SUN PALACE SOUND SYSTEM
A closer look at what’s happening in Liverpool’s underground music scene. From parties and collectives, to record labels and music artists, we meet the thriving minds currently shaking up the city.
We’re delighted to chat with Sun Palace Sound System, a one of a kind, original RLA high fidelity sound system based in Liverpool. Their party ‘Space to Dance’ returns to Invisible Wind Factory Substation next week, with former members of the Melodic Distraction team on DJ duties: Aitman, Lupini, Snoodman Deejay and Zaremba.
Hello SPSS! Hope you are well today. What inspired you to start your own sound system?
AETHHER: We’ve both loved clubbing ever since we were teenagers, we’re very lucky to have grown up in Liverpool with the likes of Korova and the Kazimier as our stomping grounds. Having those (smartphone-free) spaces to dance in when I was growing up was invaluable.
Barney: I actually found a 1980 white paper on the technical aspects of Paradise Garage when I was a teenager, but I didn’t really understand it at the time. This started a healthy curiosity about; the history of parties and club culture, particularly the 70s/80s New York disco scene and the legendary sound systems of places like the Paradise Garage, The Loft and The Gallery. However I thought it was all lost to the past, something we’d never experience ourselves.
Then, a few years ago our friend Theo (Red City Solidarity Disco) invited us to Cosmic Slop in Leeds. When we heard the Cosmic Slop system, we were blown away. By that point, I’d spent years working with big systems as a sound engineer in nightclubs and restoring vintage audio equipment for my studio Nan’s House. To know that Tom (Cosmic Slop) had successfully built an old school system that brought back the legendary sound of 70s New York, made me think it might be possible to do something like that in Liverpool.
AETHHER: Not only did it make us think it was possible, it also helped us to understand the impact of a stellar system. A great sound system can be revolutionary – it gives you goosebumps. It totally transforms your experience of music and dancing – bringing the music to life and bringing people together more. When there’s a lacklustre system, it’s easier to become distracted and fall out of the flow of the dancefloor (especially, if like me, you’re neuro-divergent). But with a great system, you’re totally immersed in the sound. It’s a pretty magical, unifying experience.
Barney: So, after that trip to Slop, we began our 5 year long journey to build Sun Palace Sound System. I revisited the white paper, and set to work scouring the world to find the right components to build and restore a Richard Long sound system, and AETHHER went to work thinking about all the other aspects that go into a great party.
In your opinion, what are some of the key ingredients for a good sound system?
Barney: For a party system, plenty of headroom and efficiency are best, with full coverage over the whole frequency range. You achieve this by overspeccing everything. If you have a system that can run extremely loud, but you turn it down, it’s never stressed and has room to breathe. If you have multiple separate cabinets and amps running different frequency ranges, nothing is getting pushed to its limits. If you have a little speaker cranked as loud as it can go, trying to do multiple frequency ranges, you get lots of unwanted distortion, resonances, and that all hurts your ears in the long run.
Horn loading is an easy way to do this, and it also adds a tone that enriches dance music, but that comes with its own drawbacks – namely the cabinets are huge and heavy. Line Arrays that you see for festivals are good at coverage for a generally static crowd, but that’s about it. For dance music with people moving around the space, point source is king. High frequencies are also very important. They are often overlooked, with people focussing on how much bass and low end you can get and the highs are just there to keep up with the bass. But that is what your ear is most sensitive to. The most important part of a good system is crystal clear highs that don’t damage your ears or sound really harsh.
For a dancefloor, quad corner set-ups are ideal for total immersion in sound and to help avoid “everyone face the DJ” tunnel vision. And of course, you can’t underestimate the importance of the room itself. The system needs to complement the room and vice versa.
Can you tell us more about the ethos of Space to Dance?
*Trigger Warning: sexual assault, eating disorders*
Barney: You can have the best sound system with the best room, but unless you have the right crowd, it means nothing. Space to Dance is about creating an accepting community of people who love music and love to dance. This music is called dance music, but so often now, people barely dance. It doesn’t feel so much like collective joy, more like intoxicated alienation and DJ worship. We want to move away from that, come back to the movers and the groovers, whatever their age, who are there for the music, the people, and to dance. We want to build a space where people can trust that whoever the DJ is, it will be somewhere safe where they can dance, meet new people and build community.
AETHHER: I’ve always struggled to connect with my body; I’m a survivor of sexual assaults, I’m queer and I’ve battled with bulimia, orthorexia, depression and anxiety since I was a teenager. But when I’m in an environment where I feel safe, when the music moves me to dance, it’s a blissful escape from all of that. As hosts, we try to create that safer, accepting environment where people can let go and connect. A big aspect of that for me is space. Having enough space to dance physically allows you to move more freely, but it can also help you to feel safe. If you’ve experienced sexual assault, it can be harder to relax dancing in a tightly packed crowd because you’re on high alert, watching out for potential threats. Space allows me to relax a bit more – at a safe distance from nonconsensual touch.
Why do you think it’s important to have such a space within the current nightlife climate?
AETHHER: No party can be everything to all people, but we try our best to create events where people feel safe and welcome but safer spaces are always a work in progress. We’d love the Space to Dance floor to be an inclusive, utopian platform for collective joy, with no misogyny, ageism, racism, homophobia, classism or any of the rest of that nasty stuff, but realistically, we can’t control every aspect of the party or vet every person who comes along. What we can do is be clear about what will or won’t be tolerated at our events and respond proactively when people fall foul of those expectations.
We want people to leave our events feeling better than when they arrived. So we infuse as much of the experience with bursts of good stuff to keep you feeling good all night long. Whether that’s pears and party rings (to give you an energy boost), affirmations to keep the neggy thoughts at bay or crafts to, well, just enjoy tbh (though they’re also handy if you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed, anxious or shy). It all helps. We try to introduce partygoers too (especially people coming solo), it’s been lovely to hear from previous attendees who’ve come alone and got chatting to new people.
What is your current take on the Liverpool music scene? Are there ways it could be improved?
Barney: Liverpool’s grassroots music scene is struggling, with venues barely paying the bills and ticket sales at an all time low. Covid had a big impact, then when it all started again it blew up with 2 years worth of shows crammed into 1 year. This oversaturated the market and people were quickly partied out. It’s a huge shame because music and clubbing is so much a part of the city’s culture and appeal to outsiders, but it’s been consistently dismissed as unimportant by the UK government. Liverpool once was the clubbing capital of the north, with Quadrant Park and Cream bringing people in from all around the country. It still has the potential to do that again, but not without external support given the economic climate right now.
AETHHER: It was absolutely gutting to see the closure of Melodic Distraction late last year. Melodic did SO much for the North West scene and its absence is sorely felt. They were like the guardian angels and cheerleaders; giving people ‘dream-come-true’ opportunities, developing people’s skills and confidence and nurturing the scene at all levels. They joined the dots between all the different strands to make a more connected, more collaborative music community. One really positive thing has been seeing so many more NB and femme DJs emerging.
Barney: Our fave party right now is Red City Solidarity Disco, run by our friends Theo, Ellie and Joe. It’s a socialist disco powered by a vintage sound system, based in an old police station turned art gallery. Each party’s a fundraiser for a different cause and it’s nice to make a change from the regular club scene. We’re also good friends with the people running Yeno Tha Soundsystem, another rig based in Liverpool. Focussing on state of the art equipment, and catering for a more harder sound, it’s great to see other people in the city doing something a bit different.
AETHHER: It’s not technically Liverpool but just over the Mersey, there’s another of our favourite parties ‘Bonsai Hifi’ at Claremont Farm. Pooky plays all night long on a Loft-style Klipschorn system. It is gorgeous. Boss, friendly crowd. Beautiful space and system. And of course, Pooky’s a pro so the selections are always on point. It’s one of my favourite places to dance.
In terms of improvements, I’d like to see: more early start, early dart nights for tired kitties like myself, more accessible visual designs used in promo, and fewer phones on dancefloors. In an ideal world, I’d love every venue to be made more accessible and to see a trained welfare team at every event, but with venues already struggling to keep their doors open and scarce funding opportunities, that feels like naively wishful thinking.
What’s your go-to song for guaranteed good vibes?
Ndedi Dibango – Eye Me
What else can we expect from SPSS throughout 2024?
We want to get a consistent, regular programme going, where people know what they are going to get month by month. We’re excited to be planning more Sun Lounge “Listening Club” events – a sit down/lie down, tea and biccies affair, where we listen to a carefully curated selection of records from start to finish.
We’ve got Space to Dance, our late night regular party, coming up 9th February at Invisible Wind Factory with some pals from the Melodic Distraction family. And we’ve also got more Dancing For Mental Health events in the calendar, our sober, daytime dance party.
There’s also a couple guests we’d like to invite to play on the system, but we have to build a bit more of a core crowd first – folks who want to dance even in the absence of a big name DJ.
We’d love to run some of Aethher’s speed friendship-ing events or intuitive movement classes in the future too, but we’ll see if we can fit all that in alongside our day jobs!
Written by Kate Hazeldine
Get your tickets for Space to Dance on 9th February here!
