Everything You Wanted to Ask Gari

Ahead of Creamfields Russia, one of Russia's most veteran promoters, Gari Chaglasyan, answers all the trickiest questions.

The full, unedited version of the interview used in preparing the piece on the Creamfields festival for TimeOut Moscow magazine (C)

Depends on the workload. Today started at 8 in the morning and will wrap up somewhere around 3.

No, honestly, we wanted to do the festival in July, but because of certain delays with the licence from the English Creamfields and hold-ups with sponsors, we compromised and settled on September.

Let's put it this way: there was no official ban as such, but since last year was very tense with all sorts of terror attacks and the date fell on Independence Day, a problem arose that we hadn't thought about at all in advance. The problem was a shortage of state security, so we couldn't guarantee the festival's safety and took the easiest decision – to cancel the event.

In effect – no. (the phone rings, Gari speaks in English, apologises and leaves for a meeting lasting over an hour; we manage to drink about 200 grams of whisky each)

Meeting with important people.

I have other businesses besides the club one. Mainly it's interactive visual technology. People came over from the States about it; the meeting was scheduled much earlier, but they were late.

What's on show is probably 20% of what I do.

Of course. We'd been preparing for it for a whole year, and the reaction of the team, from the designers to the production managers, was dispiriting. What upset us most was that the cancellation happened a week before. We have a certain image, and events like this deal it a blow. Naturally, many started to treat us with suspicion. We picked up a lot of ill-wishers.

Naturally. Why a war? We have completely different approaches. They have their sponsors, we have ours (laughs).

Well, Mills – no one is safe from something like that. There was a hurricane in France. But I can now officially state that Jeff Mills is booked with us for November 18. The main thing is that we didn't bring over David Guetta and didn't advertise his arrival (laughs).

Of course we do. We read everything, track everything, but since we've been doing this for many years, we no longer react to unfair criticism.

It hurts when you put on an event, give it your all… We understand you can't please everyone unequivocally, and resentment towards us arises when someone wasn't let in somewhere, or someone didn't get into the VIP, or something wasn't poured right. So people take offence. I can't recall anything specific right now, but any incorrect information is hurtful to us; we've simply learned not to take it to heart.

We live in a country where there's no hundred-percent guarantee of anything. We've learned to work according to the rules. If you wait for every confirmation and don't start promotion until the last second, then you'd have to PR the party after the event itself. There's a risk that we take. But above all, it's we who invest in that risk. That is, in any force majeure, it's we who lose first. And second, we don't announce something, then take money for it, and then not deliver.

We don't live in an ideal country (laughs). It's a tough question.

Not until there's support from the authorities. Electronic music isn't taken seriously by them. In various countries the Creamfields festival is considered a kind of national, cultural and tourist event – once we understand that, things will become much easier. Although something, thank God, is already changing here. Officials are getting younger. They're getting used to our existence.

I agree. Here it probably all comes down to finances. So far there's too little investment to scale these parties up. And the second point is tickets. We got in touch with our colleagues in Andalusia, where they've been doing Creamfields for a second year and draw 70–80 thousand people – more than in Liverpool. There they have one sponsor – St. Miguel beer, which takes on all the responsibility. A ticket costs 50 pounds, i.e. 100 dollars. If 50 thousand people pay that much, the event already pays for itself. With us it's all just beginning. I still hope that next year Moscow's Creamfields will be done differently. This time we were late again.

Not at all. It makes no difference to me. Petersburg already has plenty of big events: what Dance Planet does, then there's Castle Dance, 'Happiness Corporation'. There are too many companies there that have been doing this for a very long time. Forts created both an excellent name and a superb image. Their festival became very well known worldwide. The very fact that Tiësto was there last year confirms it. This year – I don't know, the line-up was weaker, of course.

Well, only you – the professionals – know Mylo. He's a great musician, but he's not the best choice for a headliner.

These are completely different events. Brahma's style is a light Brazilian party. It's hard to call it a festival, even though 'Brahma-2' is already being planned. But here the emphasis isn't on headliners; we positioned it more as pure 'fun'. For the next one we might bring 2Many DJ's. It's an urban event, whereas Creamfields is more of a dance, more professional event. It's an industry event.

Roughly equal.

We looked – Beach Club is fairly small. The number of people we'd like to see wouldn't fit there. We even discussed the possibility of additional spaces with them, but that territory was bought by Porsche – they're going to build a showroom there. So Beach Club alone seemed too small to us. There was no way to spread the dancefloors far enough apart. And as a result, the event would have resembled 'Brahma', which we didn't want. The Hermitage's advantage is that it's in the centre. Let Creamfields be accessible to everyone, not just those who get around by car.

It's curious why people say that. The site in front of 'Gaudi', where we'd planned to do Creamfields last year, is 2 hectares. The 'Hermitage' site is 6 hectares.

We'll try to change your ideas (laughs). The site itself is huge; it's just that at our concerts we only used the back part of it, so maybe that's the association people have with it. The garden can hold 20 thousand people.

We're talking about 15 thousand.

That's now a purely engineering question, which the sound engineers will handle. We're very attentive to the matter of sound and distances.

The very fact that we chose the 'Hermitage' already says that the audience won't consist of youngsters. It'll be both club characters and concert-going public. We tried to pick various musicians in their category who appeal to different people.

I grew up on R'n'B in Los Angeles.

R'n'B here right now is like house was 7 years ago. All the young people are into it; they take to it better.

Well… I agree. Let's put it this way: the choice of music in the VIP is largely dictated by the sponsors. The style is lighter, better suited to relaxed socialising.

I'd say there's some of that too. And the popularity of this style proves that foreign DJ names don't matter that much here. It'll get even more popular, because right now it's concentrated only at the level of an urban subculture. Even now we're thinking about r'n'b events…

It means we have some ideas.

No victories and no defeats. Our business is a process. The fact that we've been in the business for so many years is, to some degree, a victory.

How to put it… If it had depended on us, I'd genuinely say we screwed up. But there are simply some things over which we have no control. Naturally, mistakes happen. Our victory is that many people know us, especially among European booking agencies. And the fact that David Guetta confirmed his date with us for Halloween, despite lucrative offers from First, is our victory.

Yes, I can say it: October 29, Halloween-XIII, David Guetta.

That I can't say (laughs).
Another problem that worries me: this transplanting of big English club brands here – Creamfields, Godskitchen, Gatecrasher – happens without transmitting their ideology. For me, for instance, I didn't get any impression of the differences between Creamfields and Gatecrasher… It's all a jumble.

Creamfields isn't a club brand. It's an international festival. Godskitchen works more as a production company. They have an international contract with the tobacco concern JTI, which chose us to organise the event for them. A big plus for Zeppelin, by the way, is that they created their own festival.

Yes. And our story is different – we bring a festival brand respected all over the world here.

Honestly, nothing new has appeared, nothing interesting, no interesting clubs. About 5 years ago, in the days of Jazz Café and the 'Titanic', it was far more fun.

Probably with finances after all, because a club is an expensive business that requires large investments and gives small returns.

And in the current situation, is the emergence of some club format, some entity that would demonstratively refuse to work with sponsors and yet be successful – is that possible?

Here the system of relations between promoters and venues hasn't settled. Any international disco brand – Hed Kandi, Defected – has commercial backing from cigarettes or alcohol. And that's how they make a name for themselves.