ベンジBによる18年間の逸脱

Rewrite

Celebrating 18 years of their legendary club night Deviation, UK legend Benji B talks to Wonderland about legacy, the bond with his partner in crime Judah Afriyie, and what the next 18 years will entail.

Deviation has always existed for the real music fans. They have built a foundation and community that have set the levels for all aspiring club promoters over the span of its beautiful story. It’s not about ego or gatekeeping; Deviation has been about creating spaces, places, and community for everyone else, and developing a DNA built on the encouragement of rising talent and new sounds.

Founded in London in 2007 by Benji B and Judah Afriyie, the night emerged not as a response to trends but as a space built around trust: in sound systems, in selectors, and in the intelligence of the dancefloor. At a time when club culture was becoming increasingly siloed by genre, Deviation cut across house, broken beat, hip hop, garage, disco and beyond, guided by a simple principle – music first, community always. Over the next 18 years, it became a quiet constant in London nightlife, shaping the city’s cultural ecosystem while remaining open to new generations of artists, dancers and ideas.

To mark Deviation’s 18th year, Benji B and Judah have shared, These Are The Levels, a stunning book that depicts their insanely stacked history, through photography, flyers and lineup posters and all of the added anecdotes you’d come to expect. Spanning London, Paris and New York, the archive captures artists, rooms and nights before the glare of social media, when cameras were behind the decks and the energy stayed on the floor.

Alongside the exhibition and the return of the club night itself, the project reflects Deviation’s rare longevity: a movement sustained not by hype or nostalgia, but by care, curiosity and the people who showed up, week after week, to make the music matter.

Benji B and Judah Afriyie have always operated less like figureheads and more like custodians. Benji’s journey from pirate radio roots to BBC Radio 1 tastemaker, from record sleeves to front-row fashion consultancy, has been defined by an instinct for connection, while Judah’s role has been equally vital, grounding Deviation in logistical precision, community awareness and an unwavering belief in the dancefloor as a shared space. Together, they formed a rare balance: taste and structure, vision and execution. Their partnership allowed Deviation to move fluidly across cities and cultures, booking artists long before industry consensus caught up, and offering space to selectors at pivotal moments in their development.

As an onlooker and fan who has bought into the curational DNA of Deviation, witnessing incredible sets over the years, I’ve always aligned myself with what they do, as I like to think I’m the type of music fan who can hold a solid conversation about all genres of music, particularly if in a room with Benji B and Judah. This night they created is what I bought into. A party and celebration of all music. They both seemingly weave and stitch together lineups that in theory shouldn’t work, but always blow us away, and in the next breath, we’re talking about what a masterstroke

they always seem to play. You take a look around the scene, and there aren’t too many other promoters with such an openness and selfless approach to developing talent. Now, Wonderland sit down with Benji B to reflect on the last 18 years of Deviation, and discuss how both he and Judah have set the standards.

You’ve had a hell of a year. 18 years of Deviation and you had your exhibition recently. Talk to me about that.

The exhibition was beautiful. I wanted it to be a celebration of community and a celebration of our city, and I couldn’t have asked for more. It felt like a real recharge for me – a proper battery recharge. It served as a reminder that the temporary can have permanence.

When you do club nights, or in my case a weekly radio show, you’re committing to temporary art forms. A radio show goes out over the airwaves, lives on iPlayer or BBC Sounds for a while, and then disappears. A club night only lasts as long as the night itself, and the memory fades, or sometimes it doesn’t. Certain moments stick: a performance, a person you met, maybe even meeting your future partner. But over time, it all becomes hazy and blurred. It can feel temporary.

What’s important to realise is that even these fleeting things can still have lasting impact. You never start out thinking what you’re doing is permanent or important – you’re not driven by ego or the idea of legacy. But when you look back after 18 years, you begin to see that it was a contribution to the city I love and to the nightlife I come from. That’s something to be proud of, especially because it was never about money or fame. It was about giving back to the cultural and musical ecosystem that shaped us.

Take me back to the start, how did you and Judah meet?

Jude and I crossed paths many times through mutual people and shared club spaces, most notably Plastic People. We didn’t realise it at the time, but because our reference points were so similar, even if not identical, we’d been in many of the same clubs and at many of the same nights for years without actually knowing each other. We probably exchanged a few words in the way you do in club and record shop culture, but we didn’t properly connect until the early to mid-2000s.

That moment came at a now-legendary party called Standard, put on by our friend Kay Shin, who also designed all the early Deviation artwork and flyers. The party took place in an illegal venue in Dalston, back when Dalston was still Dalston. Jude had just finished DJing and emceeing, and I was playing when the police came to check the venue upstairs. We killed the lights, shut the curtains, turned off the power, and everyone stood completely still in silence while we heard footsteps above us. When they left, we turned everything back on and carried on twice as strong.

Sharing that moment mattered. The way Jude reacted to the music, how he used the mic, giving the music space but lifting the room at exactly the right time, made it clear how musically sensitive and informed he was. Coincidentally, I was about to start a new club night in London and had been searching for the right venue and collaborator for a long time. I knew then he was the person. I asked him to be the resident MC. He said yes, and from being co-residents from day one, our friendship and collaboration grew from there.

When you launched Deviation, what did you feel was missing in London nightlife, that you felt compelled to create yourselves?

There were a few things driving it. The main one was that I really wanted a residency in London – a regular home where I could properly express what I was doing on the radio at the time and not just to showcase my sound, but get better.

At that point I was travelling constantly, DJing all over the world, across the UK, and all over London – big clubs, small clubs, every weekend. But what I didn’t have was a consistent home in my own city. My radio show was called Deviation back then, on 1Xtra in the early years, and from 2002 up to the start of the club night, that name really defined what I was doing. I wanted a physical manifestation of that show, not literally turning a dancefloor into a listening space, but expressing its breadth.

Jude and I were both shaped by what people often describe as a golden era of clubbing and dance music in the mid to late 90s. That idea should always be taken with a pinch of salt – everyone thinks their era was special – but looking back, it really was an unusually rich moment.

When you’re inside something like that, part of you knows it’s special, but another part just thinks it’s normal. It felt normal to go to Metalheadz one night, Hard Times another, Jungle Fever another, then a Gilles Peterson night, then a house night. London offered that kind of depth and frequency, and combined with what was happening on the radio at the time, it was incredible.

Plastic People was doing amazing things, and we spent a lot of time there, but that was exactly the point – we didn’t want to replicate it. We wanted to create the night we wished existed, something that sat alongside it rather than inside it.

You said that Deviation was the name of your radio show, but was Deviation an intentional use to instantly let people know that you’re deviating from the norm back then?

That’s exactly it. I chose the name because I wanted it to represent a deviation from the norm. At the time, club culture was very genre-oriented – you could go to a great hip-hop night, a soulful house night, a broken beat night, early dubstep, dark garage, whatever it was. And I loved that. I still do. But as a DJ, I’ve always been drawn to the parts of different genres that resonate with me personally, and to pulling those elements together in a way that feels musical and cohesive. That’s what the night was about. It wasn’t about rejecting genres but about connecting them.

Deviation has always been about, like, cutting edge music with a clear curational DNA – does that instinct still guide your bookings today?

Completely. In a way, we’re both gifted and cursed because we’re not motivated by trends, numbers, or hype. We care about music, DJing, sound systems, and musical integrity. At the same time, it’s really important to say that staying true to those values doesn’t mean being snobbish. That’s something we actively avoid. We’re not a highbrow, “cooler-than-thou” club. At the end of the day, we’re ravers. You leave your attitude at the door, and everyone – regardless of background or identity – is welcome on the dancefloor.

That’s the culture we come from, so staying true to it feels natural. We love that some well-known artists have passed through over the years, but just as importantly, we’re committed to bringing through new talent – new DJs who genuinely resonate with the DNA of what Deviation stands for. Over the last five to seven years, several people have come through who’ve really carried that energy forward. I wouldn’t say we’re responsible for that, but they’ve definitely added to the fabric of what we do in a way that feels musically right to us.

There’s a very specific Deviation feeling – it’s hard to put into precise words – but when people come up to me all over the world and say, “This would work at Deviation,” that’s how I know it has a real musical identity, even if it can’t be neatly defined.

What’s one spontaneous moment that’s happened, that both you and Jude still talk about to this day?

There are too many spontaneous moments to list, but a few really stand out. One of my favourites was at Carnival, maybe three or four years ago. I was playing a tune when Jude pulled the fader down and got the crowd to sing the chorus. He kept the fader down, and they sang the whole thing perfectly. Instead of bringing the track back in, I started mixing another record underneath the crowd’s singing, completely in time. It could have gone wrong, but it landed perfectly— when the new track dropped, it hit exactly at the end of their phrase, and the place just exploded. It was pure spontaneity, a moment of real magic and improvisation.

Another unforgettable night is captured in a photo I saw recently – Rocky and Yasiin together. That lineup was wild: Kaytranada, Skepta and JME, Virgil Abloh, Yasiin Bey, A$AP Rocky, Bok Bok, with Nov there as well. It was one of those nights where you look back and can’t quite believe who was in the room.

Then there was our fifth birthday, when Dâm-Funk came over from the US to perform. Something went wrong mid-set—his Serato froze or the track cut out. Before anyone could react, Kaidi Tatham, who was in the crowd, jumped on stage and started playing an incredible keyboard solo, filling the space naturally as if it was planned. Dâm-Funk rebooted, the track dropped back in at exactly the right moment, and the room went crazy.

I love those moments where something goes wrong and turns into something magical. That kind of unplanned collaboration and improvisation is what makes nights like that special.

The first venue you started playing at was The Gramophone. Why was The Gramophone right at that moment in time. Can you paint a picture of those first Gramophone nights?

Gramophone was extremely special because no one had ever done a night there before. I spent a long time looking for an unused venue in London and found a

basement underneath a bar with a Thai restaurant, on Commercial Road. It was essentially empty – no DJ booth, just a trestle table with decks – but it was exactly what I had imagined: stairs down to a brick basement, a rectangular space with the DJ at the end, and this iconic air-conditioning tube running across it.

The first night had about 60 people; the next week it was around the block, and after a few sessions it grew steadily. We ran the nights there for about two years before moving on. During that time, our “normal” sessions were at Gramophone, while special events happened at Cable and Fabric. At Fabric, we shut down the whole club to focus on room one, hosting nights with Madlib and Bilal. At Cable, we worked with Ajay and had huge nights featuring Theo Parrish, Kode9 and Karizma. And then we moved to a venue called Concrete…

Many artists have also developed their career through the pathway that deviation has been able to kind of craft for them. What’s it been like watching that evolution from such like a close vantage point?

It’s beautiful. I feel privileged to have been part of it through the radio and the club night. At the heart of it, we’re fans of music – whether it’s a global superstar DJ or someone making beats in their bedroom. We celebrate both equally. Some of those early artists have gone on to huge success, which is amazing to see. Of course, we can’t always book them now –they’re doing arena shows, and that’s just how the music business works.

But even the legendary DJs still look forward to playing for us because they know it’s a place where they can be 100% themselves. One of the highest compliments a DJ can receive is feeling the need to truly show up for a set – to prepare, to play specifically for that audience, rather than just rolling out what they did somewhere else the night before. Deviation is one of those places. So yes, it’s incredibly rewarding to see the success of people who started with us, and I hope that continues for a long time.

What’s a non-negotiable for Deviation?

Number one for us is the sound. It’s the most important. Deviation can’t happen without a proper sound system. For most of our parties, we bring our own setup, courtesy of Bart at D.I Audio, who’s been our resident sound engineer since day one. He may not be famous, but to us, he’s just as essential. From the start, he supported us – sometimes giving discounts, sometimes even lending the system for free. We repay that tenfold now, booking massive systems through him at festivals, Carnival, or wherever.

Of course, there are other priorities. The experience, lighting, smell, security, bookings, but if you had to pick just one, it’s always the sound.

And for my last question, what’s to come for the next 18 years?

We’ve never really planned, and I mean that positively. Nightlife is naturally evolving. Venues and nights open and close, new generations take over, and at its best, it’s like a constantly developing garden – things sprout, grow, contribute, and sometimes get removed. That unpredictability has birthed entire genres, from rave to breakbeat, jungle, drum and bass, grime, and garage. Contributing to that landscape for 18 years has been about creating something special for our city and expressing ourselves musically, without attachment to where it would end up.

The reason for this book now is that our club night has grown. It’s 18, which means it’s an adult. We’ve raised it from a child into adulthood, and now we’re more custodians than parents. We’ve guided and shaped it, but life and demand have changed. In the first 10 years, we ran monthly parties and specials; now, the club night is curated, happening at the right moment in the right venue. Alongside that, we continue work on Carnival and other projects.

This book and its associated gallery pop-up are a kind of 18-year-old version of a club night – a way to capture the excitement and creative fulfilment we used to get only from the parties. It’s beautiful to see different entry points: day ones at the launch, alongside people who discovered Deviation two, five, or seven years ago, each experiencing it differently.

Looking forward, an important part of our future is mentoring and bringing through new talent, offering guidance to anyone wanting to create their own version of this, and contributing authentically to nightlife. Deviation can manifest in many ways: a club night, a compilation, a record label, a book, a short film and all are legitimate extensions of the brand. It’s exciting to be in a position where we can explore all of these possibilities.

Words – Josh Clubbe

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