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Win two tickets to Lovebox

With Dalston Superstore, plus Severino mix & interview

Celebrating a decade of love (and boxes), Lovebox return to East London's Victoria Park between the 15th and 17th of June for another massive weekend of dance deferring beats. With the likes of Hot Chip, Friendly Fires and Crystal Castles amongst the live line-up, and everyone from Dixon and Prosumer to Pearson Sound and Ben UFO stepping up to the decks, it promises to be a rather large summation of the current rude state of electronic music.

We have a pair of tickets to give away kindly donated by another East End institution, Dalston Superstore, for Sunday when disco legends Grace Jones, Chaka Khan and Chic are on the main stage, and Azari & III and Lana Del Rey are amongst those on the second Dalston Superstore Live stage (full line-up below).

DSS's in-house Trailer Trash party will also be teaming up with Gutterslut on anothers stage where their resident DJs are joined by DJ Hell – with a brand new one off show for Lovebox -Tiga, DFA/LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy & Pat Mahoney, and Ivan Smagghe.

Not only that, but you also can venture into Horse Meat Disco's infamous recreation of a bombed out New York street and gay disco, NYC Downlow, where HMD's Severino will be playing. We have a recent set of his from Dalston Superstore, plus an interview where he talks about his forthcoming album for Classic Records, his new production partnership and why Italians Do It Better...

To enter our competition to win a pair of tickets to Lovebox Sunday email [email protected] with the correct answer to the following question and your full name, address and a contact number. We'll pick and notify the winner on Monday 8th June.

Who is headlining the Dalston Superstore Lovebox warm-up party on the 8th of June?

To find out visit the Dalston Superstore website or the event Facebook here.

And now to the music with Severino's mix and interview.

Severino: Live Dalston Superstore by djmag

You're well known as a DJ in the UK but you're originally from Italy. Can you tell us whereabouts you grew up, how you got started as a DJ and why you made the move over to the UK? 

“Yes, I'm originally from a town in North Italy called Mantova. I grew up with lots of disco/rock/soul records from my sister, who was ten years olders, so I was already playing with those records and with the records I was already buying aged 9. I was practicing a lot on my own and then asked to be the resident DJ at my local disco. I was 15 and that was it! I also won a DJ contest when I was 18 so I started my DJ career in North Italy also doing radio shows. But I always loved London and it's club-music culture so I wanted to move, and needed too as well, when I was 26. Disco Inn record shop offered me a job as a promo record buyer and the rest is history...” 

Where exactly did the name Horse Meat Disco come from? And how did you get involved with starting what is probably Europe's most famous disco night? 

“Horse Meat Disco comes from a telephone conversation between James Hillard and Jim Stanton, both HMD promoters. They were thinking of a name for their new party and James had some newspaper on on the floor with a headline saying 'Horse meat discovered in sausages', or something like that! Another paper was covering the title say it just said 'Horse Meat Disco' and they thought it would be a great name for the party, which was nearly 9 years ago. They ask me and Luke Howard to be the resident Djs. Jim Stanton was already a good mate, he introduce me to Crash and the whole gay scene here.” 

Can you tell us about Horse Meat Disco's link to Lovebox. How long have you been involved with the festival? Was it where the idea of The NYC Downlow was born and can you explain to those who haven't see this what it involves?

“Groove Armada are friends and also James Baillie is our lovely curator for the Sunday day at Lovebox. They saw the NYC Downlow at Glastonbury and they wanted it at Lovebox. It's the complete experience of being in a gay disco club in NYC in the late '70s - proper pitch black rooms with neon lights, crazy dancers, trannies and music lovers...” 

What else do you have coming up this summer?

“More festivals like Number 6 in Wales, Bestival and Vintage Festival. For me also Stop Making Sense in Croatia with those Dalston Superstore lovely boyz and Girlz. Also a crazy summer in Ibiza. I can officially say I'm one of the resident DJs at Ushuaia pretty much every saturdays for Pooldisco party from 23rd June until 22nd September. It would be great to see you by the pool from 4pm to midnight!” 

Your reputation as a DJ is without doubt but will you be making anymore forays into production? We saw Age of Steam perform at the Horse Meat Disco Vogue Ball a few years ago but the project only led to one single.

“Yes, that was a fun project with Ian and Mel. Actually Ian is doing another project now called I Am A Camera. They are good and they are gonna do Lovebox too, check them out. I've been doing remixes with my friend Nico De Ceglia under Hyena Stomp. We've done remixes for The 2 Bears,Tevo Howarrd, DJ Hell and for my Classic recs compilation which is gonna come out end of summer. Derrick Carter and Luke Solomun were so nice to ask me to do the second series of 'Classic through the eyes' with old and rare stuff from Classic. I'm very excited!” 

Is it true that Italians do it better?

“Well, in a way, yes! They did lots of amazing art/music/fashion, as well as being great in food. They are still good but other countries are getting better too, they need to be careful! But yeah, Italians (can still) do it better.”

SECOND STAGE DALSTON SUPERSTORE LIVE 

Azari & III
Lana Del Rey
Patrick Wolf
The Golden Filters
Chew Lips
Saint Saviour
Tyson
Ronika 

DJs 

The Lovely Jonjo
Dan Beaumont
Rokk
DJ Squeaky
A Man To Pet
John Sizzle 

INDOOR BIG TOP ARENA HOSTED BY GUTTER SLUT/TRAILER TRASH 

DJ Hell (A brand new one off show for Lovebox Sunday)
Tiga
James Murphy & Pat Mahoney ( DFA/LCD Soundsystem)
Ivan Smagghe
Hannah Holland
Mikki Most
Per QX
Nic Fisher
Alexander Parade
Miss Crystal MC
Visuals by Prickimage 

www.lovebox.net