Chat with Stan Chow
Stanley Chow, ace illustrator and friend of the venue talks about his work, food, music and stuff…
What’s going on Stan? working on anything exciting in 2024?
I’m about to start some work for FIFA. It’s for their Museum in Zurich… and that’s pretty much all I can say about it for now. But yeah, very excited to be working with FIFA.
You’ve recently designed some beautiful t-shirts and totes for Night & Day. Where did you draw your inspiration from for the design? The proportions of your design and the words being on 4 lines looks kinda of look like the front of Night & Day?
The initial idea I had was to illustrate the front of Night&Day and then put the letters that spell ‘Long Live Night and Day’ in the windows… I started doing this and came and across 2 problems: One, there weren’t enough windows on the building to fit all the letters and secondly, even if it there were enough windows, it wasn’t looking very good. But instead of scrapping the whole thing, I extracted some elements that were already created from the initial idea and tried to make something look decent with with what I had…
On the subject of inspiration, are there any local or national illustrators or artists that are on your radar?
I have to give my old school mate and lifelong best mate a shout out… Barney Ibbotson, who also resides in Manchester. A notable mention goes to Ben Lamb, who used to illustrate many of the flyers for Night and Day.. One favourite illustrators outside of Manchester is Jonathan Edwards (aka Jontofski) who lives in Wrexham. His style and technique is other-worldly.
As a DJ what have you been listening to in 2023?
Large Plants and Project Gemini are 2 new bands that I have discovered this year, but I guess the reason why I like them is that they kind of make music that sounds old. Best gig I’ve been to this year has probably been Queens of the Stone Age at the AO.
However predominately exploring, listening to and play old 70s soul, funk, psyche and rock from around the world nowadays.
You’ve been playing records out for some time now. When Elbow played here, Guy Garvey mentioned something about you DJ’ing Night & Day and The Sweeney. What’s all that about?
I think he was referring to a situation back in the day when something was kicking off in Night & Day, so much to a point that the police were called. When they turned up, I coincidentally was about to cue the theme tune to Columbo, but then I saw police and I played The Theme tune to The Sweeney instead as it was on the same record, which seemed more apt. The police would turn up fairly frequently for whatever reason whilst I was DJing, so it became a regular thing to play the Sweeney theme tune, but also I’d play the Starsky and Hutch theme when they turned up.
Looking at one of your other insta accounts, you like food and cooking. Any restaurant/food recommendations for us?
Peace Garden is my one of my favourite Chinese restaurants near Manchester University… the Roasted Lamb Ribs they make is my single favourite dish in the whole of Manchester. Double Zero Pizza is very much our weekly staple in the Chow household… if I was going to make a suggestion from there it would be to order the Margherita and customise it with Porchetta, Black Olives and Jalapeños.
Stan’s t-shirt and tote design for Night & Day are available to buy now directly from the bar and at are online merch store here
