, it’s only right that they celebrate their 10th birthday with not one, but three huge parties.

There was last week’s New York rave with Chicago legends DJ Deeon and Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir, and this week sees them host in London and Glasgow too, on Dec 7th and Dec 13th respectively. In the aftermath of NY and in the warm-up to London and Glasgow, we caught up with some of the Numbers lads to chat about where they’ve come from and where they’re headed. They also gave us some crazy old flyers from the Numbers early days; just scroll down to see them all.

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Numbers is ten this year, which is pretty crazy. How has 2013 been for Numbers?

Goodhand: For me, 2013 has been pretty hectic. My daughter was born in March, closely followed by the Pleasure Principle festival we organised, plus a lot of commercial work through my design agency REMOTE. For Numbers 2013 has not been our busiest year in terms of output on the label, but behind the scenes it’s been the busiest year since we started this thing. Lots of preparation for 2014. We have some amazing music to unleash from SOPHIE, Kool Clap, Darq E Freaker, Redinho, Deadboy – loads more which we’re all really excited about.

Neil: I’ve been super happy with the music we’ve released this year especially.

Spencer: 2013 has been a crazy year!

Bobby Cleaver: To be honest, our tenth year has totally flown by. I can’t believe we’re sitting here with these three birthday parties right around the corner. It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were all chatting about plans for “next year’s 10th anniversary”, and how we were going to mark it. It’s been hectic but I’m really happy with how its panned out so far. Just, so many things have happened, but the definite highlight for me was our Pleasure Principle festival. The reaction it got from everyone who came along made it totally special.

You’ve got three parties in three cities to mark the 10th birthday. Why this triple threat of events?

Spencer: City-wise, New York was something we’d been talking about happening for a while. It was in a Warehouse in Brooklyn and was the first Numbers in NYC, so it made sense to call it a 10th Anniversary event. The location gave us an opportunity to get two of our Detroit and Chicago heroes to play: Anthony Shake Shakir and DJ Deeon.

Bobby Cleaver: Yeah, getting to book DJ Deeon and Shake for a Numbers party was crazy! For locations we started to make a wish-list of places we’d like to hit for a 10 event, and New York was always been at the top of that list. So when plans started to come together for Glasgow and London, Spencer got in touch with the Rinsed crew and the stars must have been aligned or something for us, because all the dates worked out perfectly. Stuff of dreams, really. If you told me ten or twelve years ago this party would have happened, I’m not sure if I would’ve believed you.

Spencer: Totally. Shake’s one of my favourites, well, probably ‘our’ favourite, Detroit producer. His stuff still sounds futuristic and chaotic, even though it’s twenty years old. We’d been trying to get Deeon to the UK since the start of Numbers but it’s not possible due to various visa nonsense, so it was a really special moment for us. I’m not sure if Jack made good on his promise to cry though.London on the other hand is our home from home. I mean, I lived here for over ten years, and our December events have been running for a few years now. We’re returning to the massive Warehouse we used for our big 2011 party, which was one of the best shows we have ever done I reckon.

Bobby Cleaver: Like, eighteen months ago, when we started talking about plans for our 10th anniversary, Glasgow and London were both definites, for sure. You’ve gotta have a birthday party on home turf, right?!

Spencer: We couldn’t not, could we? Glasgow is our actual home, even if many of us aren’t there the whole time. It’s also on Friday 13th… I’m generally a bit superstitious, so it will be fun!

Bobby Cleaver: Managing to lock in Hudson Mohawke for both the UK dates was ideal as well. He ties things together nicely, and don’t think he’s played at a non-festival Numbers party since our first London warehouse in 2011… Keeping it in the family, huh. The rest of the London line up I think reflects the depth of what we’re into. Redinho, who’s going to be the first ever LP artist on Numbers in the early 2014, and Optimo, who we’ve been fans of for a long, long time now. I’m particularly looking forward to hearing them play a big Warehouse party and, well, I can’t really say much about the special guest, but I’m sure they won’t disappoint! Headliners aside though, the programming for these parties has been about making Jackmaster and Spencer both have plenty of time to control the events musically. These are the 10th anniversary of the club, so we all want the events to reflect what’s gone on over the last ten years; to ensure that they have a strong Numbers flavour for each one.

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Speaking of Jackmaster too, I know that much of the press about Numbers seems to centre on a narrative that generally runs like: Jack is the “head” of Numbers. I don’t think it’s stressed enough just how much of a collective effort Numbers is, and how different everyone’s roles in this are.

Goodhand: Jack and Calum tend to get most of the exposure as they’re essentially the public face of the label due to their DJ careers, but everything we do is most certainly a team effort. There is no ‘head’ of the label as such. It doesn’t really operate like that. I guess it’s like the co-op from popular TV series ‘The Wire’, where we sit around in a dark room (see ‘Skype’) and have heated discussions (see ‘Gmail’) then hit our corners (see ‘Google Docs’) to take care of business.

Richard Chater: Ha, yeah, it’s basically Waco – but without the guns and God-bothering. We’re all different ages and live very different lifestyles, but the thing that binds us is our shared tastes. Some of us are dads, some of us spend their weekends hill-walking, and some of us spend way too much time in airports. I guess all our experiences and interests just get chucked straight into the Numbers melting pot, and we take it from there.

Neil Morton: Yeah, like any well-formed cult or drug cartel, there’s a shared purpose. The collective nature of it helps to create and form the ideas.

Bobby Cleaver: I think “collective” is definitely the right word. Ever since we started, we’ve always worked together as a group with equal input in all creative decisions. This can have its draw back’s at times – like when trying to agree what colour of t-shirt to print, which seems to be a never-ending debate actually, ha – but having six people’s ideas is definitely more fruitful than just one or two in the long run.

Numbers encompasses a lot of different things now: a label, parties, a festival, it’s a very expansive enterprise yet manages to tie together aesthetically. In terms of the scope of what Numbers does, do you feel this template is the way forward for similar crews?

Spencer: Well, everyone’s story is different. Ours is that we went through a lot of different stages before we got to where we are; three labels run by different people, full time jobs at record labels, record stores, distribution companies, design studios, other club nights – you get the idea. We aren’t trying to set a blueprint for what everyone else should do, but we decided a long time ago that if you cut out all the shit that gets confusing in between, and just focus everyone one the one project together, then generally everyone works better together. More than that too, it’s better for us all as friends. Numbers is first and foremost a bunch of friends releasing amazing music by talented artists, putting on genuinely fun and memorable events.

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Speaking of the aesthetics, the growth of the Numbers look has been such an interesting one. How do you feel the design has grown over the years?

Goodhand: I used to collect flyers from Glasgow clubs when I was a wee guy, maybe as young as eleven or twelve years old. I loved the different visual languages of each night, and how they each developed over time. I guess when Numbers started I was definitely conscious of the aesthetics of each club. I wanted to create a long running series which tied together in a similar style. Combining the old labels was great for me, as I went from having to develop four quite unique identities – Jack’s Dress 2 Sweat, Richard’s Stuffrecords and Calum’s Wireblock – and merge them all together into one. Bit of a relief to be honest, ha. A lot of the earlier poster designs were informed by the style of music of the guest, or in some cases the actual name of the guest. More recently I’ve been working with an artist called Thomas Traum, and the creative coder Mike Tucker; creating real-time, sound re-active 3D visuals for our live shows and posters.

What can people expect from you after the new year, both conceptually in terms of what Numbers wants to achieve, and with artists close to the label?

Spencer: Musically we clearly have never really been genre driven. We don’t listen to one genre, so we don’t just release one. Redinho’s album will be out next year now. There’s been some delays with a couple of tracks, and timings with production have held it up. I know people are waiting for this, but a good record will be good this week or in three months. We’d rather it’s the best it can be by the time people get it! Other than that though we’ve got a release from Darq E Freaker in the pipeline, what I think is one of Deadboy’s best EP’s to date, some of DJ Deeon’s best material remastered from DAT, and much more SOPHIE material. Loads, actually.

Is there a release from either Numbers or the older labels that really stands out as a favourite for each of you? And/or, is there a particular release you feel was a bit slept on, or deserved more attention than it got?

Neil Morton: We’re re-releasing Sparky’s Portland record with a thirty-minute Ricardo Villalobos remix, which is definitely a slept-on killer. Sparky (aka Dave Clark) has got some amazing music, like the recent Luma release on Optimo Trax. A favourite track of mine from Wireblock was one he made with his brother Craig called ‘City to City’ under the name Music At Nite.

Bobby Cleaver: Deadboy ‘Here’ is always a record that stands out for me. The artwork on the picture sleeve is beautiful, and the three tracks just sit together so well. The tracks always get a great reaction when played in clubs and have given me loads of good memories; peak time at a club with ‘Wish U Were Here’ through to Jessie Ware singing ‘Aint Gonna Lie’ live on our festival showcases a couple years back was wild.

For your Pleasure Principle festival, how do you feel it turned out, and are you planning something bigger or different for the next one?

Bobby Cleaver: The vibe at Pleasure Principle was unreal. It was kinda like a big friends and family thing. It was so far away – ten hours from Glasgow and five hours from London – but everyone just seemed to connect and get on the same wave-length. The artists and the crowd seemed to be having a wicked time, all the time. I guess though, at the same point, the distance from any major cities definitely made it a bit of a logistical nightmare to get artist travel sorted. I think it would’ve been a bigger festival (in terms of crowd) if the site was a bit easier to get to. We’re putting some plans together for 2014, but we’re looking at a slightly different format; closer to a major city, but still with the full weekender feel for 2015.