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Artist News Business News Gigs & Festivals
Village Underground announces fifteenth anniversary programme
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 29 June 2022
London venue Village Underground has announced a series of shows and club nights this September to mark its fifteenth anniversary. The anniversary programme will see the venue welcome back some of the promoters and artists who graced the building in its early days, as well as hinting at its future.
“We cleared burnt out cars and years of fly-tipped waste, sandblasted walls, laid concrete over the mud and planted a meadow for our roof”, says founder Auro Foxcroft of turning the Shoreditch building into a music venue in 2006.
“There was no plan”, he adds, “we just saw an opportunity to do something and took it. In the early years the never ending possibilities of London’s creativity ventured through the doors and sowed the seeds of VU to come, gradually taking shape as a grassroots music venue”.
“The last fifteen years has been a kaleidoscope of artists from around the world”, he continues, “with living legends like Alicia Keys, A$AP Rocky, Blondie, Charli XCX, Jeff Mills, Lee Scratch Perry, Mulatu Astatke, Pixies, Stone Roses and Underworld – sharing the stage with new artists from the underground, emerging scenes and global cultures – and this is the true heart of Village Underground”.
Meanwhile, Managing Director Amelie Snyers says: “The one good thing about the pandemic is that it forced us to slow down and spend some time thinking about what Village Underground had achieved by then – the good and the bad – and what needed to change”.
“A lot of these changes are reflected in the VU15 programme”, she continues, “it also offers clues to what is coming next: more diverse and engaged programmes, making the most of our independent status, working with all sorts of interesting, fun, new promoters, collectives and artists and finding ways to support each other as we all slowly recover from COVID”.
“Ultimately, we want VU to be for everyone and this won’t just be about our audiences and who is on stage, but also who we work with, how we work together and how we treat each other”, she concludes.
Here’s the big birthday line-up:
1 Sep: Eat Your Own Ears (line-up TBC)
2 Sep: Slow Dance – Oli XL, special guest (Hyperdub), Glows, Saint Jude, Folly Group, Memory Of Speke
3 Sep: Amaliah, Cashu, Suchi, Two Shell, special guest (NAAFI)
4 Sep: EartH Percent (line-up TBC)
8 Sep: Bird On A Wire – Wu-Lu
9 Sep: Mina & Bryte, Que DJ (Distruction Boyz), Banga, Sensei Lo
10 Sep: Touching Bass: The Cavemen, Alex Rita, Errol, more TBA
11 Sep: Channel One Sound System
12 Sep: Bird On A Wire (line-up TBC)
13 Sep: Metropolis – Just Mustard
16 Sep: 20 Years of Future Terror – DJ Nobu, Haruka, special guests TBA
17 Sep: Waterworks x Optimo 25 – Optimo, Paranoid London (live), Debonair, Jaye Ward
19 Sep: Loud & Quiet – Theon Cross, Lunch Money Life, special guest TBA
20 Sep: Parallell Lines – Gwenno
23 Sep: Percolate x Salute – Lxury, Fliss Mayo, Jasper Tygner, Aletha
24 Sep: Krankbrother – Noise Manifesto with Paula Temple, Samantha Togni, Lesser Of
26 Sep: Rough Trade – Line-up TBC
27 Sep: Crosstown – Hatchie
Find out more about all of Village Underground’s fifteenth anniversary celebrations here.