The big cities have always been the places you go to find new music and listen to talented, bubbling under talent before the inevitable explosion of popularity. The Mango Club in Chester buck this trend, playing host to some of contemporary underground’s breaking talents to packed out, fever pitch crowds every time they open their doors.
We tried to get inside the heads of founders and promoters, Alan and Benito, in order to get to know a little bit about their monstering Cestrian success story.

So I’m sure you get this a lot, but could you tell us a bit about how you both (and Benito) came up with the name?

Sure. The name ‘the mango club’ comes as at the time a couple of our mates used to call each other mango “hey mango”. As the party started purposely to bring friends together through music we decided the name, worked quite well and we went with it.

I’ve got to say I’m a fan of the event page/flyer art too. Can you tell us a bit more about the inspiration behind these works?

Yes this is a massive part of us as a party and showcasing talent of people from our area is very important. Each year we give an art creative freedom to design the flyers for the events, The inspiration for this there are a lot of talented people from Chester and we want them to be part of the Mango club. We like to incorporate aspects of the city in the design to give representation.

For a club night outside of a major city, you’ve managed to make a success of booking some of the freshest underground artists and DJs over the years without any cynical ploys or resorting to booking more obvious names. My question is; How all of that?

Alan: It’s a great scenario for us to be honest and one we appreciate. We have a blank canvas And just want to bring our favourite artists to the party and by doing this have gained a trust from the community who come. We used to dream of bribing some of the people we have been able to into Chester. It’s a nice thing to do for our community.
Benito: I think a lot of credit also lies with the team we built around us and have continued to develop. Because there never was much of a scene in the city, like Alan said – we have, and do still have a blank canvas. Accompany the fact that the crowds are relatively young and willing to be educated or so to speak, along with the fact that we have a really hard working team encouraging people to come to the parties – we are kinda on to a winning recipe. They come, they enjoy it and then they keep coming and they haven’t had their heads turned by boring and obvious tech-house artists because nobody is really doing that around here, they’ve gone straight into the good stuff which allows us to continue to book genuinely exciting up and coming artists rather than having to compromise our ethos.

Sticking with some of the names you’ve booked over the 4 years, are there any highlights or DJ’s that have surprised you that come to mind?

Alan: Christopher Rau was a bit difficult (crowd-wise). Apart from that everyone else has been first class. We’ve witnessed outstanding performances night after night.
Benito: I will have to echo what Alan said, almost every single one of the artists has been impeccable, both behind the decks and as a person. We actually became such good friends with Jordon (Mall Grab) he’s just moved in over the road and I’m currently tour managing for him as some work on the side. He would be an obvious highlight for me and is the perfect example of us booking somebody on the cusp of their big break. Willow would have to be another highlight, I’ve never seen (vinyl only) mixing as smooth as that before in my life and the crowd were on point as always. HNNY as well, I think that was our first ever sell out if I remember rightly. He was unbelievable and it’s such a shame he is no longer playing out anymore. I guess that makes it all the more special that we had him. He was such a nice guy and we wish you all the best Johan!

Mango Club Resident, Nick Jones provided us with an eloquently sourced mix to give a glimpse of what to expect from their take over with himself, Alex Wilson and Benedikt Webber and special guest, Luv*Jam on a Friday that also includes 12 hours of Freerotation as  well as appearances from DJ Bone  XDB,