An Isle of Man DJ duo is set to take to the stage at one of the UK’s leading independent festivals this August Bank Holiday weekend.
The duo has built a reputation on the island for energetic sets combining house, disco, funk and classic tracks, with the pair performing at private parties and corporate events.
The Shambala opportunity came after Chris was contacted by a stage manager who works across a number of major UK festivals, including Glastonbury and Boomtown.
Tom said the stage manager, who is originally from the island, had heard through word of mouth that Kitchen Disco would be a good fit for the festival. The appearance will mark the duo’s first major UK festival performance.
Chris said: ‘We have both independently and together played a lot of smaller stages both on and off the island, but we have not played a major UK festival before.
‘The opportunity to play on a main stage with a touring-grade sound system complete with sound and lighting engineers is tremendously exciting.’
The pair’s history with music stretches back to their teenage years, having grown up near each other and attended school together.
Tom said: ‘We first got Technics decks when we were around 14 and have never looked back.’
Chris added that the pair are both avid vinyl collectors and spent their teenage years travelling to Liverpool in search of rare records, before taking their music to school discos, house parties, birthdays and eventually friends’ weddings.
He said: ‘We used to hire speakers and lights from Aldridge Audio and get our parents to drive us around in the early days!’
After both spending years DJing, including UK club residencies in Bristol and Sheffield, the pair returned to the island and decided to take a different approach to performing.
Chris said: ‘Rather than looking for gigs in bars and clubs, we wanted to use our experience and love of immersive high-quality sound towards a more exclusive experience where we bring the party to people’s homes or venues for one off special occasions such as birthdays, garden parties and corporate gigs.’
Kitchen Disco officially launched in May this year, with Tom saying the response to the concept has exceeded their expectations.
‘The best parties have always happened in the kitchen, we knew that Kitchen Disco was a special concept and the bookings we have received since our launch in May this year have been astonishing.’
The festival will feature more than 500 artists performing across 35 venues.
Kitchen Disco’s festival appearance has been supported by the Isle of Man Arts Council.
Tom said: ‘The IoM Arts Council with their domestic travel grant have been fabulous in helping us cover the cost of travel to get to Shambala.’
Chris added that the realities of travelling from the Isle of Man can make UK gigs more difficult, particularly when transporting equipment.
‘Living on an island makes it way more difficult to play at UK gigs and the IoM Arts Council grants available for domestic travel mean that we can hopefully agree to more events on the big island soon!’