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3 Years of The Fix

The Fix hit it's 3rd birthday recently, so we asked Simon Singleton, creator, booker, and gatekeeper of The Fix to give us a retrospective of the most successful and brilliant acts to have graced the stages over the years.

FRUKT’s live music night THE FIX is a monthly celebration of the best new breaking live acts and emerging talent, always hosted in the famous central London basement at The Social, one of the capital’s most celebrated music venues and owned by the magnificent Heavenly Records label.


THE FIX was launched in October 2013 and has run pretty much every month since then (we miss out January when most of the world hides from music venues and gorges on guilt-ridden detox shakes) and we recently celebrated our third birthday. We’ve now hosted over 100 live acts on the famous tiny stage, as well as some killer DJs.
 
Run in conjunction with BMI, the US-based performing rights society, THE FIX has featured plenty of acts that have cut through to the mainstream, and a host that haven’t quite become household names but we love them all the same. 
 
For starters, here're three acts that once graced our stage and are now filling out huge venues.
 
1. Nothing But Thieves

The headliners at our first birthday packed it out, being a much talked-about buzzy rock act at the time. Since then, they’ve headlined The O2, been nominated as Best Breakthrough Act in this year’s Q Awards, and been named as one of the 25 Most Influential Acts Under 25 by Spotify. Oh, and they’ve notched a Top 10 UK Album too.

2. Gavin James
The recent winner of Best Breakthrough Act at The MBW A&R Awards, Irishman Gavin James has had a monster 18 months, selling out the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire and releasing an album that’s had considerable success around the world, including the UK, Ireland, Netherlands, France, Belgium and Switzerland. Oh, and he supported Ed Sheeran to 82,000 people in Dublin… take a listen here.

3. Dakota

Playing an early doors solo set in 2014, soon after Dakota teamed up with Jonas Blue to create one of the biggest club tunes of recent years, ‘Fast Car’, which has since had over 500m plays on Spotify and Youtube. She’s also performed the song to stadium-sized crowds around the world, after the track went Top 5 in UK, Australia, Germany, and Sweden, among other countries. 

And here are three THE FIX acts you might not know right now but who just blew us away…
 
Broen

Norwegian band who’re simply bonkers brilliant – bringing a distorted technicolour synth-funk flavour which sounds all the better when you see them all draped in full glittery golden suits. And then if that wasn’t oddball enough for you, they use a tuba wired through a pile of effects pedals to provide the basslines.

Kioko

We reckon this Brummie band will have a big 2017, as their mix of reggae, pop and hip-hop is both ridiculously fun and massively commercial. Taking the punk elements of The Specials and the warm melodies of UB40, it arrives at a time when traditional roots reggae is really coming back into fashion with the likes of Protoje and Chronixx.

Loose Meat

The coming together of a synth wizard and former blues rocker, Loose Meat have recently released one of 2016’s most underated albums. Inspired by italo-disco and quirky post-punk, playing live they fuse these influences into a slinky, squelchy, fun-packed session that left the Social dancing and sweating away.

We asked the Design Team to select three of their favourite posters from The Fix from over the years.

Every month The Fix's poster is created by a different designer, and each have their own individual take on the FRUKT house style. Below they give us a little insight into their process and thoughts on how they designed their own poster. If you've like to see the full archive, we've collected all the posters on a separate page here.

Left

My June 2014 poster was an excited reaction to the beginning of summer. The watermelon came first, and then the headliner Wild Swim prompted the swimming/slide element. Hopefully one day we’ll make a real one. Laura Willis

 
Centre

The idea behind this poster was basically to create something simple, cool and Christmassy within The Fix brand guidelines. So that’s why I based my poster design on a Santa Claus paper beard, on which I applied some halftone effects to match the snow or dots in the background and I also gave a candy cane-like treatment to the The Fix logo with few stripes coloured in red and green. Geo Sanguino
 
Right

There are two things I'm passionate about; cats and the British culture. So when I was appointed to develop The Fix August poster, it made me think about The Bristol International Balloon Fiesta. This event takes place every August each year. There are so many unique, colourful and interesting hot air balloon designs in the event, so I came up with an idea to incorporate my love of cats with this annual British event. In the design, I wanted to show the feline's curious personality. So I transformed the cat into a giant hot air balloon with the front view of the cat to bring more depth and contrast into the poster. Ricky Cheng