The Bristol house duo whizz up a festival-ready mix ahead of their FOUND appearance supporting Maya Jane Coles.
Having spent a number of years living and working in Bristol’s burgeoning music scene, it wasn’t until early 2010 that producers Rich Beanland and Amos Nelson – better known by their wayward moniker Waifs & Strays – finally clubbed together to begin work on their debut release 3am which was pushed out by Matt Tolfrey through his Leftroom imprint.
Bringing together a heady mix of classic house stabs and deep, dark baselines both Rich and Amos have since gone about comfortably establishing themselves as two of the city’s most promising up and coming DJs, with support from the likes of Radio One’s Heidi and Fabric’s Jamie Jones amongst others.
Kicking off their festival season supporting Midland, Maya Jane Coles and Cyril Hahn at FOUND – which takes place on the 15th later this month – the two boys have put together an of hour long mix exclusively for Wonderland that’ll get you prepped for the long summer of mud, sweat and warm cider ahead.
Tell us a little bit about yourselves. Where have you come from? Where are you going?
Two guys living in Bristol, making house music. Neither of us are originally for here, but we both consider it our home now. Where are we going, who knows, but the journey is pretty exciting right now!
What’s with the name? What does it say about you?
It would be really great to say there was a big story behind the name, but in reality it came about because we had a track coming out with Leftroom and needed a name. We went through a whole bunch of terrible, terrible options, until we landed on Waifs & Strays, which we liked and went with that!
How has Bristol influenced your music? Where do you look for inspiration?
The city has such a rich culture in music especially electronic music. There are so many great people making amazing music here and luckily most of them are our friends, people like Eats Everything, Lukas, Christophe, DJ Die and loads of others. Plus we have a lot of friends who are putting on amazing events such as Love Saves the Day and See No Evil in Bristol. As its a small city everyone in the scene knows everyone so there is a real community feel.
Kicking off with FOUND festival in a couple of days’ time, what have you guys got planned for the summer? Any festivals in particular we should watch out for?
We are doing lots of festivals this summer – Love Saves the Day, Isle of Wight, Secret Garden, Burning Man, Eastern Electrics and the daddy of them all Glastonbury! Being from Bristol, Glastonbury has a special place in our hearts so it’s a massive honour to finally play there! We love festivals so it’s shaping to be a great summer!
Tell us something we don’t know.
There are 20 Lego bricks for every person on the planet.
Waifs & Strays play at FOUND festival in Haggerston Park on 15th June. soundcloud.com/waifs_strays
Words: Thomas Curry