Catching up with FOLD London: Projects, Challenges and New Merch

“We’ve been through a lot this year and we know there is a light somewhere out there, that’s why we continue our fight on half a sinking ship!” Read the interview below.

With a second and even tighter lockdown in Europe, due to Covid’s outbreak, culture, artists, and creatives suffer the most. With their work in 2020, the FOLD crew broke through with their series FOLD Detect and the live streams straight from their venue. Power plant, venue and family FOLD, keeping London’s electronic music (scene) alive, has recently launched new merchandise, which revenue will help the venue to stay open and support the people behind it. The team follows up on their efforts also in 2021 to keep the community together, London’s infamous techno scene empowered and enforce artists and creatives from inside the community. The institution for music & art in the industrial heart of Canning Town is an important home and ground of creative studios and a 500 capacity state-of-the-art performance space.

We spoke with the team to get an update and sum up recent happenings around FOLD.

FOLD has grown from club to label despite the adverse 2020 and its effects on the UK club and electronic music world. How have things developed since our last chat?

The label is just a natural continuation of our journey. FOLD keeps growing and widening its horizon day by day, our streams, podcast series (DETECT), and record label are becoming the central gateway for UK dance-culture at least whatever is left of it. Unifying and keeping us warm to get through these hard times together.

And now Brexit…?

Brexit is something that will make everyone’s life so difficult, we can’t feel it just now, but in full swing, it will have a huge impact on the nightlife industry as a whole, it will make an extremely, huge difference for all grassroots venues and artists.

Your “Detect” and “Fold Invites” series have been growing in this past difficult year. Could you explain the concept of these shows, some of the behind the scenes work that goes into them, and which ones you would highlight?

We started the “DETECT” Series and “FOLD invites” before the full closure of nightlife, it’s like a book with many stories, people behind the scenes telling us their story in their own way. They express feelings openly for us to share and nothing makes us more proud other than having the ability to pass it around through our platform. Our book is inclusive and intersectional at the core, my personal favorite so far is: Detect [005] S Ruston.

Almost one year after the first lockdown, how are you keeping up and what do you consider the most urgent steps towards clubs opening once more?

It has been a very difficult year, not physically and materially but mentally more than anything. We need to look after each other, check-up on each other and get through this together. We can’t yet see the light at the end of the tunnel but we are getting there, all this will be over soon but at the same time, we can’t afford to lose more than we already have. It’s kind of difficult to say what the most urgent steps towards club opening are, but it’s very urgent to keep clubs visible and above water to help them survive these hard times. Every venue still has rent to pay and huge overheads, if clubs close before everything opens then all this fight will be for nothing.

What uplifting moments do you cherish the most?

That’s very difficult, this situation feels so downhill, sometimes we forget to cherish moments. I do cherish the time that I find to make music.

How can our people support FOLD during this pandemic? What has been the best support and how can people support

It will be a massive help to support our social media platforms, subscribe to our channels, artists that are trying really hard to continue to make music, and our team working tirelessly to keep everything intact, relevant, and visible. In addition, you can support grassroots venues by purchasing their merchandise. We just launched our new FOLD bags and they are available for a limited run on our website. We’ve been through a lot this year and we know there is a light somewhere out there, that’s why we continue our fight on half a sinking ship!

Listen back to our Podcast with Fold’s driving force Lasha aka Voicedrone here and find out more about FOLD and their work via Facebook | Soundcloud | Website