1) Evolve is really fun night - recognisable for the colour and decor as well as the music. How important do you think the image of E:volve us and why?
E:volves image is very important to us, we at E:Volve kill ourselves to make sure that we totally transform any venue we play at so that where ever we maybe you walk in and it feels like home. We feel that the bigger clubs have got lazy relying too heavily on their brand and just stick a couple of logo inflatables in to remind you were you are. E:volve likes to surround the clubber in its vision of how we feel clubbing was in the past and with adding something new how it should be again.. and so far it’s proving pretty popular.

2) Could you briefly describe how Evolve started?
Ahh… the beginning like all beginnings is very hazy. Jock & Suz were promoting Men@Work ( which still is a very active underground Telford Free Party Crew ) and Paul was nestling in the safe space between being a Pro VJ and trying to cajole the other members of the Aura Orange ( the Legendary Wolverhampton Party Crew ) to try to get something happening again. So all of them were desperate to try and fill what we saw as both a personal hole as well as something we thought was lacking in the club scene in general. The two halves met at Men@Work parties Jocks & Suz`s desire to step away and take real control over a project free of the party politics of a free Soundsystem met perfectly with Pauls need for someone who was keen to actually do something and they kicked the idea around but it wasn’t until 6 months later at the Bulldog Bash Festival for the Hells Angels that Paul was involved with organising and Jock was a guest DJ that conversations that had always started "we should" turned into "we will". Finding the venue was the first challenge and so we looked to Paul’s home turf in Wolverhampton where smaller clubs are the norm and the scene is uncluttered. We begged stole and borrowed whatever we could to get the basic equipment together and since then everything we have ever made has gone back into the night over and over again.. Bigger rig, better lights, more decor, more, more, more..
E:Volve has really evolved over time, with little mutations every party adding new things and loosing ideas that didn’t work, its natural growth and decay which finds a more harmonious party, that everyone instantly feels is right.

3) What's the best Evolve night been over the 2 years?
Depends who you ask. They have all been great, we’ve had no major trouble, we’ve had plenty of highlights far too many to mention. Some amazing DJs playing stunning sets but in general we are in growth and the best night so far has always been the last one. Once we get to the stage where we say "ahhh.. Wasn’t that night 3 years ago great".. We know something has gone desperately wrong.

4) Any low points?
Well, the first time we lost our venue was a downer, it was due to EVIL DRUGS!!! There was 1 guy.. Yup 1 single guy....once... who was found with a small bag of illegals and it gave the owner the reason he needed to just close the door on us. His true motive was of course to paraphrase Peter Kay.. "Dancers aren’t Drinkers" and its difficult to pay staff wages on the sale of a couple of dozen bottles of water so this was just the excuse he had been looking for. This happened just as we were getting into our stride and the parties were really starting to take off and made us really miss a beat, but in another way it forced us to look outward and reassess the way we wanted E:Volve to grow and we decided that we had to take the chance and move into a bigger arena and focus on the more crowded Birmingham scene which is where we have flourished.. So (and we recently met him by chance and said this to his face) thank you - small minded club owner :)
Oh yeah, there was that time as well we got "exposed" on Central News for selling "illegal substances" or Nitrous as we all know it. The government decided to overturn a law that apparently wasn’t legal in the first place and make the distribution of N2O illegal overnight, we didn’t respond quick enough and the hidden camera crew filmed the Evolve party and the sale of Nitrous and did a big expose, we were all in the footage, our logo and web address were all visible as was the clubbers and the Djs, BUT fortunately because they didn’t have permission to film, plus they were shown on camera consuming the "illegal substance " themselves they couldn’t pass the footage on to the police to press charges and it all turned into free publicity, but boy - We cacked it when an insider leaked the fact that we were going to be exposed on that weeks show!

5) Do you think it works better as its own night instead of hosting a room in a different night?
Yes far better. We liked to think we show the other rooms up when we do a hosted room. We put 110% effort into the space we were allowed inside the other night. As you know the atmosphere of E:Volve is because of the overall event as a whole not a single room. And so we would describe it as giving the clubber on those hosted nights a flavour of what to expect if they came to an E:Volve.
In fact now we tend to be asked to pretty much do all the other rooms as well when we play out. And we take a branded room as part payment. E:Volve Productions was born because people could see that we were completely committed to that event and had all the gear that a night needs to make their party happen at an affordable cost to the organiser. We will never stop doing hosted rooms as they bring us regular nights, the attention of the scene, with less hassle per event (sort of) and a whole new crowd each time we play who may have never seen an E:Volve Event. It’s the reason we keep growing. We aim to make everyone who hasn’t been before when they see one of our hosted rooms..." if the guys put this much effort into 1 room.. Imagine what damage they are going to do with a whole venue.. I might give that a night a visit "

6) Is there anywhere you'd like to hold a night or host a room where you haven't already?
Hmm.. We’ve pretty much covered the big clubs of the Midlands so individual venues hold no sway for us.. But I suppose we would love to do a hosted room at a Gatecrasher or perhaps a Sundissential. There’s a certain collection of clubbers there that might not usually stray outside of the relative safety of a night like those and we would love to get a chance to say to them.. You have a choice.. There is a scene outside of the super clubs.. And it’s pretty damn vibrant. Come get involved. We would also like to get more into the festival scene.. We just have to get to know the right people that will come with time.

7) Where did the idea for the bouncy castle come from?!
Ooooo we are all big kids at heart and clubbing is playtime, so we went to the extreme with that and spent a small fortune on toys and games but they didn’t last long as they got damaged and misused as only 500 overgrown slightly befuddled unsupervised clubbers can. The Bouncy Castle is "relatively" bullet proof and makes a great distraction and change of pace, I mean the mood changes on that thing over the course of a night.
It’s weird you’ve really got to see it to believe it, a whole other party happens there. It’s like another dance floor at first no one wants to go near it.. Until the regular big kids do and then they see it really is okay to just play and they bounce and bounce and bounce and rediscover how bloody knackering it was being a kid. Then as the night moves on and people settle down, it becomes a chill zone, people take a break and sit and gently sway as others get on or off it’s a place of lively debate. There’s definitely some romancing there about 1am.. So watch out for that you Pervs.. And then after that it becomes the world’s biggest crash pad and all sort of wasted humanoids lie in their own particular state of destruction until the lights go back on and its home time.

8) Is there anything you've done that you'll never do again?
Ohh.. Never say never. I can’t really think of any major failures. Although we often get that feeling when we are lugging one of our rigs up three or four flights of stairs and especially down again at 6am the following morning. It’s that fourth or fifth trip, when the muscles die and the lungs explode and the head is hazy - that that particular thought crosses the mind in a very real sense. But a couple of weeks later.. There we are. Cursing ourselves because we are in the same position yet again.

9) And finally, is there anything else Evolve has got in store that you'd like to share?
Well we really need to re-establish a home base, that’s the first goal of this year, we spent most of last year floating, which is fine, it got us out and seen, but we won’t start to really grow again until we have regular events in an established venue for us and we feel we might have found our new home at the Rainbow Warehouse, if all goes well we will be very focused on having regular nights there. There is the potential for another smaller spin-off night along the same lines with probably a different music policy in another city, but that’s still in the "we should" phase of development so don’t hold your breath.

Finally, we would love to thank our fantastic resident DJ's and guest DJ's that have played for us over the last two years. You lot the clubbers for all your help and support as E:volve would not be what it is today with out you. Lets stamp E:volve on the clubbing map in 2008!!! Lets show the world how to party!! The E:volve Crew x