CLUBBING IN NOTTINGHAM CALLUNA X SUPERFLY
SUPERFLY x CALLUNA: LEICESTER MEETS NOTTINGHAM FOR A NIGHT OF HIGH ENERGY HOUSE MUSIC
Leicester’s famous house music collective Superfly unites with Calluna for an extended Friday night session that bridges quality house and rave-tinged-90s energy. Blimey O'Reilly has shaped Calluna to deliver a new standard for clubbing in Nottingham. Calluna plays host to Superfly residents Tall Order and Boris’ Breakfast Club alongside homegrown talent Akonite and Poach - all taking place at Cullana, Nottingham's most visceral dance space.
Regional collaborations in UK dance music often promise more than they deliver- two crews sharing a bill, splitting the night down the middle, and calling it unity. What's happening on Friday 30th January when Leicester's Superfly collective links up with Nottingham's Calluna is something more organic: a natural extension of relationships that have been developing across the Midlands' house music community, anchored by Blimey O'Reilly's ongoing work with both Calluna and his involvement with Superfly and The Garden of Dreams - we’ve been talking about this little Superfly soiree for sometime, now its reality.
Blimey O'Reilly has become a crucial connector in the region's dance music ecosystem, and Calluna - the Nottingham venue he's cultivated as a home for high-quality house music- reflects his understanding of what makes a space work. The venue itself defies conventional club architecture in ways that create atmosphere through constraint rather than excess. High ceilings that should create breathing room instead amplify the sense of compression, modern neon pink lights cutting through the darkness like industrial warnings, and that distinctive corridor-like configuration that forces bodies together and turns every night into a shared physical experience rather than a passive one. It's Instagram-ready but not in the tired sanitised bottle-service way; the aesthetic is raw, deliberate, unapologetically intense and really fucking cool.
When Calluna is packed - which it is every Saturday and now most Fridays - and surely will be on the 30th - forget Dry January, pay weekend makes this a Fly January and a farewell to the skint evenings in, we all know and er love!
Back to Calluna. You're in it, fully committed, and the music becomes the only thing that makes sense. The booth is the same level of the dancefloor - it's the kind of environment that demands quality because there's nothing else to hide behind. No elaborate production, no pyrotechnics, no distractions. Just a sound system, some lights, and a DJ set to groove.
This commitment to quality house music has made Calluna a crucial venue in Nottingham's landscape, a space where the focus is squarely on the music rather than the spectacle. Blimey O'Reilly's curatorial approach has always prioritised substance - DJs who can actually play, DJs that know how to rock a party, records that actually work, nights that build something rather than just replicate a formula. His connections to Superfly and The Garden of Dreams speak to a wider network of promoters and collectives across the Midlands who share this philosophy, making the 30th January collaboration feel less like a one-off event and more like a natural meeting of minds. Bunker, the crew from Derby, are also in this same vein.
For this particular session, Calluna is hosting guests whose sound pushes into harder, more energetic territories than the venue's typical programming, creating an interesting tension between space and sound. Boris Breakfast Club bring something distinctly different to Calluna's usual palette, and that contrast is precisely the point.
Their approach leans heavily into 90s rave aesthetics filtered through contemporary production sensibilities, speed garage with its skippy, syncopated swing, and jacking house that refuses to sit still. Drawing from labels like Big Trouble Records, Rapid Trax, and Sucker Punch Records, their sets occupy that space where nostalgia meets functionality - records that reference rave's golden era without being imprisoned by it. The bass doesn't just drop; it kicks, demanding physical response rather than passive appreciation. 140 bpm and then some.
The influence of producers like Andre Zimmer - whose broken beat tendencies and polyrhythmic experiments push house music into more challenging territory - suggests an approach that's technically minded even when the energy is peaking. Then there's influencers from the likes of Remmert, the Dutch producer whose output sits somewhere between electro, breaks, and house, always with an eye toward rave's more unhinged moments. And Mixoydian, whose inclusion suggests an appreciation for producers who understand that dance music can be both intelligent and devastating. You're impressed by the selection even as you're losing yourself to the groove.
This is music built for moments of intensity - classic ravey stabs, acid lines, breakbeats chopped and manipulated, all running at tempos that demand commitment from the dance floor. The influence of NewTone is telling here; the UK producer's ability to bridge old-school rave aesthetics with contemporary club functionality is exactly the kind of approach that makes these selections work in modern contexts. These aren't throwback moments; they're about understanding what made those records devastating in the first place and applying those principles now.
The Rapid Trax and Sucker Punch Records affiliations speak to this harder edge - labels that understand the lineage between UK rave culture and contemporary hard house and techno without descending into nostalgia. .
Against this backdrop, Superfly's residents are bringing something entirely different, and that's what makes the collaboration genuinely compelling rather than just a convenient regional link-up. Tall Order's sound operates at the opposite end of the house music spectrum . Where they deal in intensity and acceleration, Tall Order traffics in restraint and repetition. From minimal, rolling approach - informed by labels like Eastenderz, Nature, and Circoloco - is about building tension through what's left out rather than what's piled on.
The producers he's currently championing tell you everything about his aesthetic: Rossi's stripped-back grooves that work through hypnotic repetition; Prospa's genre-agnostic energy manipulation; Waff's no-nonsense functionality; Franky Rizardo's evolution away from big-room house toward something more nuanced; Ozzie Guven's Euro-minimal sensibilities; and Late Replies' melodic techno leanings. These are all artists who understand that less can absolutely be more, that a well-placed bassline and the right percussion can carry a dance floor for ten minutes without needing any tricks. And of course, not being afraid to rock a party.
His sets tend to lock into a groove and explore it fully before moving on, creating a hypnotic quality that's almost meditative compared to the kinetic chaos that the guest selectors bring. Tech house that prioritizes the tech, disco edits that highlight the rhythm section, minimal tracks that reveal their complexity slowly- this is house music for heads-down dancing, for getting lost in the groove rather than waiting for the drop.
The extended timeframe, running from 8pm until 3:30am, allows for this kind of programming. It's enough time for each selector to actually develop ideas, to take the room somewhere and see what happens, rather than cramming highlights into a set that's over before it's really begun. In an era where DJ sets have become increasingly front loaded and predictable, seven-and-a-half hours split between four selectors creates space for risk, for experimentation, for those moments when a DJ realises the room is with them and decides to push further.
The visual identity of the space - those neon pink lights cutting through Calluna's industrial aesthetic - will amplify everything. This isn't ambient lighting designed to create comfort; it's confrontational, deliberate, a constant reminder that you're here for intensity. Combined with the venue's natural tendency toward compression when it's packed, the atmosphere will be charged before the first record drops.
For Blimey O'Reilly, this event represents what Calluna is fundamentally about: creating space for quality house music in all its forms, even when those forms contrast sharply with each other. His connections to both Superfly and The Garden of Dreams have built a network across the Midlands where these collaborations make sense, where the focus is on the music rather than territorial concerns.
What you can expect on January 30th is a night that refuses to settle into predictability.
This is regional UK dance music operating exactly as it should: quality venues providing platforms for different approaches to house music, established connections between collectives enabling genuine collaboration, and programming that trusts its audience to appreciate range. Superfly x Calluna isn't trying to be the biggest event; it's trying to be the best representation of what the Midlands' house music community is actually about - the residents are uprising.
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