Esyllt and Ian created Dirty Pop, a popular club night at Clwb Ifor Bach
ESYLLT Williams and Ian Cottrell have been at Clwb Ifor Bach on Womanby Street for 49 years between them. The two DJs run the popular club night Dirty Pop.
On January 21, it was announced their final show is on March 5 though both Esyllt, 42, from Riverside, and Ian, 48, from Penylan, insist that this is not the end.
As they prepare to take a break, both DJs – staples in Cardiff’s club scene – reflect how it’s changed since they started, what Dirty Pop means, and how it’s changed their lives.
“It might take a while to step back and realise what we created. I think seeing the outpouring of love we saw when we said we were having our last weekend. It made me realise what a big part of the Cardiff nightlife we have been,” said Esyllt.
The club night is based on the bottom floor of Clwb and has officially played at the venue for at least 14 years.
Both work full-time alongside playing music every Saturday night. Esyllt works as a manager at the Millennium Centre and Ian is a translator.
Ian moved to Cardiff in 1991 to study at university and quickly started DJ-ing at Clwb while Esyllt moved here in 2004 and began DJing there a year later.
The DJ duo came up with Dirty Pop in 2006 though its official birthday was in 2008. The night showcases edgier and more fun pop music, in their words.
“There was never anywhere like Dirty Pop in Cardiff. The gay clubs at the time were proper clubs where people would go and play techno or hard house. It doesn’t appeal to me and it never has.”
“Every song of ours has a vocal,” said Ian.
Over the years, Dirty Pop hosted Madonna nights, birthdays, gigs, Eurovision parties and even an unofficial Agony Aunt behind the DJ booth.
It became known as an inclusive club night for bringing different communities, including the LGBT+ community, into Clwb.
Now because of Covid and personal reasons, both Ian and Esyll have decided to end their residency on a weekly basis.
“Lockdown was the longest I’ve not DJ-ed. It was a revelation having all that time and the weekends,” Esyllt said.
“I found myself on that dancefloor”
After so many years, Clwb and Dirty Pop has come to mean a lot for both Esyllt and Ian.
“Personally I’m proud of creating a night that hopefully will be remembered and I believe has contributed to the scene here in Cardiff, to have created a space where LGBT+ people can go too,” Ian, who identifies as gay, said.
Esyllt also said that becoming a DJ and interacting with people on the night has helped build up her confidence
“I’m really proud when people have said, ‘I found myself on that dancefloor’ and I think that is enormous,” she said.
“In many ways I’ve found myself on that dancefloor as well. Socially I’m quite anxious and I’m not very good with crowds of people. I don’t like lots of people looking at me, which might seem quite weird for a DJ.
“I’ve always loved music but I’ve always felt very shy and I don’t make my own music or anything like that. I never felt very confident in myself musically,” Esyllt said.
“However when I DJ, I feel confident and that I know what I’m doing. It just works and I like myself there. I feel like I’m in the right place at the right time.”
Ian and Esyllt will miss a lot about being Clwb regulars too. “I’ve made loads of friends and I’ll miss seeing people on the dancefloor, but we’ll be keeping in touch,” Ian said.
“I’ll miss the last half an hour when the other DJs come down from upstairs and we’re all dancing in the DJ booth,” Esyllt said.
When I DJ, I feel confident and that I know what I’m doing. It just works and I like myself there
Esyllt Williams
How Dirty Pop came to be
Ian and Esyllt first met in 2004 through work but would often see each other through gigs and mutual friends.
“I was always a bit intimidated by Ian’s dance moves,” Esyllt said. When asked about her own dancing, Esyllt said: “I can’t go on Strictly. I’m that good.”
After Esyllt began as a DJ, they would often see each other working shifts on different floors.
“I was talking to someone from Clwb and persuaded them I could DJ. I had never DJ-ed before but I looked at it and thought ‘I can do that’ and then I learned very fast on the job,” Esyllt said.
Though there weren’t many female DJs on the scene, Esyllt said you still had the likes of Bethan Elfyn, now a presenter at BBC Radio Wales.
The idea for Dirty Pop came as both Esyllt and Ian wanted to see more pop music on Cardiff’s club scene.
Ian said: “You’d hear dreadful music where songs are remixed that don’t need to be remixed. You’ve got decent songs so just play the songs.”
“Pop was really having a moment. More commercial pop was more looked down upon, a bit bland and not very edgy but you started getting edgier pop in the beginning of the 2000s,” Esyllt added.
“Ian suggested ‘why don’t we make a thing of it’ and that’s why it’s called Dirty Pop. It’s that sort of edgier pop music that wasn’t just for children.”
Back then, Dirty Pop would play at different venues such as The Toucan, Buffalo, and Ten Feet Tall as well as Clwb.
Both said that some people looked down on the night because of its focus on pop music.
“It was seen as our silly little night or people would say we’re not proper DJs and we just press play. Just because we don’t mix everything every two seconds doesn’t mean that we can’t,” Esyllt said.
“At the end of the day, we’ve lasted longer than many of the other club nights. We’ve been doing this every Saturday for God knows how many years,” Ian said.
The night built up a following through platforms like MySpace and a small Facebook group. While it doesn’t have a first official night, its first birthday was held in June 2008.
“It was about 18 months in at the time. Our birthdays are now in September so we’re probably a couple of years older than we pretend to be,” said Esyllt.
“The audience found us”
Dirty Pop is known for its inclusiveness, particularly for the LGBT+ community.
Ian said: “It was never a part of the original idea. We never discussed it and never set out to. We always say the audience found us. It changed Clwb for the better and opened them up to a different crowd,” Ian said.
“We wanted it to be a night we both felt comfortable going to. We wanted a night where everyone felt like they could be there,” Esyllt added.
Ian said: “We’ve raised a family because people started bands or music careers who had been coming to Dirty Pop for years.
“Artists like Mantaraybryn and Dead Method became the Dirty Pop kids in a way.”
Over time, Ian and Esyllt got bolder with their plans too.
“We got more confident. We changed the logo and had an upgrade. We had our themed birthdays every year as well as Eurovision parties on the middle floor,” Ian said.
The Eurovision parties were particularly popular, selling out within minutes and queues down Womanby Street.
Unlike some DJs, Ian and Esyllt had an open-door policy before Covid and this would allow them to chat with people and make friends.
Esyllt said she’s had to juggle DJ-ing while also acting as an Agony Aunt when people came to tell her their problems in the DJ booth.
“We’d even get people come in saying they’re on a date and ask to play a song because it would really impress the person they were with,” she said.
So why they have decided to (kind of) end things?
Both decided Dirty Pop would have a final show after things changed because of Covid-19. The pandemic forced clubs to operate differently even when they reopened. People could no longer come into the DJ booth to request songs and the crowd changed too.
Ian said becoming seriously ill in hospital with Covid in December 2021 also contributed.
“It made me really question my own mortality a bit more and how I felt about being in that club environment. It freaked me out a lot. I know every club is taking every precaution it can but going back to that environment is still a bit scary for me,” Ian said.
“Before this, I said to my husband Matthew that I maybe needed a rest. I’ve been DJ-ing at Clwb for more than 30 years and I want to get my Saturday nights back,” he said.
Esyllt said: “We have loved doing Dirty Pop. We’ve seen people get married. Ian himself got married. We still want to carry on DJ-ing but we don’t want to have to DJ. It’s our turn to have a bit of a life.”
‘To infinity and beyond’
So what’s next for Dirty Pop? That remains an open-ended question despite my best efforts to squeeze it out of them. “To infinity and beyond,” Esyllt said.
“It’s quite liberating. There’s no master plan so we’ve been free to think about what we can do next,” Ian said.
Esyllt said: “We actually have some super-secret plans that we can’t tell you about but it will be fabulous.” Whether they’ll be playing at any festivals depends on how good the toilets are, Esyllt jokes.
As for the final show, both say they don’t want a sense of finality though they know what the last song will be and assured it will be turned up to an 11.
And for their first Saturday off on March 12, Esyllt said: “I haven’t thought about it really but probably just go to bed.”
