King Sunny Ade P is a DJ, vinyl junky, music journalist, professional Flâneur, radio DJ and fanzine writer. His natural habitat is the record shop – where he can be found digging for obscure vinyl – and the DJ booth where he can be found most weekends playing records to up-for-it party people. On Tues 13 Feb he’ll be steering The Great Fat Tuesday After Show Party into the wee hours at The Palace.
Hearing ‘Voodoo Ray’ for the very first time whilst dancing at ‘Hot 88’ in Manchester’s legendary Hacienda and realizing that the aliens had well and truly landed was the main inspiration for him to get into DJing. “Pushing through those huge rubber butcher’s curtains into the main dance area and grinning inanely is one of the main reasons I still DJ. To this day I want to share that experience with others.”
He’s part of ‘The Balearic Assassins of Love’ a hirsute raggle-taggle collective of vinyl junkies who worship at the Technics of sunrise and the quadrophonic wickerman of sunset-like 80s Kicker-shod party druids. They encapsulate the spirit of Acid house, the emotional joy of pop and the laid-back loose feel of the White Island.
King Sunny Ade P has played a huge amount of parties over the years, never repeating a set or compromising on venue; an Acid house drenched beach hut, various Masked Balls an ex-Communist Prague Nuclear Bunker, the Lord Mayor ‘s Carnival, Illuminated bike rides, Hidden forests, Primavera, strobe flecked Brighton basements and beach bars, 12 hour’s down by Prague’s Vltava river, European boat parties, supporting countless bands, African and Brazilian carnivals, mammoth pre and post fire sets on Hastings pier, New Year’s Eve, Numerous London clubs and Bars, every imaginable house party, beach parties, sunset/sunrise sets in beautiful Sussex fields, windswept horseboxes, circus tents, Ibiza, Mayday Pagan all-dayers, Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester Über bars, European speakeasies, and obscure cellar bars, always with a smile and a laugh and a joke.
Some people believe music is a matter of life and death, but KSAP assures you it is much, much more important than that. Expect the unexpected. He currently holds down three DJ residencies to create that eclectic, highly danceable, couldn’t care less, ‘last day of the holiday’ feel.
His DJ sets maintain a freestyle expression that seamlessly binds sporadic inspiration through technical flair and copious amounts of vinyl. Equally at home playing achingly beautiful downtempo sunset and wood smoke campervan sessions to happy-times hands-in-the-air hay-bale raves, KSAP straddles all genres like a well-heeled Achilles colossus in smiley T-shirt and Day-Glo poncho. From meditative, spiritual moody hippy-trippy vinyl to primal chant/tribal boogie 12” records for KSAP nothing is out of bounds, and there has never been any such thing as a guilty pleasure!