TheMUES Productions Team has attended the majority of the Closed Sessions events, and recently got to chat with founders Blaise Railey and Matt Classens at Tropicalia.

With past guests like Falcons, Sweater Beats, STWO, Kaytranada, Branchez and Joe Kay, Closed Sessions started out as invite-only house parties that steadily transformed into dance parties at the coolest venues in DC.  Their events are part of a bigger movement of the Millennial generation emerging here in the DMV.  As Matt mentioned in our exclusive interview, Generation Y has grown up being influenced by everything from our parents’ music, like the Beatles and Rolling Stones, to the hip-hop world of Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.  The idea behind Closed Sessions is to take artists who are influenced from all different types of music and bring them to the masses.

The most recent show featured the DMV native LAKIM and Boston-area producer Sevnth Wonder, as well as El Blanco Niño. All these talents were brought together by Closed Sessions and Future R & Bass. The event attracted a large crowd who stayed and danced until the early morning hours. You would have never known that it was a Wednesday. After seeing the entire energy, one thing is certain: Closed Sessions has already established itself and is only going to get bigger.

-Check out our interview with Matt and Blaise-

TheMues: Tell us how all the magic of Closed Sessions got started.

Matt: It all started when Blaise and I had an idea to throw these rotating house parties around the city, and do our own bar and have liquor sponsors and bring in big DC bartenders and everything.  Eventually they just got too big and we just had to move on to a venue.  We forged a great relationship with Flash and Indigo Studios, and that definitely helped with the start-up.

Blaise: Matt and I had done shows inthe past together, just here and there with different companies and we were really just out there doing our own thing.  And then one day Matt hit me up, the first party we did was in his basement with Alex Young, and had 80 or 90 people show up just from an email.  The next party we did was Lindsay Lowend’s EP release party and it was supposed to be smaller, but then it got bigger and the cops showed up, and we were like “alright, we need to like, go to a venue with this.”

Matt:  We all grew up in the same generation, you know?  We all listened to hip-hop now and then, or maybe always, in addition to stuff like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and our parents’ music. So you know, you can tell with all this, it’s “future bass” that’s all hip-hop influenced and I think relates to our generation, a lot.

TheMues: Where do you guys think it’s going to go next? You’ve hit 10 [parties], where do you think it’s going to be in like, 20?

Matt: I think we definitely bring a very eclectic sound. It’s not like every other party series.  Everybody who comes out is listening to the artists on SoundCloud before they come to the shows.  It’s that way for us as well, we are fans, first and foremost.

TheMues: Who was the first person that you listened to, and I’m sure you have different people,  that sparked the idea to kind of start having these closed shows?

Blaise: It was really stuff like Boiler Room, and I then got into live streaming small DJ sets. The first time I really understood what the idea could be was the first party we did in Matt’s basement when 80 people showed up because of an email we sent.  I thought to myself “alright well, if you bring the music that you like and you genuinely want to promote it, and it’s not something you’re doing because you’re getting paid to do it, then people will see that, and feel that–and want to be a part of it.”  We saw similar things happening in big cities and we were like, “let’s do something like that in DC.”

TheMues: What’s been the most memorable show?

Matt:  There was the STWO show, it was snowing pretty hard and the place was packed. But I think I speak for the both of us when I say that the most memorable show was the Kaytranada show, which was one of the first ones we brought to Flash.

Blaise: Yeah, Kaytranada came through and it was his first DC show; and it was probably the biggest crowd we’ve had at Flash.  It was close to 220 people over the course of the night, and by the time he got on the floor was packed. Everyone was standing on the couches around the dancefloor, just totally focused on his set.  That was the moment, right before his set started, where we were like “Damn, this is what we want Closed Sessions to be because everyone’s here for Kaytranda and that’s awesome.”

Matt:  You could see it in the crowd’s eyes.  College kids, beat boys, hipsters… Everybody was there.  And of the things that we really strive to do differently is to keep our lineup strictly producers only.  D.C. has a great emerging music scene right now, the whole DMV I should say.

TheMues: Where do you see Closed Sessions going in the short-term?

Blaise:  We’ve been booking a lot of shows in succession so we have a party almost every month.  We have the one coming up on August 7th with Obey City. We have two dates coming up in September, one with Moving Castle and another that we can’t announce yet.  We’re bringing back STWO and Snakehips in October, that’s going to be a tour stop for them.  And hopefully more cool stuff leading up to New Years. We’re excited about that.

TheMues: What artists are on your wish list?

Blaise: Mr. Carmack.  That’s the number one guy we want to bring.  And we actually just threw our first Soulection show with the Soulection crew so it shouldn’t be too far down the line.  Also, I would say Tennyson, artists on Soulection, artists on HW&W Recordings and artists on Flow-Fi.

TheMues: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us guys. Anything else you’d like to say?

Matt:  As far as our vision goes, Flume is definitely an artist we would like to bring.  It’s a nice goal to set… a sold out Flume show.

Blaise: Yeah, the only last thing I would say is that we have a Facebook group called “Closed Sessions DC,” and it’s not a Facebook page or a fan page.  It’s a community, and we want people to join that group.  You don’t have to “LIKE” the page to see the content being posted. We post about our events, you can find pictures from the events, find out about our merchandise, and really meet everyone that you meet out at the shows and connect with them.

Check out upcoming Closed Sessions shows on August 7th with Obey City and September 5th with Moving Castle and Manilla Killa!