For anyone who doesn’t already know, Bionic is run by head honcho’s and residents Cally (of Cally & Juice fame) and Brian M (of Brian M vs McBunn). Ahead of Saturday’s big Bionic event to be held at the Syndicate in Bristol, I decided to catch up with Cally, one half of this leading promotion, to get the low down on preparations for the event, Bionic’s plans for the year and, well, just about anything to do with Bionic...

As Saturday’s event is in a new club for Bionic do you think you’ll have a lot of new faces there?

Yes definitely. We think it’ll be a good mixture of old and new faces. This is what usually happens when we try something in a venue we haven’t used before. This keeps things fresh and introduces new people to our events and our sound. The new faces always get hooked on the first event and end up coming back for more.

And for those who haven’t been to a Bionic before what can they expect to hear?

Well we’re predominantly a hardstyle and European hard trance event, although we do try and cover all genres of hard dance to have that cross appeal. It seems to work really well as there’s something there for everyone.

At most Bionic events there are 2-3 rooms of varying styles, for this event there’s only one room, are you going to mix up the music for this room a bit more than usual and how do you think this will differ from having more rooms?

Yes we’ll definitely be mixing up the music a little bit more. This should work really well, with people getting to hear some tasty classics alongside some of the freshest and most upfront sounds you’ll hear anywhere in the country. Also one thing we’ve noticed with doing one room events, is because everyone is in the same place the atmosphere should literally take the roof off...apologies in advance to those who have to clean up after!

(Cally pictured above)

Will Bionic be doing more events at this venue?

Obviously we have a hectic schedule as we both not only promote and DJ, but we also have to find time to get in the studio to work on our productions, so at the moment we’ve not scheduled in a set date, but we’re pretty certain we’ll be returning to put another Bionic on at Syndicate sometime this year.

Why choose Bristol to do an event over any other areas?

Well it was a bit of a joint idea as they’d been wanted us to come to their venue for quite some time, and we were looking to get the brand out to different areas. We’ve always pulled a good crowd from over the bridge to our Bionic events in Wales, and since putting on arenas for Slammin’ Vinyl at several of their events we’ve become very well established in that area.

Bionic are best known for introducing foreign acts to the UK before anyone else, why did you choose not to book a foreign act for Bristol?

It’s our first Bionic at the Syndicate and we were very aware of them not booking many hard dance acts in the past, let alone having a whole night of hard dance, in fact this is something they’ve not done yet. As many people attending may not be used to hard dance we thought we should go in and offer them something a bit more familiar that they’d know. As both myself and Juice and Brian and McBunn however are both playing sets there on the night, if we feel they’re up for the more diverse European sounds we can tailor our sets to suit, so guaranteed whatever hard dance you are going there for you will get to hear it.

(Brian M Pictured on left)

Bionic have had some exciting collaborations in the past with events such as Storm, Time Flies and Tranzaction to name a few. Have you got any exciting collaborations coming up?

As it happens we’ve got an upcoming event with Time Flies at Escapades in Newport on Bank Holiday Sunday 25th May. We’ve worked closely with Time Flies on a few occasions in the past and have a good working relationship, and all our events held with them have been amazingly successful, so this is going to be another unmissable event to put in your diary.

(Bionic @ Creation, Cardiff)

Bionic is well known for hosting arenas for some of the UK’s biggest events, including Escape Into The Park, Slammin Vinyl, Godskitchen, the Metro Weekender and the Hardcore Weekender. Are you hosting arenas this year for any other big events?

Yes we’re busy hosting arenas for other promoters this year. Still working as closely as ever with probably the UK’s biggest hard dance event Slammin’ Vinyl, we’re lucky enough to be hosting arenas at their Hardcore Weekender event, their Slammin Vinyl Sanctuary Festival, and their almighty Westfest event. And for the first time we’ll be hosting an arena at Q Dance’s massive Q-BASE event. We’re really excited about this as Q Dance put on some of the world’s largest events and so it’s going to be an honour to host an arena there.

(Picture of Main Hangar @ Q Base 2007)

We’ve noticed that last year hard dance was successfully taken to Ibiza for the first time on a large scale, by Heat, Tranzaction, Bionic, Breathe and Concept. How did the hard dance go down out there?

It went amazingly well. In fact we couldn’t believe the reaction we got, and from a lot of people who usually go for the house and trance. Even though it was our first year out there we were lucky enough to be involved in Tidy/Euphoria at Es Paradis, Judgement Sunday at Eden and Manumission at Privilege. Needless to say we’re all back there this year for more of the same, only this year we’ll be featuring at more events out there.

Is this set to be a regular thing?

Definitely, thanks to Chris from Tranzaction who put in a lot of the ground work to make last year possible, he’s now set a place in stone for us out there, so fingers crossed it’ll be a yearly trip and hopefully each year will get bigger and better.

(Bionic @ Evolution, Cardiff)

Do you think any other promoters will follow in your footsteps?

Yes this has already happened. Due to our success last year Frantic are joining us this year and so we’re very excited about what we’ll be taking out there as a whole package. There’ll be a lot more to offer including extra DJ’s, so if you haven’t already booked up and are interested please see our Bionic group for more details. We’re out there from 18th - 25th June.

If you could take Bionic anywhere in the world, where would that be?

Well up until now it’s been a personal goal to host an event at a Q Dance event, but now we’ve achieved that I guess next on the agenda is Australia.

Everyone I’ve ever spoken to about Bionic has always commented on how mad and up for it the crowd are. How do you think they compare to other crowds?

You can’t compare it. The Bionic crowd are mental, lol! Sorry there is just no other word for it. Never have you seen such an up for it and energetic crowd. Nearly everyone who’s ever played for us has always commented on them, and Bionic wouldn’t be Bionic if it wasn’t for them ;)

(Bionic arena @ Westfest 2007)

Well I hope you’ve had a insight into the mad world of Bionic and if you’re going on Saturday I’ll see you there ;)

Interview by N-a-t-s-k-i