Durham needs dance: Introducing Jinky Sounds

Founder of Jinky Sounds Ollie De-Gentile Williams, aka ‘Deeg’, tells all about his vision to transform Durham’s nightlife scene

7 hours ago

Milly McCarthy | News

Jinky Sounds is Durham’s latest music events company, recently launching in January 2025. With the departure of Snafu Events, Jinky aims to revitalise the city’s nightlife scene by “quenching Durham’s appetite for good music, the right setting, and your favourite people.”

The Tab spoke to founder and director of Jinky Sounds, Ollie De Gentile-Williams—better known as ‘Deeg’. A second-year PPE student at Collingwood, Deeg is an avid college rugby player and lives in Surrey. Shocker. He previously served as head of promotions at Snafu Events and DJ’d at some of their events.

His creative director is Dante McNichol, a 1st year fellow Collingwood student responsible for content creation, video editing, and DJing at Jinky events.

Rounding out the executive team is Gabriella Deegan, a second-year Hatfield law student, bringing some balance to the Collingwood dominance. Head of promotion, she oversees event sales and takes on the difficult task of convincing people to miss out on a big Jimmy’s night out for something new.

Jinky have a team of representatives whose primary job is to repost on their Instagram stories with event promotions. Let’s be honest, this is more annoying than persuasive (cough, cough, every events company to ever grace Durham).

However, Jinky takes a different approach. Instead of forcing publicity, Jinky aims to grow organically, with reps genuinely enjoying the events and sharing content because they want to, not because they have to. Each rep was called one on one at Jinky’s set up, to explain the vision and get them on board.

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Suggesting how Jinky might be able to compete with other local event companies and make an impact, Deeg told The Tab: “We aim to create an ethereal vibe — a unique experience where people are fully immersed in the music, rather than just another copy-and-paste night out.”

Jinky’s focus is on its music, bringing more electronic, house, UK garage, and disco into Durham’s otherwise monotonous and formulaic nightlife scene.

I don’t think it would be a stretch to say most of us drink a little too much to compensate for Durham’s predictable music scene – blacking out in Babylon is a shared, and sadly, common experience. But at events like Rotate and Jinky Sounds, you don’t need to splurge and get blackout. In Deeg’s own words, “good music and good mates are enough”.

Deeg emphasizes this from his own unique perspective: he’s been sober for a year, having to endure Angel by Robbie Williams closing out every night and dancing to bizarre remixes of Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo.

When asked about the biggest challenge of starting his own music events company, Deeg pointed to what he calls the Durham Default Bias.

He describes it as the all-too-accurate phenomenon of students sticking to the same weekly routine — Loft Monday, Babs/Rotate Wednesday, and Katie O’Brien’s Friday — simply because that’s what their friends are doing, and it’s what they are familiar with.

His challenge? Convincing people to try something new, knowing they’ll love it once they’re there, rather than defaulting to the same old spots.

Jinky Sounds’ next event is a terrace party at The Angel on March 12th, featuring Rotate resident DJ’s, such as Laily and Stashton, alongside Tommy King, Paddy Harvey, and many more.

Milly McCarthy | News

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