From sunsets to Sosho Hey, Mister DJ Mind Fluid Tsunami Benefit Joya Launch Time Out London Bar Guide Elle The Guardian Evening Standard The Independent Time Out Time Out The Independent Time Out Sauce Guide From sunsets to Sosho   07/03/2006   Brum DJ Pete Gooding, resident at Ibiza’s Café Mambo for the past decade, has swapped the sunsets of the White Isle for the uber cool of London’s trendy East End. But while he might have said goodbye to his long-standing Ibiza residency, we can say hello to his new London residency, called ‘Goodbye’, currently smashing up the underground Sosho venue. No, it’s not Pete’s attempt to confuse us all. But the name of his London residency makes more sense when you realise it’s an amalgamation of his and fellow resident DJ Jason Bye’s surnames. Clever? “I had a good innings at Mambo, but felt it was time to move on and push the sound that I love and that I’m not so famous for”, says Pete. It’s his desire to move away from the chillout label with which he’s been tagged following years of sunset sets. Indeed, it was his marathon sets (he often played more than eight hours) at the San Antonio venue that helped Café Mambo become one of the most famous Cafes in the world. But Pete Gooding has always had more than a chillout string to his bow. “That’s the problem with dance music, you get known for something and get categorised as a particular type of DJ, and it’s really difficult to move on to something else without being critised,” says Pete. But despite their very different locations in the world there are similarities between Mambo and Sosho, on Tabernacle St, EC2. For a start, both are bars that double up as clubbing venues, taking music-loving patrons through from a civilised evening to a full on party. Pete’s DJ’ing partner at Goodbye – held on the first Friday of the month – is Jason Bye, also a former Mambo resident. While Sosho’s General Manager is Stuart Langley who – you guessed it – used to be the bar manager at Café Mambo. “When I started managing at Sosho I wanted it to become a place for the Ibiza crowd to hang out in the winter,” explains Stuart. “The seasonal element about Ibiza means that for six months of the year you’ve got nowhere to hang out and nothing really to do. Having been bar manager at Café Mambo I knew a lot of London based Ibiza people and Pete was one of them. After a few months we had old Mambo staff working at Sosho, and waitresses from Ibiza, as well as some of the island’s DJ’s like Pete, Jason, and Andy Warburton. Word soon got around that the music was kicking and the bar became full of Ibiza people – it was like Ibiza never left us! Stuart is Head of Music for the Match Group that owns six bars across London, including Sosho. It is his love of good music and his Ibiza contacts that led to Sosho attracting swarms of Ibiza regulars desperate to maintain their link, however tenuous, with the island. “Music is always the lowest priority for bar managers,” says Stuart. “But I think it’s the most important thing about a bar, and unbelievably, despite London being a huge city, there are so few bars playing decent music.” “It’s one of the best bars in the capital if you’re into music,” reckons Pete. “They’ve got a strict underground-only music policy that’s quite Balearic, and for Ibiza people there’s no better place to drink in London. Sosho must be the only bar in the capital where you can get into trouble for playing something commercial”! says Gooding, in all seriousness. There are similarities between Sosho’s drinks and and Ibiza’s too, laughs Pete. “Stuart has this famous cocktail expert to train all his staff, and it shows. The service is superb, and it’s a shock to have that combination of quality dance music fans have to slum it in some gritty basement with plastic cups!” he jokes. Pete may have abandoned his Ibiza home for good (he says he’ll still fly over occasionally for guest slots), but hanging out in Sosho almost feels like he never left. And this issue’s great covermount CD shows where’s he’s at musically right now. It’s deep, dark and showcases Gooding’s love for house music. Think underground clubs, cool dancefloors and sound people. Mixed on Ableton Live, the mix showcases both Gooding’s ability to track down superior dancefloor tunes, as well as his outstanding aptitude for programming sets. Starting off deep and atmospheric, the mix gradually builds and builds, becoming chunky and electronic, until it rips right through the speakers with dirty, driving, electro house. “This CD crams in what Jason and I do over five hours on a Friday night at our Goodbye residency,” says Pete. It starts off deep and funky because at 8pm there will still be people in the bar having drinks after work. Track three is about where we would be at about 10pm when people are just starting their nights out, and it’s more driving but still atmospheric. By track five, the dancefloor would be going off.” Look out for Pete’s new house music label Freefall Recordings. “Quitting Ibiza will give me so much more time to dedicate to production,” he says. “With the Mambo residency I had to take four months off a year because it was impossible to do any work out there. I would always arrive on the island with good intentions and for about a month I could manage to remain relatively sober and avoid the party scene. Then inevitably, I’d slip into the Ibiza way of thinking, and before I knew it, it’d be the end of the season I would have one hell of a headache. “Now at least if you e-mail me during the summer, there may be a chance I’ll reply!” he chuckles. The sun may have set on Pete’s Mambo residency but it is just rising on an exciting new challenge at Sosho.