Clubbers: Justin Robertson to perform at Savoy in Cork this weekend 

After a lengthy absence, Justin Robertson makes a long-awaited appearance at the Savoy this Sunday, May 31. This could be considered as one of the slowest reschedulings of a gig going, as the DJ was due to appear at the Kino in March 2020 before covid scuppered that.

I have strong associations with Robertson and the month of March, having seen him on a memorable St. Patrick’s eve in Sir Henry’s approaching the mid ’90s. But that 2020 date was building up to be a poignant one for me, at least, given that before the clear and present danger of coronavirus became a reality, I, and no doubt many others, were still reeling from the untimely passing of Andrew Weatherall just the month before on February 17. For me, Weatherall and Robertson were very much intertwined in my mind. Even though they emerged from very different scenes in England, and had a few years or more difference in age, they were emblematic to me of the early ’90s UK acid house scene. I also related to them through their cross over with the indie music scene in their remix work – Weatherall through his work with Happy Mondays and My Bloody Valentine (and, of course, Primal Scream), Robertson through his work with The Sugarcubes.

But a moment that cements the pair in my mind is when they played Sir Henry’s together in the early ’90s. We were all there for Weatherall, but there was no one there that night that didn’t walk away thinking that Robertson blew the roof off the place with a relentlessly funky electro house set.

It was a magical time, and Justin Robertson was certainly in the right place. Hailing from Surrey, he chose to make the 200 mile journey north to Manchester in 1986 to attend college rather than to the more convenient London purely because of his love of Manchester bands like The Smiths, The Fall and New Order. But, as an open-minded music fan, he was also curious about the city’s legendary Hacienda club.

It was there he was exposed to the acid house explosion. He credits Mike Pickering and Martin Prendergast’s Nude night at the Hacienda as his introduction to house, but he also worshipped at the altars of Graeme Park Dave Haslam, and John Da Silva. He was also casting an interested eye to the scene in the capital, particularly through the lens of Weatherall’s Boys Own fanzine.

He soon started to do his own thing as a DJ through a residency at his Spice night in 1987 at Konspiracy, Most Excellent, and Bugged out. Tom Rowland and Ed Simmonds were regular attendees, long before they became known as The Chemical Brothers. Through the city’s revered record emporium, Eastern Bloc, he was offered his first remix work. It led him to doing remixes for Erasure, The Shamen and Fini Tribe.

Under the name Lionrock, he released his debut single, Lion Rock b/w Roots ‘N’ Culture, in 1992, which led to being signed to Deconstruction. The band had some chart success with tracks like Packet of Peace and Rude Boy Rock.

A writer, a visual artist, a musician, Robertson’s always ploughed his own furrow. I wonder if the initial influence of Mike Pickering, who was also a guiding light to Greg Dowling and Shane Johnson, is part of the reason for the affinity Cork has for him, a root DNA, but I think it’s because he just knows how to deliver a good tune.