After hearing about Simon Dunmore and Miss Divine’s epic journey as a result of commuter chaos at the weekend, Simon Marlin of the Shapeshifters tells us about their even longer trans-European adventure as they make their way from the UK to Slovenia...

If Al Qaeda wasn’t enough, along comes the Icelandic volcano to try and piss on our party! Even  on the 7th of July 2007 when nearly every airport in the country cancelled flights due to the terrorist bombings on that horrible day, we still managed to get to our show at Amnesia, Ibiza. It took us 13hrs but we made via Coventry on Thompson airways by booking the last 3 tickets on any aircraft anywhere that day.

So when the volcano erupted and wiped out all airspace over the UK it became apparent to us very quickly this was another Shapeshifters who dares wins mission and plans were quickly swung into action.

It’s no secret we love our motors so having just added an Aston Martin DB9 to the family courtesy of Max, we quickly earmarked her as a prime candidate to get us to the ball on time!



First thing was to assure a way off the island so we booked tickets on the ferry to Calais pretty darn quick as there was nothing left on Eurostar etc. Having those firmly in our grasp we waited out Thursday to see how things were panning out. It became clear to us things were only gonna get worse, so after a quick vocal session with Will Young (as you do!), we waved him off and legged it to the car.

We headed out of London and pointed in the direction of the sea and Dover. We expected Dover to be an apocalyptic scene on arrival, but when we got there it was strangely calm. Anyway after a quick burger we stocked up on essentials and on board we drove.



The crossing was an hour, so with the hour difference we touched down on mainland Europe at 9pm.

Quick load of the iPhone sat nav (because the Aston one is Volvo and rubbish) and off we speed doubting the sat nav intently for the first hour. Do we go Brussels through Holland and into Germany? Or through France to Reims then Stuttgart Germany??? We decide our fate is in the iPhone and push on through the night at a rate of knots until we are both too tired to continue and end up in MANHEIM! At 02.30am 645.98KM done! Not the most glamorous of stopovers but we didn’t care and found the first hotel we knew the name of, Maritim!

Next morning at 10am we wake up to a glorious day for driving and a phone call from Simon Dunmore and Sam Divine who are winging it over to Geneva for their show at Le MAD. Good effort all round from the Defected crew, especially as Aaron Ross maybe stuck in Tokyo ‘till 5th May (according to Virgin) and Sam Copyright is banging around Portugal on his jack also! Anyway we pay the bill at 11am decide breakfast is only going to slow us down and hit the gas, only stopping for more burgers and coffee.

Mile after mile of autobahn as fast as we dared, but ironically we did get stopped by the police in Deutschland!  Not for passing them at 165mph but for the fact that they were more concerned we had broken an EU law and not displayed a GB sticker on our car! We promptly showed them the magnetic GB sticker we bought in Dover but forgot we were driving a fibre glass car and it just wouldn’t stick! 15 euros fine and a laugh at our expense we were Grand Tourismo again.



We crossed the Austrian border at Salzburg 1,289km in at around 4pm and entered into what can only be described as petrol head heaven. At first it’s pretty standard motorway, then you hit Graz and the low lands to the Alps and it becomes an orgy of scenery, perfect roads and ‘giggling at the roar from our exhaust sound’ in the long tunnels all the way to Slovenia. We reach our destination Maribor 1,691km at 7pm on Saturday night to a very relieved promoter and friends still scratching their heads as to how we made it at all.



We dropped our bags went for a sound check and then caught a couple of hours rest before heading to the venue for the ‘MTV Pleasure’ festival and hoped our efforts would be rewarded.

We were not disappointed; the venue was packed and the crowd were really up for it, we felt a special atmosphere was brewing and made our way to the decks, the party was already jumping thanks to our good friend Pookie and we played on for another 3 hrs to a very vocal crowd. Job done and thank you! It was a very special night.

I’m not gonna bore you with the return journey on Sunday as it was pretty much more of the same, except we did race a Porsche 911 Turbo through Germany which was insane! But we arrived back in London at 5pm Monday after a nice stopover in Köln feeling pretty inspired by the weekend’s events.



As DJs Max and I lead a very privileged lifestyle and have it all our way for most of the time, so when something like this happens and the chips are down we need to remember that without the people who put on these shows and the fans that pay to attend those events to listen to us play our favourite records that sometimes you just gotta go that extra mile - quite literally - and it was our pleasure, really a pleasure to work hard to keep this scene we all love alive, ‘Strictly for the L.O.V.E’

Simon Marlin

the Shapeshifters

Nocturnal Grooves Vol.2 mixed by the Shapeshifters is out 26th April.