Celebrating 12 years of DUNJ, Eora's best kept secret

Dance and electronic music is having a moment. Perhaps its largest moment ever, with Australia currently touting a third place ranking as the world’s most popular space for dance music, as far as streaming is concerned at least.

For a culture historically so embedded within the idea of ‘youth’, it can be rare, in Australia at least, for promoters to stick around. Promoters might throw a few events in their university days, have a crack at throwing a doof, and in many cases, ultimately stop or severely reduce their regularity. To many, it’s trendy.

DUNJ is not one of those promoters.

On the eve of celebrating the brand’s 12th birthday, and mammoth 150th event, what better time to discuss the changes of a culture that they’ve helped pioneer in their home city.

The DUNJ team, originally three friends but now a massive nine people, is a hard group to get in the same room. The nature of their events understandably comes with some important editorial discretion, and so this conversation comes from the hivemind that they clearly all share.

“DUNJ (originally Dungeon Events) was started by 3 friends as a DIY party in unique locations around Sydney Harbour, strictly on Tuesday nights. We were club rats and club promoters at Chinese Laundry and The Wall @ World Bar who were looking to run our own gigs and at the time this kind of event outside of the confines of the club environment seemed like our best option,” they told me via email.

Like in any conversation with a Sydney-based promoter, the topic inevitably turns to the restrictions placed on dance music by the city at large. Whether police or council, Sydney’s dance music scene has regularly suffered the consequences of a city grappling with an identity crisis. Ironically, the musical culture of the home of VIVID has in recent years largely succeeded due to the efforts of those acting outside of the city’s own frameworks.

DUNJ is all too aware of the impact this environment has had on their history, but clearly wears it as somewhat of a badge of honour.

“It’s less that Sydney is the home of DUNJ and more that DUNJ is a product of Sydney as a city and a scene.”

The group, then 3, started out running DIY pop up parties, largely in “historically significant locations” around Sydney Harbour. Their foray back into the club scenes then, as with so many promoters, forced the team into running events inside the aforementioned spaces ‘outside regulation.”

“DUNJ is a product of its environment and has evolved alongside and against the restrictions and limitations of the city.”

If you thought that some promoters were enigmatic, they’re nothing when compared to DUNJ, who have made a habit of regularly sharing world-class lineups with almost no time to spare. A regent gig, featuring Forest Drive West, dropped only around a fortnight before the show, for example.

DUNJ’s following, an expansive and intergenerational group of dedicated music lovers and dancers, leave the group largely with no choice but to be this way. “Once we had a bit of a name for ourselves, limited promotion became a necessity. We didn't want too many people coming to these events for safety and duty of care reasons, so the limited and vague promotion strategy was an easy way to ensure we got the scale and type of crowd we wanted,” they said.

This approach to promotion, while not totally emulated by other brands, is among many a gold class standard in keeping DIY spaces safe. Gatekeeping might be an ugly word to some, but for DUNJ, it’s almost a necessity.

For many outside of Eora, the spaces that DUNJ occupy remain a massive mystery. While it may be tempting to label them as ‘warehouses’, the DUNJ team are very quick to clarify what we’re actually talking about here.

“Warehouse culture is a broad term that can mean different things to different people. The term warehouse relates more to real estate, most of the creative spaces we utilise are considered warehouses but this term diminishes the function and purpose of the space and the work and passion of the creatives, artists and crews that run them. Some of these spaces look and feel like a quintessential warehouse, some spaces feel more like (and are) actual live music venues, some feel more like clubs, some feel like workshops and others feel more like an art gallery.”

While Eora has long fumbled its claim to be the club capital of Australia, these spaces have and continue to act in many ways as a blank canvas for local promoters looking to leave their mark. Eora’s more underground sound is a landscape run, predominantly, by promoters and not venues. DUNJ’s events, as a result, each have their own distinct flavour, style and energy often matched to the acts that they book.

It’s this element of uncertainty and anticipation, DUNJ feel, makes the city what it is. “The main thing that sets this scene out from the rest is the spaces we utilise and the relative freedom that these spaces enable for our community and for us as promoters, especially regarding production. There is always an element of surprise and anticipation for our audience , even if they have been in the same space recently,” they said.

This clear signature is not only down to DUNJ’s mastery of lighting, quality sound and environment however, with the group growing an incredible list of local and international contacts very clearly desperate to play their shows. While this has now expanded to many different avenues of ‘bass’ oriented music, DUNJ started, primarily, as a dubstep party.

“When we first started running shows we were focused very heavily on dubstep and our predecessors Void, Garage Pressure, Signature Bass, Low Society + more had stepped back from running shows. As dubstep grew into the post dubstep era our sound diversified and we started connecting with more artists outside of the strictly dubstep sound.”

As dance music has grown, so have they. Recent guests include the likes of Piezo, Truant, Batu, Djrum, Sybil, Loefah, Konduku, K-Lone, Facta, Yushh and so many more.

ghostlyWith a focus on community, it’s clear that their approach has not gone unnoticed both at home and abroad. Many promoters would likely give an arm and a leg for some of the acts that they book, but DUNJ, perhaps somewhat frustratingly in the eyes of their ‘competitors’, look at it all too humbly. “Dance music events are inherently about communities, crews, labels and other groups of creatives, so once you engage with one artist it can open up a lot of doors for other acts from their community,” they explained.

This sense of collaboration is something DUNJ sticks to at an unrivalled level at home also. “Collabs are a pivotal part of our events and our focus on fostering community. It’s safe to say that over ⅓ of our events have been in collaboration with another crew / collective,” they explained. Collaboration is at the core of what DUNJ does, with almost 75 different collaborative events under their belt, featuring the likes of Eora and Australia’s most well respected names in dance. Including the likes of Ghostly, Big Ting, Asylum, Translate, Headroom, Construct, SHED:, Decay, Extract the Motion, Extra Spicy and so many more, the group have fostered incredible connections that can be felt all across the Eora scene.

This desire to collaborate, as the team described, comes with its limitations however.

“We also hope for more active collaboration and cross pollination between scenes and generations but this is made much harder by the city’s reluctance to let dance events flourish. Dance music events need to be publicly accessible to enable great collaboration and cross pollination. Nothing will stop dance music events happening but the kind of open collaboration and co-mingling we dream of becomes very hard when you can’t publicly and proudly promote your events to other communities. The restrictions and regulations on these events stifle opportunities for communities to build and leave communities isolated.”

The slowed normalisation of dance music is something so cruelly and regularly compared with countries overseas, who are registering clubs as places of cultural and historical significance, making major strides in regard to drug and safety policy, and reaping the massive economic benefits that come with the flourishing of modern culture. Eora in particular, with the 2014 lockout laws acting as a prime example, has long struggled with government and police’s definition of dance music as “high risk”.

DUNJ has, like only a handful of promoters within the DIY space who have stood the test of time, persevered to deliver in an environment seemingly built to guarantee their failure. Against that all however, the group have upheld a standard very much against the grain of what the powers at large would consider dance music promoters to be.

“In our time we have luckily never had any major altercations, fights, human inflicted injuries or deaths. Although we say it’s lucky, it isn’t down to luck, we create safe spaces, people are there for the music (not to get wasted) and our crowds always behave themselves and look after one another. This community is and has always been inherently safer than the casino, we just don't have the same level of political influence.”

This has, in DUNJ’s time, seen the departure of many of their collaborators and the understandable wearing of their own ambitions. “The constant fight against the restrictions of the city to be able to participate in the economy has been consistently grating against our will and drive,” they said. “We’ve seen so many of our friends, beloved artists and long standing promoters throw in the towel due to the restrictions, rules, legislation and the general unconstructive attitude the city holds for what this community is able to provide to the economy and creative scene,” they continued.

Regardless of this, for DUNJ there’s clearly nowhere else they’d rather be.

Like many operating within Eora, DUNJ flaunts the underdog colours of its city as a kind of badge of honour.

“We’re deeply in love with Sydney as a city and although there are many hindrances, rules, unfair legislation and a general lack of acceptance for dance music events, we feel a responsibility to keep pushing and contribute to the cities culture, in an attempt to change the city for the better, provide meaningful moments for our community and prove the worth of dance music events as part of the cities cultural offering.”

DUNJ’s desire to improve its city, over its lifetime, is a goal that rings true in everything it does. Its work with promoters, artists and creatives of all different backgrounds and generations has it sitting, among those who know, as an almost parental figure within Eora’s still blooming culture. With no clear ambitions to grow commercially, to fly to more fertile ground interstate or overseas, or to sacrifice the size and intimacy of their events, DUNJ exerts a confidence and consistency that inspires those around them to do more, and to do it better.

“We have big dreams for the city and definitely want to keep pushing for greater acceptance of what we do and what our community loves,” they shared.

But while the group are, to say the least, incredibly modest in the way they approach their position within Eora’s scene, they’re not without their own moments to be proud of.

Looking back on twelve years and verging on 150 events, the group shared a series of some of the best memories they’ve had. Broadly, these were times just shortly after their inception, as the lockout laws forever changed Eora’s dance and nightlife landscape.

“We’ll always look back on the lock out era in the creative spaces fondly. There was a feeling of civil defiance in what we were doing. We weren’t doing anything wrong but it was clear that the government at the time had it out for dance music, dance music events and disco balls for some reason.

There was a beautiful culture around these spaces; promoters worked together and shared advice, experiences and leads on spaces and equipment. There was a very healthy and constructive level of competition and symbiotic growth where promoters would see what others were doing and think about how they could take the space or the event to the next level.”

Collaborations with [insert], bunkers with Paleman, Pinch and Mungos Hifi, a 3 stage Sunday event with Yolk, many late nights and early morning bump outs, bridge parties, park parties and Reclaim The Streets rallies with mobile sound systems are just a few of the specifics that stand out.

“It’s definitely hard to single events out but the ones that come to mind when prompted are our events for; DJ Nobu & Haruka, Forest Drive West, Special Request, Djrum, Azu Tiwaline, Yushh, Alex Coulton, Sherelle, Etch, Konduku and Versa. These stand out for a variety or reasons whether it was because we we got to collab with some great crews, we did a very innovative or unique set up, there were environmental or police led challenges we had to overcome, we got along really well with the artist or the artist’s sound really encapsulated where we were at musically at that exact moment of time.”

A lot is also owed to the stragglers; the stamina crew who stuck around to the very end and helped carry equipment over dusty trails with sun in their eyes.”

In a space and culture growing increasingly populated, DUNJ feels to those who have known it a long time as a brand that’s, for the most part, remained the same. While the group itself has grown, their connections have become even more concrete, their approach to community even more set, and their practice even more influential.

For them, the future looks, simply, as it always has.

“[We’ll] just keep doing what we’re doing while evolving and learning in the process.”

Here’s to being humble. Happy birthday DUNJ.

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Jack Colquhoun is the Managing Editor of Mixmag ANZ, find him on Instagram.