Saturday 26th July 2025 and something very special happened in Torquay. The former Claires nightclub that had been closed for many years was recently refurbished and a brand new entertainment venue has been created and named Arena Torquay. A multi-use space but with emphasis on Live entertainment along with an amazing backstage set-up for touring artists.
I was asked to be a part of a reunion night for Full Tilt and Kinda Funky, two of the biggest dance music and R&B nights in the south west through the 90’s and early 2000’s. Having designed the logos and flyers from the inception it was really cool to be able to dig out lots of old artwork, images and flyers to use for the promotion for this reunion night. No headline DJ’s but the original residents were the roster for the event with the line-up as follows
Full Tilt: Alex Downey. CrG, Joe Freeze b2b Martin Smith, Ben McGowan b2b Matt Vinyl, Kev Walters.
Kinda Funky: Mike McGowan and Craig Fisher.
With the night running from 7pm-1am it was going to be a challenge with set times, but playing back to back with Joe on vinyl was a really fun thing to do. It’s been long time since we did it last and even tho we had a get together to check through our tune selections, we still ended up reading the room and going with the tunes we felt would be the most nostalgic of the original nights. Taking over from CrG’s early slot we were able to take a virtually clear floor to full during our 90 minute set ready for Matt and Ben to keep the b2b going until Kev ‘Smoothound’ Walters took things up another level with a banging vinyl set to close out the night.
I also my had my camera with me to take some photos of the night as it progressed. Here are some of them with the full gallery available on my design website at https://area23.org/galleries/back2claires-july-26th-2025/
Here’s an all vinyl mix I recorded back in approx 2000 heavily influenced by Sasha and John Digweed’s progressive Northern Exposure releases.
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