Belfast’s Jordan Nocturne is a DJ, producer and remixer, Nocturne Records founder and one half of The Night Institute with Timmy Stewart.
A high-energy, (almost) residents-only party and label that has acted as a focal point of the scene over the last decade – they just celebrated their 10th birthday – The Night Institute has inspired a generation of Belfast clubbers to lose themselves on the dancefloor at an eclectic variety of venues across the city.
Ahead of the fifth edition of their annual open-air Eastside Electronics party in the heart of East Belfast, headlined by Erol Alkan and Luke Una, we caught up with Jordan in his favourite local watering hole, Belmont Bowling Club, for a chat about the city as he sees it.
Favourite bar
I live and spend a lot of time in East Belfast, and here at Belmont Bowling Club is a really cosy place to spend a Sunday – either with family or without!
With your member’s card, it’s £1 less a drink, and in the summer, you can get the sun, you can watch people play bowls, and it’s just a really nice community place.
These places excite me more than a trendy, clinical bar. I love the logoed carpets and the memorabilia on the walls. I like social clubs in general, we did parties at the Hack Club [Ballyhackamore Working Men’s Club] and at Malone Rugby Club. I think these places have a lot of character.
Best club
We don’t really have clubs in the traditional sense any more. I suppose there’s the likes of Thompson’s Garage, which has been there for years, and the Ulster Sports Club, which is a multi-purpose venue. We have a lot of good times there with The Night Institute, but I think the best club experiences I have are in the clubs that aren’t clubs.
The Hack Club was a recent one for me, where it was a social club with a top floor function room where you’ve got your sprung dancefloor, your carpet, your cheap drinks, and it felt a bit illicit. It felt a bit like ‘if you know about it you know’ – we didn’t get footfall, so it meant that people were there because they knew about the party.
I think anywhere that you can turn into a custom-made club for the night or for a series of events, that’s really the Holy Grail for Belfast.
Favourite DJ
Katiee.eem, who is playing for us at Eastside Electronics. She’s been on the dance floor at The Night Institute for years, so she really soaks it all in, and now she’s starting to get her flowers, where she’s playing at quite a lot of festivals.
She played down at Connolly’s of Leap [in Cork], she is playing [Belfast LGBTQ+ institution] Ponyhawke, which means quite a lot to her, and she does the FLINTA [female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans and asexual] parties, T4TB2B, at Sound Advice. They started at maybe 60 capacity, and it’s now grown and I think the last party was 100-plus. So I think it shows there was a need for that in the community.
She’s done her homework and her music taste is impeccable.
Best festivals
Of course there’s the likes of AVA Festival which I’ve played at regularly for the last 10 years, and Emerge which does huge numbers, but I think it’s nice to see a lot of boutique alternatives now coming through.
If You Know You Know, their line-up this year is really impressive despite being capped at 500. I know there’s real focus there on set building and production and there’s a huge community aspect there.
What we’re doing with Eastside Electronics is a bit bigger, there’s slightly over a thousand capacity at CS Lewis Square, and our angle for that is, as well as trying to create a platform for the likes of Katie and Venus Dupree, to only really invite guests that we think have maybe done something for the culture.
This year we’ve got Luke Una and Erol Alkan, both people that have certainly earned their stripes, and in previous years we had Lil Louis and David Holmes. So while those headliners are heritage acts, they’re people who are still moving things forward today, rather than throwbacks.
Best record shop
I don’t buy records regularly but I love the idea of record stores as a social hub, and Marion Hawkes has definitely done that with Sound Advice Records.
She’s had her Top Shelf parties there for maybe 40 to 60 people, and we’re doing a Cultural Conversations event with Erol Alkan and Luke Una there before Eastside Electronics.
As well as being a great place for people to go and find new music and uncover old music, it’s great as a place where people can discuss and share and celebrate music.
Marion’s done a really good job there. The fit-out’s fantastic, she is an encyclopedia of music, and I think she’s an integral part of Belfast’s music scene.
Key track
Levon Vincent – Man Or Mistress. It’s a Twitch anthem, and I think because Twitch has been a mainstay of Belfast’s club culture for so long, it defined the sound of Belfast, in a way – very raw, industrial and electronic.
It isn’t a track that would translate into a lot of different club environments, but because Belfast likes to get rowdy and punch the ceiling along to a raw melody, I think that’s the sound that describes the city.
Unsung heroes
I don’t like the phrase ‘unsung hero’ for anybody, but there are two people we should be shouting One is Noel Watson, who was there at the advent of club culture in London in the early 80s with his brother Maurice.
They came from here, went over to London, and they were flying back and forward to the States quite a bit, collecting records. They had the who’s who of fashion and music coming to their parties in London at that time.
Noel now lives in Belfast and he’s taken on a role as music, culture and events curator and programmer at a nice boutique hotel called The Harrison. He’s just a really interesting person, and we had him play for us at The Night Institute.
Another one is Chris Frieze, who runs the Mystic Arts record label and works at Never Never, which is Belfast’s leading streetwear store, and at Sound Advice.
He’s similar in a way to Noel where he’s got his fingers in a lot of pies, and I think that should be celebrated.
Best label
The Night Institute – Good Vibes for Uncertain Times Vol. II by The Night Institute
I have to say my own label with Timmy Stewart, The Night Institute. It’s been really nice that people like Spencer Parker and Lauer have wanted to contribute to our compilations. Lauer’s track has had 30,000 Spotify plays already which, while not exactly a massive success, is sort of indicative that we’re doing the right thing, because a lot of stuff goes on Bandcamp and just flies under the radar completely.
Timmy did Extended Play for so long, which was almost like a mentoring platform more than anything else, but it gets to a point that you need to give people a connection to the outside world.
So that’s why us doing Love International and Pikes in Ibiza and things like that means that when we’re talking to people we can go, ‘Here, have you checked the new compilation out?’. We’re not watering down the story, but we’re opening conversations.
Buy tickets for Eastside Electronics, and follow Jordan on Instagram and Bandcamp.
Images of Jordan Nocturne by Chris Jones / Inflyte+