Fri 13 Oct

Ivan Smag­ghe

About this event

Ivan Smag­ghe belongs to a top table of DJs that jour­nal­ists like to lazi­ly describe as ​“The DJ’s DJ”. He has the abil­i­ty to play music like a raw con­duit between famous­ly obscure records whilst nev­er los­ing sight of the dancefloor’s strobe soaked bod­ies — inject­ing some­thing of him­self seam­less­ly into the mix along the way.

His genre defying/​defining pro­duc­tion from Black Strobe, It’s A Fine Line and now Smag­ghe & Cross has con­nect­ed him and gar­nered the praise from the likes of Craig Richards, Vladimir Ivkovic, Para­noid Lon­don, Opti­mo, Solar and of course, his long time friend Andrew Weather­all — all fel­low cru­saders in the fight to prove that elec­tron­ic music is so much more than a one dimen­sion­al sound­track for a night on the lash, and so much more than an Insta­gram account. In Jan­u­ary 2020, Smag­ghe & Cross released their sec­ond LP, 1819, on Offen Music and are work­ing on a new lp for the end of the 2023. 

After co-run­ning the leg­endary french label and par­ties, ​“Kill The DJ,” Ivan washead­ing up his own imprint, ​“Les Dis­ques De La Mort”; an out­let for a unique taste in music and span­ning releas­es & remix­es from long sta­ples (Man­fredas, Cos­mo Vitel­li, Mar­co Pas­sarani, I‑Cube, Red Axes, Roman Fluegel) & spe­cial new com­ers (Elles, Sworn Vir­gins, Zil­las on Acid). LDDLM is a label that is always faith­ful to an instinc­tive­ly recog­nis­able ​“style of no style” and the refusal to be pigeonholed.

Covid has reframed the way of mak­ing and dif­fus­ing music : whilst think­ing of reac­ti­vat­ing some label action, Ivan has opened Amor Fati with Niv Arzi from Red Axes, a coun­ter­in­tu­itive blog page giv­ing away edits to who­ev­er wants them. The col­lab­o­ra­tion between these two may take form in Cus­toms & Faces, a new out­let and an Axes x Smag­ghe 12” will be out before the sum­mer on Ani­mals Dancing.

“Dres­den”, the party/​dj duo Ivan shares with Lithuan­ian leg­end Man­fredas is a cel­e­bra­to­ry man­i­fes­ta­tion of Ivan’s ethos and has expand­ed from Lon­don & Vil­nius res­i­den­cies to world tour­ing and Sum­mer. Look out for their all-nighters (and their record­ings), their tshirt col­labs with Mag­ic Cas­tles and soon, their not-so-func­tion­al club music.

You can catch Ivan sub­vert­ing the mass­es any giv­en week­end in clubs & fes­ti­vals such as Lux/​Lisbon, Nitsa/​Barcelona, Rex/​Paris, In Between/​Los Ange­les, Cor­si­ca Studios/​London, Nuits Sonores/​Lyon, Love International/​Croatia, Houghton/​Norfolk and many oth­er dens of iniq­ui­ty world­wide- and for this spe­cial occa­sion, down on the SE British Coast in Mar­gate, at Faith in Strangers.

Schedule

10:00 PM