In amongst his busy schedule, Tom Craven, the brains behind the legendary Back to Front parties, took the time to answer a few questions about what he's upto at the moment.

Hello Tommy, can you please tell me a little bit about what you’re up to jobwise  a the moment?

At the moment I’ve got my fingers in a few pies job wise. I’ve quit my regular day-to-day Civil Engineering career to concentrate on my main passions, which are my music and my parties. It’s been tough financially but it’s what I really want to do long term, so I thought why not go for it! During the day I work for The Rebel Agency (www.therebelagency.com) looking after the established Crosstown Rebel artists such as Damian Lazarus, Jamie Jones and Clive Henry as well as the new breed of probably the best up and coming house and techno artists around such as Seth Troxler, Lee Curtiss, Shaun Reeves etc. Our roster keeps developing monthly and is getting more exciting by the day, so it’s really fun to be involved in such an exciting company. Apart from the agency work I’ve been getting my head down and concentrating on my parties, BackToFront (Manchester) and Basic (No Location). After a year or so of sporadic BackToFront parties whilst I did a lot of travelling, I’ve managed to sort out a few killer new venues for the next few months in Manchester. BackToFront is all about rocking it out in exciting spaces to amazing music and I feel we are only just getting back to finding the right venues after losing our best venues, so we are all really happy about that! Watch out for our Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties, the venues we’ve found and line-ups are amazing, so we’re really looking forward them! Apart from BackToFront, I’ve kicked off a new party called Basic with my housemate Subb-an, which is just about a load of mates getting together in a certain location and getting very basic! We’ve done two parties in London and Berlin (at the Weekend Club) so far, with the next instalment looking likely to in Barcelona during the Sonar festival. This party has no regular venue, city or line-up, its just all about having a proper rave off where ever the wind may take us. Keep an eye out for future Basic parties!

2. Who’s currently doing it for you at the moment, DJ and producer wise?

DJ wise, every time I have seen Dyed Soundorom, he has absolutely killed it! He always plays really groovey, cool party house music that is consistently brilliant! Other than that I really love the three female Panorama Bar residents, Cassy, Steffi and Margaret Dygas. I heard Margaret Dygas in Panorama Bar in Berlin a few weeks ago and she was amazing! They all play really interesting music, from out right weird and wonderful beats you just can’t find, to absolute killer old skool house cuts you wish you could find! Other than that I think a lot of my close friends who are doing similar things to me in the UK are just as good anyone else out there at the moment, such as Tristan Da Cunha, Frenchy and Despo from Back to Basics in Leeds, Adam Shelton and Subb-an from Below in Birmingham and my residents Adam Proctor, Phuss and Cotty. I think next year will be a big year for all us lot.

Production wise, for really cool, different house music; I’m really loving Jamie Jones and Lee Foss’s Hot Natured project. Some of their new beats are amazing! On that vibe guys like Pezzner, Mr. G, Levon Vincent, Linkwood, etc. are all killing it at the moment. On the deeper tip I love anything Soulphiction, John Daly, Andy Vaz, Cassy and Andre Lodemann are putting out. All produce really cool melodies, with really interesting sounds and simple grooves. I’m really in to stuff like this. Stuff that straight away doesn’t instantly hit you, but the more you listen (esp. on good systems) the more you realise how good the music actually is.

What 5 records might someone find if they root through your box:

1) DJ Linus – Inside Munich

2) Hot Natured – Equilibrium

3) Soulphiction – A Short History Of…

4) Roy Davis Jnr – About Love (Solid Groove Remix)

5) Global Communication – The Way

3. Can you tell us a little about Back To Front and how it came together?

Basically, me and my two best mates Ozie and Louis were always travelling to different cities to party and, at the time I was pretty busy DJ wise and was always going to clubs in other cities every week and, we just got sick of having to go to other cities like Leeds, Birmingham or London to have a good rave off! With Manchester’s heritage, it was criminal there were no decent parties apart from Sankey’s we wanted to go to. So we set out trying to find a venue. We wanted to do it differently from others at the time and find a venue that would get people genuinely excited about coming to our party and, hopefully persuade people to travel from another cities. Then one day we were in our mates wicked skate shop, CAST, in Manchester’s Northern Quarter and we said to our mate who ran it, this would make an amazing space to host a party in. He said he’d done little Hip Hop parties before that were cool and he’d be up for doing a house party, so we set out about making it happen. The make-up of the shop was perfect. It had a long counter we used as a bar, it had a cove we used to set up the decks in, it had a few toilets within the building and it had this half pipe skateboard ramp which was the real beauty of the venue! Added to that the general décor was wicked with loads of mad graffiti and crazy furniture and fittings… it all came together to make one of the most unusually brilliant venues you could wish to have a party in. So with the venue in place, the music and residents already sorted, BackToFront was born in the Summer of 2006! Initially it started out with mates playing like Adam Shelton, Adam Proctor and Inxec, then as the party developed we invested any money we made in future line-ups. Matthew Styles was our first proper guest, then after him we have had the likes of Mike Shannon, Jay Haze, Cassy, Guillaume & Coutu Dumonts, Mara Trax along with the best UK based DJs like Jamie Jones, Hector, Matt Tolfrey, Geddes, Subb-an, Frenchy etc.

The highlights over the years were all the skate shops parties, our 1st birthday with Cassy back in 2007, our after party session at Sunshine Studios, our first NYE warehouse party last year and all the people we’ve met, partied with and become good friends with along the way!

The low light was the council closing down the skate shop… RIP CAST!

4. Can you tell us bit about what’s happening in the scene in Manchester at the moment? Is there much going on in the scene?   What are the locals getting excited about?

There has definitely been a resurgent scene over the last few years. It might not have the same hard core party house scene as say Leeds but I think the scene in Manchester is more eclectic and you can hear a lot of different music in a lot of very different venues. In Manchester there are loads of really cool, niche little parties who are putting on some amazing line-ips regardless of Sankeys and the Warehouse Project. Parties like Cutloose, Naïve Melody, Facktion, Meandyou, Content, El Diablo’s etc… are all really exciting and are all really pushing boundaries which you don’t see in other cities. In most other cities you just get the same old ‘popular DJs’ booked and rehashed. I mean over the next few weeks all these smaller parties are putting on acts like Andy Weatherall, Gerd Jansen, Lawrence, etc… acts like this playing at smaller, more intimate parties can only be good for the music scene here as you’d only really expect to see such line-ups in London. And the good thing is that things can only get better. The independent bar scene in Manchester is really strong at the moment so we really need the little venues and parties to support all this growth cos a lot of people are really sick of the big clubs. But the future here, definitely looks bright!

5. Over the years, you’ve had many different parties in all kinds of random locations.  Describe your favourite 2 parties with favourite locations, who played etc.

(i) Well, the top has to be most of our parties at CAST Skate Shop in Manchester. For everyone involved it was a really special time in our lives. The venue was amazing, the music was consistently brilliant and the vibe of the party was like no other at the time. It was devastating when the council put a stop to it! But at least we had 10 amazing parties.  My favourite party was probably when Matthew Styles played our third party. Adam Shelton warmed the place up perfectly, Matthew was unbelievable and I smashed it at the end. It was the first party where I stood back and thought we’ve created something pretty special here. The flow of the music all night was amazing, the crowd was electric and it was at capacity at 10.30pm! I was like, roll on next month!

(ii) My second favourite location we have done a party at was at Sunshine Studios, which is an old office block in Manchester which has been turned in to loads of little dance studios. On the 3rd floor there was this mad café that covered the entire length of the building, which was kitted out in loads of mad décor and kitsch furniture. We set the venue up as an after party for our mates Geek party as we knew they’d be loads of people at that party with nowhere to go afterwards. So we spent 12 hours decorating the venue with all the mad décor we found on site. A few weeks previous, graffiti artists from the lower floors had graffed up the corridors and stairways so the place looked pretty mental, perfect for an after crack! I played pretty much for 5 hours, digging deep through my record collection as we watched the sun rise over the Manchester skyline. Was class!

6. What’s been the highlight of 2009 for you and why?

There have been two absolute massive stand outs for me this year! The first one happened after Below in April in Birmingham. One Monday afternoon after a bank holiday we’d all had enough of sitting around the cold Rainbow warehouse so we got a speaker, a pacemaker, a few select vibe merchants and had it right off in the Rainbow Ice Cream van in the Rainbow Warehouse courtyard all day. About 20 of us, crammed in to the van and partied for about 12-hours non-stop! Tristan Da Cunha DJ’ed the whole time without a break with his Pacemaker! It was a totally amazing experience, crammed in to the van as we rocked it from side to side all day and night. Is definitely up there with my top 3 partying experiences and I know everyone who was there feels the same!

The other highlight happened a few weeks ago when me and Subb-an hosted our first party on the 15th Floor of the Weekend Club in Berlin. The turnout amongst our friends was amazing, with about 80+ of our friends making the weekend excursion to Germany! After our party we all headed off to Panorama Bar where most of us lasted until it closed Monday morning. Was a pretty special weekend!

7. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever found when clearing up after an event?

A can of condensed Mushroom Soup! Opened and emptied.

8. What are your plans for the rest of this year what’s in store for 2010?

For the rest of the year I’m going to concentrate on the next two BackToFront’s and my December gigs. Our next party is our yearly Christmas Party on Saturday 12th December. This year we’ve found an amazing little loft space in the Northern Quarter and we’ve invited Adam Shelton & Subb-an from Below in Birmingham to come launch their new ONE Records label in Manchester. The venue is only 120 capacity so it will be first come, first served. But we are really excited about this intimate little venue and can’t wait to hear what ONE Records is gonna be all about!

Our next party after that will be our NEW YEAR’S EVE party. After last year’s amazing NYE party we thought we really need to offer Manchester another alternative NYE party to all the big club, rip off bollocks! We’ve found an amazing warehouse space again and are just confirming our line up, which is gonna be amazing! Check our myspace (www.myspace.com/backtofrontrecords) or our Facebook (BackToFront) for details.

2010 is going to be a busy year! I’m going to concentrate on growing and developing The Rebel Agency with Will Nustedt, I’m going to get in the Studio a lot more and hopefully get more tracks and edits finished and I’m going to try and get BackToFront back to where is used to be. We’re in process of finding more amazing spaces and taking bookings and music to the next level. So keep and eye out for future developments.

Also, I’m starting a live-to-air radio show (with listen back facility) with James Cotterill (Cotty) in the New Year. This show will showcase all the amazing music we manage to get our hands on as well as showcasing DJs, artists, friends, parties and anything else we’re buzzing off! I really can’t wait for this to get going and find its feet, as it can only be a positive experience.

Cheers

Tom