---
title: "Interview with Van Sim"
abstract: "A long talk with the manager"
authors: ["nikomas.md"]

---



𝓃𝒾𝓀𝑜 𝓂𝒶𝓈  
When did you start in ᴋʟᴜʙᴅ? 

𝒱𝒶𝓃 𝒮𝒾𝓂  
Season 8. I didn’t start as manager, I started as the guy who puts the stamps. I knew Francos from before, and he told me one day that the crew was about to change so prepare your music because it will be nice for you to be in the club. This was the end of Season 7.

𝓃𝒾𝓀𝑜 𝓂𝒶𝓈  
How did things begin for the club that year? 

𝒱𝒶𝓃 𝒮𝒾𝓂
So in June that year we started working on renovations inside the club that summer, and it was at that time that I realised the situation with the sound inside the club was a bit off. We cleared a lot of things from behind all the walls, stuff that was there from the very beginning of the club. Honestly, before that time I hadn’t thought much about the sound in the club, it was hard for me to say if the sound was at it’s best because back then there was a lot of people using CDJs and Tracktor, digital stuff which I find more difficult to understand if it is at it’s best quality of sound possible. I didn’t play records then either, but the only thing I knew was analog sound engineering. It wasn’t until... I think it was Daniel Bell or someone? He came and played a lot of records and music that I knew very well, and it was that night that I realised that the sound wasn’t.. the best it could be in the situation of the club. I told Danny that we should put some time in updating and tuning the system again.

𝓃𝒾𝓀𝑜 𝓂𝒶𝓈  
I can’t imagine he wanted anyone messing around with his sound-system though. 

𝒱𝒶𝓃 𝒮𝒾𝓂  
Haha, yes. But, after one very good DJ from Paris, Molly, came to play in the club, I made a lot of alterations and at the end of the night, we agreed that it seemed to sound extremely nice. Some days after this, I was called and asked if there were any other changes I wished to make. I immediately said to throw the two rear JBLs, and get two new Funktion-1s. Through connections with my old sound engineering teacher, we found an amazing distributor from UK, and they sent
the engineer out with the speakers to install them. This was a proper British guy. Very British guy. I mean... a Sound Engineer. Cares only about sound, doesn’t like football, 55 years old, loved drum and bass. He was kind of a hero for me, because he literally only cared about the sound and only spoke about the sound.

𝓃𝒾𝓀𝑜 𝓂𝒶𝓈  
Did the engineer do the first tuning for the new set up then? 

𝒱𝒶𝓃 𝒮𝒾𝓂  
No. Danny asked the guy to make the sound for the club, but the British guy said... look, I don’t know your music, I know drum and bass. In this situation, Andreas knows this music better, maybe he should make the sound. So he left, and from this day on I started tuning. I was writing down the hours spent tuning the system, and until now it’s probably been thousands of hours.

𝓃𝒾𝓀𝑜 𝓂𝒶𝓈  
What was your vision for the club at the time? 

𝒱𝒶𝓃 𝒮𝒾𝓂  
It was at the time that we, with the other guys, were trying to make the club into vinyl-only in a way... if you play with Tracktor, or CDJs, or whatever, its okay by me, of course, but it’s not so romantic you know. It is not bad, but for me is not the same. We just liked the romance and culture. So in Season 9, I started to suggest to the guys to take a rotary mixer. I was thinking about the classic situation in the 90s. What did they have in the 90s in the booth? Rotary mixer, Technics, and Vinyl Records. After weeks of research I suggested to the guys about the Bozac, which we then took from Bristol. At that time, people were unsure if the mixer’s workflow was suitable in a club context, but it didn’t take long for some people to agree that the sound of it really suited ᴋʟᴜʙᴅ. We were just trying to bring the classic sound of Techno. Maybe people brought this sound to ᴋʟᴜʙᴅ before, we are not criticising the people before us, but yes, we tried to bring this classic Detroit sound and culture. Honestly not many really liked it. Even Danny wasn’t into it. Me and ꜱᴏᴄʀᴀᴛᴇꜱ were in heaven, but it wasn’t working

𝓃𝒾𝓀𝑜 𝓂𝒶𝓈  
Do you have any idea why people didn’t see what you were trying to do, or why they didn’t like this sound? 

𝒱𝒶𝓃 𝒮𝒾𝓂  
Guys, we are in Cyprus. We have just 6 hours to enjoy the club, we are not in Berlin when we always have 3 day parties. For this reason I thought about reviving the classic style... when you only have 6 hours, every track should be a bomb. In ᴋʟᴜʙᴅ I don’t know what a warm up set is, or what a main set is? Cypriots go to the club whenever they want.. if there is 20 people in the club at 1am, I want them to be dancing already so that when more people arrive at 2am, they arrive and see people dancing.

Anyway, we had a lot of criticism around this time. Before us, there were a lot of styles... and there were people who really liked that sound, and they felt we were bringing something new, something hipster or hype... but we said this is not new music, its music from 1985 to 1995; the classics!
So we had a lot of struggles in the club, I saw a lot of people unhappy. We had people coming from outside of Cyprus and tell me, “man, the sound here is one of the best in Europe”. Yet, the people were unhappy. Maybe in the last 1 and a half years, some people start to accept the sound, but I don’t know. This is fine though, the audience is allowed to have their opinion, and to care about what they listen; we tried to adapt to them, without abandoning our vision for the club.

𝓃𝒾𝓀𝑜 𝓂𝒶𝓈  
So what did you do moving forward? What were the last two seasons like? 

𝒱𝒶𝓃 𝒮𝒾𝓂  
Well, one of the things about Cyprus is that the followers of one “sound” can start to seem like a football team, they want to hear one thing and only come when their team plays. As an example, some people who like the ᴀʟᴇx ᴛᴏᴍʙ sound, only come when Alex plays. So we tried to make tactics about this – one night we put myself to play before ᴀʟᴇx ᴛᴏᴍʙ because we wanted to show our sound to his crowd. It did not go well. We even brought Ceephax Acid Crew. ꜱᴏᴄʀᴀᴛᴇꜱ found him. I pushed him a lot to bring this guy here... ꜱᴏᴄʀᴀᴛᴇꜱ and I said “malaka, Ceephax is for all! Ceephax is without borders”. Again, the attendance was down. We struggled to accept this turn out. Sadly Danny saw everything too, he saw problems here and there, lower attendance and communication difficulties. Three days before he told me the club will close forever, we were trying to plan the program; we said we will be local. All local. 27 nights next season, 24 local nights – 3 internationals: Rhadoo, Do or Die, and Lamache or someone else. We were trying to do whatever it took to get the support of people. Anyway, then Danny just told me, you know what, I don’t see a future, I think it’s time to close the club forever.

I was in extreme shock. But, I understood him. He support- ed me 100% for 4 years, now it was time for me to support him. Everyone is still in shock until today, but we have to remember that, yes, ᴋʟᴜʙᴅ was amazing, extremely nice club, but now we can move on and create something else. The club taught us how the scene here works.

𝓃𝒾𝓀𝑜 𝓂𝒶𝓈  
A new legacy.

𝒱𝒶𝓃 𝒮𝒾𝓂  
A new era. 
