The Warehouse Collective is making its debut this Saturday, presenting an all-day soiree for dance fans in a stunning Sydney location.

It’s looking to redefine the warehouse party, taking that rustic, DIY energy and translating it into a large-scale event soundtracked by world-class talent. The Warehouse Collective is being held at the heritage-listed Exhibition Hall at the Australian Technology Park, marking one of the first times that the space has been used in such an ambitious manner.

Australian dance pioneers, The Presets will be spearheading the event with a brand new live show, and they’ll be joined by fellow hometown heroes Bag Raiders. Representing Australia’s new wave of talents, Kilter, Nyxen and Lucy Cliché round up The Warehouse Collective’s first roster, for an event that’s set to tingle all the senses when it lands in just a few days.

Ahead of The Warehouse Collective, we spoke to Kiran De Silva of Division Agency, a Sydney club and dancefloor ambassador who’s just one of the brains working tirelessly on the event. Read below for his insights and a taste of what to expect on Saturday, and grab your ticket right here:

You guys will be throwing your first Warehouse Collective event this Saturday. Firstly, what inspired you guys to start this event? How do you think it sits in with the rest of Sydney’s club/festival scene?

As an agency, we’re always to find new opportunities and be boundary pushing when it comes to events. The venue itself is nothing short of mind-blowing and I think you would be hard-pushed to find a single dance music enthusiast who wasn’t immensely inspired by the space.

There’s no denying that Sydney has taken some major blows when it comes to it’s nightlife market, so being able to deliver an event of this size, production and calibre in such an epic setting will hopefully be a great injection into the club/festival scene.

Heading into your inaugural event, there are lots of variables and uncertainties, even though you guys have a pretty solid track record of throwing parties. What are some of the obstacles you guys faced in the lead-up to the event?

The sheer size and cavernous nature of the venue means there’s a huge amount of work that needs to go into the overall production planning to ensure we’re delivering the best quality of event. Apart from one party in 1998, the space hasn’t ever been used in this capacity, which always leaves an element of unpredictability but we’re confident people are going to be impressed.

The only other main hurdle is truing to minimise as much as possible your impact on the surrounding suburbs and residents. Thousands of people descending on a single location at the same time is never without it’s challenges but most of the time it just comes down to being thorough with your planning and execution.

After the lockout laws, Sydneysiders have become more creative about partying, and there’s definitely been an increase in warehouse events. How do you think The Warehouse Collective has taken the warehouse concept, improved it and made it unique?

Warehouse events have been around forever and always played a core role in the development of Sydney’s underground dance music culture. It was only natural that out of oppression of that culture on essentially a parliamentary level, it returned to it’s roots and found a way to continue thriving. Most of those events are relatively small though – 200 to 300 people per party max and generally focus on intimate settings that connect a DJ and crowd.

Sydney rarely sees warehouse events on a large scale but there’s just something so engaging, so enthralling and so damn good about experiencing electronic music in a mammoth warehouse with the production and sound to match.

Tell us about the lineup you have curated. How do you think local dance pioneers like The Presets and Bag Raiders sit alongside newer acts like Kilter and Nyxen? 

Bringing a heritage listed space like this back to life meant that it felt super fitting to curate an all Australian lineup. One that we think transcends multiple genres of music across multiple generations of electronic music fans, but will be still be musically cohesive and very much showcase/remind people how incredible some of the talent in our backyard really is.

You guys seem pretty chuffed with your venue, the Exhibition Hall at the Australian Technology Park. What is it about this venue that makes it so special, and what can we expect aesthetically?

Chuffed would definitely have to be an understatement. It’s been a long road to getting to the point where the event is actually taking place, but it has been worth every single moment. No words can really do it justice, but just the raw, exposed beams spanning the roof coupled with the vast polished concrete floors and formidable pylons make it legitimately breathtaking.

Aesthetically, most of the venue will remain as is. Overkill can very much be a thing, so the party will definitely to some degree pay homage to the industrial nature of underground warehouse parties by exposing and utilising the space being visually stunning where we can. Although in saying that, we have lined up an epic amount of lights and lasers. A large scale warehouse event without the lasers to match would be utterly preposterous.

You’ve also said that this Saturday’s event will be the first of a series for The Warehouse Collective. When can we expect the follow-up, and what direction will you steer the series from hereon in?

The Warehouse Collective, like all the brands we look after, is something that we want to grow and expand both conceptually and musically going into 2018. A lot of our shows to date have been house and techno oriented, so there’s no doubt we’ll be looking to activate more of that kind of music in upcoming events. There’s also a lot of room to explore the experiential side of events as there truly is a plethora of creative people doing some amazing work in Sydney, so we’re beyond excited to see what we can achieve with this project!