Our organic clothing brand, Goose Studios, started off life as a Northern Soul night in our home-town called "Goose Phat Studios presents...". It was all about bringing the good times, organically sourced from the likes of Franki Valli, Chuck Wood, The Flirtations and Gloria Jones.

A touch of Wigan Casino in the 21st century. We filled sweaty pubs in 2016 with 18 - 80 year olds giving it their all on the dance-floor. Proper stuff.

As we roll into our 8th year in business we've kept the Northern Soul sentiment of keeping big-business capitalism at arms length and treading our own path. Keep the faith!

We’ve decided to rummage through our own DJing archives to dust off some of our favourite set openers in the always reliable, always delightful, toe tapping gloriousness that is Northern Soul and 60s Motown (I know, the latter is very Blackpool Mecca of us... maybe Ian Levene was onto something!?).

A bit of background to Northern Soul for you history nuts. As the London Art School scene started delving down the rabbit hole of psychedelics and the youth grew out of the promiscuity and violence of rock’n’roll, up North, the move into more repetitive jobs, the factory production line and the office admin tasks meant the Northern Soul scene emerged like a dancing phoenix from the boring flames of the working week. Wigan Casino its epicentre.

Classic Motown hits had a re-birth at Blackpool Mecca. Track selectors disappeared to the States in order to find rare cuts in dirty old Floridian or Detroit record shops.

These all night (and often all weekend) gatherings garnered a faithful following as you hopped into ya mates Transit van, stole a load of amphetamines from some rural pharmacy and had a good ol’ boogie in the dance halls of the North.

This is all context though; we don’t need to know all this. What we do need to know though is that Northern Soul is a shed ton a fun and has been having something of a renaissance for the last few years and crucially, unlike all those summer disco tracks, its music where you don’t need sunshine for it to be enjoyed.

In fact, it might be more fun, getting a little bit boozy with ya mates in a grotty living room somewhere whilst it shits it down with rain outside. It’s comforting and come rain or shine; it puts a smile on your face.

What Northern Soul also is though is that it is a hark back to the past when the U.K used to make some things. The guys and gals, who wanted to escape inner city Wakefield, were the ones who were working in factory production lines or in the offices of companies who used to make stuff here in Blighty.

Whilst the U.K rightly got a bit of a shit reputation for striking all the time and producing stuff that kinda fell apart in the 70s and 80s, that is far from the case now. In the Northern industrial heartlands, cottage industries and artisanal craftsmen have re-stroked the fires of making and put firmly to bed the dirty connotations of ‘Made in the U.K.’.

This is something that always has been a driving motive behind Goose Studios - the idea of reducing our carbon footprint as a company and to try and champion a new, better way of how garments are produced and consumed.

You’ve read or heard us talk through about some ideas that we feel are important in this consumerist age. Whether it is buying less and buying better or reducing how much plastic we consume as individuals or as a company but we have a bigger picture in mind.

The big picture for Goose Studios is for us, as a company, to reduce the environmental and societal impact on how our clothes are produced and to foster and champion a new way for clothing to be made and consumed.

So get your friends over, have a beer, have a dance, listen to the playlist but most importantly, keep your eyes peeled because this just got exciting.

Keep the faith!