As part of the ‘Behind The Scenes‘ series, we’ve decided to catch up with the brains behind all these amazing events we all attend.

Cutting Edge owners, Sam Drozd & Mike Oakeshott had a chat with us to tell us all how the Cutting Edge brand first started, spoke about their party coming up in Amsterdam plus more…

So, tell us about the birth of the Cutting Edge brand?

We used to work together on some smaller parties around Surrey, Mike as a promoter and Sam as a DJ. The Cutting Edge brand came about after a conversation with Mike and one of our residents, Cali and in November 2014 the party was launched at Area in Vauxhall.

It wasn’t until early 2015 until Sam came on board as a partner, since then the team has continued to grow with Ronnie, another partner coming on board, we also have a social media manager and artist liaison.

Over the past two and a half years, what has been your favourite Cutting Edge party?

It’s a difficult one because there’s been so many, from the sell-out Hannah Wants events to the team up with YMO & Love LDN, if you look back at that line-up now it looks almost like a mini festival.

This year we’ve also taken the brand outside of London with a warehouse party on NYE with the guys at Pro-Ject, which was going off from start to finish, and also down to Junk in Southampton which is one of Sam’s favourite clubs.

We’ve also worked closely with Audiowhore at two of their Ibiza events at Sankeys. But to be honest, our last London event back in November, the 2nd birthday, was pretty special, we had a wicked line-up and the feedback we got from the clubbers was probably the best we’ve had. Although saying that, we’re pretty confident that Amsterdam will eclipse all of those…

Which brings us onto our next question… How did Amsterdam come about?

We were actually approached by the owner quite early last year and flew out for a meeting back in April time, it was the first time Sam had been to the city and it’s safe to say we both now love the place..

We were playing around with the idea for quite sometime, I think we were really just waiting for the right time and the date we’ve got is perfect, it’s just after the Winter and before the festival and Ibiza season kicks off.

Who’s set are you looking forward to the most out there?

Haha, that’s a tough one to answer without upsetting anyone! We’ve had Dale play for us a couple of times and his music really epitomises the direction we are taking the brand and Miguel Bastida is an artist we’re sure is going to be absolutely huge, we gave him his London debut last week at Lightbox and he tore it up.

The obvious one that stands out is Sam Divine, she’s been killing it recently with the launch of her label D-Vine Sounds, she’s been a friend for sometime but due to her Defected ties and many festival appearances it’s difficult to sign her up to one of our London shows. After we made the Amsterdam booking we actually went down to Box Park in Shoreditch for her label showcase, it was 9pm on a Thursday night, you could of been mistaken for thinking it was 4 amon a Sunday morning, the place was bouncing.

What do you think of the current London/UK promoter scene?

If you work in the scene it’s pretty obvious that it’s pretty saturated right now, but we’re still a relatively young brand and would never discourage or belittle would be promoters, the other thing is that the level of competition keeps us on our toes and at the end of the day we think it makes London one of the best city’s in the World for house music.

Last weekend we launched our new brand Enclosed and were up against the likes of The Social, Defected at Ministry Of Sound, Amnesia at Egg, Apollonia at Fabric and the Studio 338 opening party, I mean, where else can you find those kind of names all in one city on one night?

Would you ever consider moving from your current home of Fire & Lightbox?

You never know what’s going to happen in this game but the team at Fire & Lightbox are like our family, they were the ones who gave us the platform to launch and grow Cutting Edge, and besides that, Fire & Lightbox are up their with the best venues in the Country. Lightbox is a very unique space and Fire has been massively improved over the past 12 months with the changeover in sound and lighting additions.

What do you both do outside of Cutting Edge?

Mike recently joined the Fire & Lightbox team to work on the Tribal Sessions residency and Sam is one half of award winning DJ outfit Luvstuff.

What do you have in store for us for the rest of 2016?

Amsterdam… Ibiza… Brighton… Leeds… And obviously London. We’ll also be throwing some more enclosed parties.