Brotzky beat competition from all over the world to be crowned winner by Bench, Igloofest and Mixcloud.

Set in the sub-zero centre of Old Montreal, this year Igloofest welcomes the biggest stars in dance music including Sébastien Léger, Maya Jane Coles and Green Velvet.

The festival takes place across the last three weekends in January, and last Saturday was Igloofest’s first ever sold-out night, with 10,000 revellers turning out for the music.

Needless to say that the event’s notoriously good-natured ambiance was particularly hot last weekend. Weather channel Météo Média who were on site actually measured that the temperature oscillated by 10 degrees between the quays and the crowd!

We wish Brotzky the best of luck for his set tonight! We will be posting more photos and videos after the event.

Bench have teamed up with Canada’s incredible Igloofest to offer aspiring DJ’s everywhere an unbelievable prize.

Set in the sub-zero centre of Old Montreal, some of the biggest stars in underground electronic music will hit Canada’s dance music capital for Igloofest 2012, one of the most exciting and unique music events in the world.

This year around 67,000 ravers will turn out in their best winter gear to listen to the likes of Sébastien Léger, Green Velvet, Tiga and Tiefschwarz during the final three weekends of January 2012.

Bench are giving one lucky DJ the chance to win:

• A 90 minute set at Igloofest on Friday 27 January 2012
• Return flights to Montreal
• Accommodation in Montreal
• 3-day VIP pass to the festival from 26 – 28 January 2012
• Shopping spree worth up to CAD$1000 in the Bench Montreal store

More information can be found at:

http://www.mixcloud.com/competitions/bench-igloofest

Entrants will be judged on factors including tune selection, originality and technical ability.

The competition closes on Thursday 15 December 2011.

Photography by Miguel Legault

Our favourite Spanish DJ took to the decks with international superstar David Guetta at San Sebastian’s most famous club, Bataplan Disco.

Alex is one of the resident DJs at the club where other huge names such as Roger Sanchez have played.

Del Toro’s sets mix different styles of music including electro, acid jazz, funky vocal and disco. You can hear some of his mixes HERE.

For the last four years he has also been the official DJ for the San Sebastian Film Festival, playing at private parties as well as on the red carpet.

He has played for stars such as Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and Richard Gere.

Bench started working the young DJ earlier this year, sponsoring him with clothing and supporting him across a wide set of gigs and events.

The ‘Scene Converter’ creates a photograph that looks like you have taken to the stage at Melt to perform in front of a massive crowd.

You can get a copy of the printed picture on the spot – or alternatively it can be downloaded or posted to Bench’s Facebook page.

Every summer Melt casts a spell over about 20,000 music fans from all over the world, the music mix is not only extraordinary and unique, but the location is truly out of this world. Ferropolis, “the Iron city” is an open air museum consisting of five gigantic decommissioned brown coal excavators in the middle of Gremmin Lake.

This year Brit rockers of Pulp, The Streets, White Lies, Atari Teenage Riot, Boyz Noize, Cut Copy and many more will present their latest tracks. Apart from the Bench Main Stage, the Sleepless Floor will present the fans with the finest electro beats throughout the festival.

Bench has long been an integral part of the music, clubbing and street art scene. The streetwear and sports collections of the brand have repeatedly drawn inspiration from elements of an urban underground lifestyle, and Bench is once again responsible for the Melt! merchandising collection.

Further information may be found at www.bench.co.uk and www.facebook.com/bench.germany.

Taking place in Madrid on 24 and 25 June, the festival will showcase a range of international acts including Crystal Castles and The Ting Tings.

Dcode festival boasts go further and also provide visual art exhibitions and screenings that are intended to enhance the festival experience. The idea is that each year the festival is presented graphically by an artist. This time it’s up to Boris Hoppek, a German living in Barcelona that has already gathered recognition in various galleries across Europe, Asia and America.

Dcode Festival also promotes Art through its partnership with Art Barter. Launched in November 2009 by London-based curators, Art Barter re-examines our current system of exchange, encouraging the trade of art for goods and services, not money.

While the concept itself isn’t all that new – Picasso and Modigliani were famous for trading paintings for meals, the Chelsea Hotel accepted art as rent, and Andy Warhol traded his talent for a video camera – Art Barter has expanded the willing artists to include Tracey Emin, Gary Hume, Mat Collishaw, Gavin Turk and more, and added an element of surprise: the unconventional buyer.

At Art Barter, you can buy art with anything, except money, and there is an interesting catch – you will not know which artwork belongs to which artist until after the show’s end. This creates a gamble for the public and will make people value the art without being predisposed to a name, title or price tag. Having to barter also entices the viewer to think about what they have that is unique to offer the artist.

Each artist’s work is displayed in the exhibition with a unique number next to it. Viewers are invited to fill out barter forms with their offers on any work that they desire. These offers are then displayed for the duration of the show on a pin board, which by default becomes a focal point of the exhibition as the days pass and more offers are made. At the end of the show the artists will choose from all the offers made on their work and will decide which (if any) offer they would like to exchange their work for.

Berlin, New York and London have been witness of this amazing art project and now it comes to Madrid with the support of Dcode and Bench.

Video art will also be an essential part of Dcode thanks to Onedotzero, a London-based moving image and digital arts organisation which commissions, showcases and promotes innovation across all aspects of moving image, digital and interactive arts.

How was your set tonight?

The last 45 minutes were great. I was totally in the zone and I played one of my top 5 favourite records as the last track, Mr.Flagio’s “Take a Chance”

Your profile has risen considerably in the last year, how does it feel now playing to much bigger club and festival crowds?

When you’re standing on a big stage you’re like, ‘How am I going to make this happen?’ I like small clubs with total intimacy but with big crowds there’s just a whole… well, there were lazers! I’ve played at Sonar and a couple of festivals in Ireland, so it’s building up and up now.

How did you come to be in Berlin?

I played indie music for years in Ireland, then I started making house, techno, whatever it is that I make. Dublin was going great at the time but I went to Berlin because you have to put yourself up against the best, and you have to be surrounded by people who are at the top.

Who are some other up-and-coming producers that you’re excited about at the moment?

I do this party Passion Beat every month, and we’ve had the likes of John Talbot, who’s a genius, Nicolas Jaar, tons of different people. There’s a real movement of people who are into leftfield house music, It’s not techno, it’s not disco, it’s electronic music with loads of different influences.

How do you think living in Berlin has affected you?

The first one or two years in Berlin I went out a lot and absorbed a lot of music and it was a big education for me. You realise what you like, what your taste is, what you think is good. I think overall the quality of music in Berlin now is way more diverse and more open to deep stuff, disco, and house.

How does tonight’s show rate for you?
It was our 7th time playing live and our first festival. I’ve played alone for crowds like that but it’s definitely the biggest we’ve played as a band, and it’s a nice achievement to see them responding

You and your bandmates stand in a square formation on stage, all facing inwards. What was the inspiration for that?
We need to see each other and speak and communicate and create this environment in which we can improvise. We’ve never really had enough space, like at Fabric we do it in a semi circle so we all get to see each other but it’s not the same. We’re going to do it like this at festivals, it just feels like the right thing to do

The show ended on a high note, with your track “Space Is Only Noise If You Can See” speeding up considerably at the end. Was that planned?
Not always, we’ve done it twice now. The first time was improvised, and we were like, ‘We should pull this out when we have a big crowd that is very eager and we can give them something.’ We play very slow music at the beginning, like 70 beats per minute, but it’s not interesting for me to be pigeonholed as making slow music. With me alone without a drummer putting the intensity in at 128bpm it would sound stupid, but with the live band it fits

You have quite a following in France, what’s it like performing in front of French audiences?
I’m very lucky to have a very positive French reaction. I’m a little French so maybe that has something to do with it, I don’t know. Paris, here in Lyon, Marseilles, it’s very, very special every time

From today the city of Barcelona will be overrun by music lovers from all over the globe as they celebrate the start of Sonar festival and the hundreds of parties that occur over the days of the festival.

Sonar is a music and digital art festival in its 15th year, held in the heart of the city of Barcelona for three days every June. At last year’s festival, more than 90,000 people enjoyed a musical line-up that combined major names in today’s electronica alongside a broad range of artists from around the world. Hundreds of thousands more from Europe and further afield visit Barcelona over the days of the festival, this year on 16, 17 and 18 June.

It’s not uncommon for visitors to fly into Barcelona and skip the core-festival program, favouring the off-sonar events that take over Barcelona’s clubs, bars, beaches and rooftops during the long weekend. Bench are partnering with electronic music bible Resident Advisor for their infamous invite-only Rooftop party atop of Hotel Diagonal.

The rooftop party has become one of the quintessential experiences in recent years and this year it returns to the site of last year’s soiree, Hotel Diagonal.

A tantalizing array of DJing talent including Panorama Bar’s Cassy, Dirty Bird boss Claude VonStroke , Ovum chief Josh Wink and one of the breakthrough artists of the last few years, Space Dimension Controller, will all be sound tracking the party.

Although the party is invite-only, Bench and RA ran huge competitions in the run-up to the event, attracting thousands of entrants. 50 sets of double passes to the party were up for grabs as well as three grand prizes which included flights from anywhere in Europe, three nights accommodation and double passes to our rooftop shindig.

For those of you stuck at home, Bench will be producing a special video from the event which will showcase the highlights of the party, available on the Bench websites in the weeks after the event.

Ahead of the rooftop party, Bench caught up with West Coast superstar Claude VonStroke, AKA Barclay Crenshaw.

Since beginning his Dirtybird label out of San Francisco back in 2005, the ever-affable DJ/producer has pushed a brand of bass-heavy house music that has always maintained a knowing sense of playfulness, as singles such as “Who’s Afraid of Detroit,” “Deep Throat” and “Aundy” have reached the level of international club smashes.

As you might expect, Crenshaw’s touring schedule is among the busiest on the circuit, and this summer he’ll be returning to Europe for multiple dates across the continent. The UK will be treated to four CVS appearances -including a set at festival favourite Glastonbury – and the same goes for Spain: in addition to a pair of dates at weekly Ibiza carnival We Love Space, Crenshaw will be touching down in Barcelona during Sonar for a set aboard Mobilee’s boat bash and our party with Resident Advisor on rooftop affair at Hotel Diagonal.

You can read his full interview HERE.

To give you an idea of the incredible music that will be blasted out at the party, you can listen to Josh Wink’s RA podcast on Bench Live. Tracks from the DJ/Producer and electronic music legend can be listened to HERE.

Bench will be bringing you photos of the event over the next few days and updates on our Facebook page. Viva Barcelona!

This year, Bench was an official partner of one of Europe’s biggest electronic music festivals, Les Nuits Sonores.

Every year, Nuits Sonores invites a different city from around the world to join in the festival in unique and innovative ways, through the artists playing and creative projects.

This program is called a “Carte blanche”, and in August 2010 Nuits Sonores chose to invite Tokyo for the 2011 edition.

When the earthquake happened earlier this year, Bench and Nuits Sonores planned to raise money for the people of Tokyo and the areas affected by the earthquake.

Bench paired up with Nuits Sonores to design unique t-shirts with artists from the InFiné music label, which were auctioned off on Thursday 2 June at the festival.

The InFiné record label was created by Lyon-based DJ and producer Agoria, who also co-founded the Nuits Sonores Festival in 2002. Agoria and his label artists all designed t-shirts to be produced by Bench and auctioned off during the festival, with all proceeds going towards those affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Other items including graffiti art and photographs were auctioned off at the festival, raising thousands for the charity.

The artists were happy to pose for photos with their Bench t-shirts and tell us about their designs as well as their history in music.

Arandel is an anonymous DJ who has gathered press interest through performing in masks and face paint. He found a unique alternative for his photograph!

To view all of the artists photographs and interviews CLICK HERE