An interview with Hide&Seek founder You&Me

CAPESTHORNE HI RES ARIEL VIEW

Hide&Seek is the UK’s newest and most exciting boutique electronic music and arts festival, coming this summer to to the lush grounds of Capesthorne Hall, a stately home set in 100 acres of picturesque Cheshire countryside. It all goes down on August 31st from 11am to 11pm and features a cultured line-up across a number of stages, boasting key players on the scene across house, techno, disco and minimal music. Maestros include Dan Shake, Francesco del Garda, Ingi Visions, Jamie 3:26 and Jeremy Underground – plus Josh Baker, Margaret Dygas, Mathew Jonson (live), Nicolas Lutz, Praslea, Spokenn and Voigtmann, with more to be released in the coming months. But what goes on behind the scenes when it comes to running a festival of Hide&Seek’s size? We caught up with the festival’s founder, You&Me, to hear a bit more…

Buy your tickets to Hide & Seek here: https://www.residentadvisor.net/events/1241712

The festival is featuring a load of our favourite acts, including Margaret Dygas, Ingi Visions, Del Garda and more. Why do you think minimal techno has exploded in popularity in Britain over the past few years?

People are always looking for new music, deeper sounds, something more experimental, and the deeper you get into music hunting and musical experience, the more refined you music taste becomes. In our opinion minimal music is as deep as you can go in terms of a genre, so for a lot of people it’s unheard material, refreshing and satisfying.

What is it about these artists that so appealing?

This fits in with the last question, these underground artists are known as ‘diggers’, it’s well known that they commit their life to finding unheard music/producing new music. What makes them so appealing is that you can bet they won’t play more than a couple of tracks that you have heard them play previously, and you know you will hear more than enough unheard tracks to satisfy your needs.

Naturally it’s also very important to foster local talent. Can you tell us a bit about the local talent on show?

To be honest it didn’t take much thought to decide which local brands and artists we would be involving with Hide&Seek. All of the brands were hand selected due to connection/friendship and relationships we have built over the past years, whilst all sharing the same passion, love and vision for driving the underground music scene. The brands who will have their residents spinning at the festival consist of; You&Me, Set One Twenty, Animal Crossing, iQ, Modular, Pooku, Tranquil, Augmented and The Mango Club. All of whom we know throw a wicked party with top quality music.

Of course, the line-up is full of straight-up house and techno acts too. How difficult is it to put a line-up like this together?

It was an emotional rollercoaster to be honest haha. Anticipating replies from agents. It’s a complete different kettle of fish to organising/programming 3 artists for a club show, which we are used to with You&Me. We pulled through in the end and secured a line up we are more than happy with and overly proud to announce!

While the line-up features a host of brilliant, ‘underground’-inclined names, it chooses to sidestep superstar names. Was this a conscious thing for you?

We didn’t really think about it this way. We selected our artists dependent on their music, we have watched every artist on the line up, and within their genres they are the superstars really.

Is there one artist over any other that you’re looking forward to seeing?

Without sounding cheesy, every artist on the line up excites us.

Can you tell me about You&Me? Who does what, what’s involved and what does your day-to-day look like?

Day-to-day looks like a WhatsApp group chat for You&Me haha! We spend all day every day discussing our next ventures, bookings and ideas.

There are 4 of us who own You&Me, 3 of us have run a full time events company for around 7 years. Around 5 years ago we met Josh Baker and ended up spending the summer together in Ibiza, this was were it all began really.

How it looks now is:

Kurt Hurst – Artist Booker, Artist Liaison, Venue logistics.

Josh Baker – Head DJ/Frontman, Music Production

Dash Ford – Creative/Design

Dan Mourino – Resident DJ, music producer, Marketing & Advertising

We all have our own roles, but everything is agreed as a team, as we all have the shared connection to our sound and music direction.

The residents as well, they are a big part of You&Me, Seba&Emile, Matt Wide, Jacob Samuel.

We are preparing for the label release at the moment as well, so that is taking up some time. Watch out for the first release on You&Me Records.

How much of running a festival would you say you’re prepared for? And what would you say you’re not? What have you enjoyed and disliked about the process so far?

We personally would not have been prepared for any of this haha! It’s pretty overwhelming, but thankfully we have professionals helping us. It is pretty scary but we are loving every minute of the learning process.

Festival aside, what keeps you busy during the year? And when does the preparation start for 2020?

Like I mentioned earlier, we run a full time events company, some of our events run weekly, so we are always preparing for the next event. For Dan and Josh they keep themselves more then busy with their music production. Ohh and of course the holidays/music festivals haha, as a team, between us 4, our residents and the crew, we travel around Europe a lot during the year visiting music events and festivals. Preparation for 2020 for both You&Me and Hide&Seek has already begun.

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