Sammy Virji Plays for the Masses at Civic Center Park, for the Culture at Club Vinyl in Denver
Evan Dale | September 21, 2025
Alistair McVeigh
London-born DJ, Sammy Virji has exploded from his roots in UK Garage – and musical roots much deeper than that – into a world-renowned name over the past couple years. These days, you’ll see him on the mainstage at festivals and one-of-one events around the globe. One weekend you might see his name on a circuit lineup, and another he’ll be headlining Après at the Amp in Vail Colorado. One night you might catch him in Manchester, and the next you can see him play in Austin, Texas – as is literally his schedule in a couple weeks.
But none of the international success has taken from his dedication to the music itself. What it has done, however, is greatly expanded not only the locales, but also the venues at which he’s playing. That in turn has turned a lot of people on to an eclectic signature style which traverses from those garage roots, deeper into house, techno, and ultimately bass music. For one evening in Denver, he played it all, immersing himself in both the immensity of a big stage outdoor event and the intimacy of a late-night club set – one after another – proving that his artistic dynamism and connection to his roots are still both very much intact.
Civic Center Park lies at the edge of Downtown Denver, sandwiched between a ring of high-rises to the North, museums to the South, and gold-domed government buildings – bisected by Broadway – to the East and West. It’s one of those publicly owned swaths of land designed for a different era, but there are still purposes for it today. When a Colorado professional sports team brings home the championship, Civic Center Park is where the parade empties out into. Denver’s infamous 4/20 festival burns the place down every year. Food trucks, markets, and cultural celebrations park there on certain days during the summertime. And since the shutdown ended, it’s also become somewhat of a cornerstone for live outdoor music, with Virji himself playing a Boiler Room set at the park’s Greek Theater just last year. With all due respect to Colorado’s other well-known outdoor venues, Civic Center Park is also much easier to get to, and to subsequently make a night of it post-show.
Sammy Virji
Such was the case for Sammy Virji. While the late summer sun was still very much shining above Denver, hordes of already stumbling youth shuttled in by party bus and poured into the vast connections of lawns, sidewalks, and porta-potties. A massive stage with massive speakers backdropped by the century-old Civic Center Building was their destination. And first up were supporting sets from Australian producers, Surushinghe and DJ Boring. Their sets bridged the daytime to the night, bridging, too, the wide-ranging kind of stylistic space to build into Virji’s own. Once the sun had officially set, Sammy’s reflected the indefinable breadth of the electronic nuance that could be expected by a talented producer with his musical background – his Dad played brass on Lauryn Hill’s album, he himself is a multi-instrumentalist, and his own canon spans a mosaic of stylistic lanes.
Club Vinyl is a Denver institution. And on the same night that Civic Center Park was alive with the sound of UK Garage, Kevin Saunderson and Mike Dunn – both institutions in their own rights, albeit as trailblazers of the Detroit Techno and Chicago House renaissances, respectively – were spinning their own legendary back-to-back sets, late-night. Thankfully for those with the wherewithal to connect the dots – and not too spun out to still connect a sentence from beginning to end – Club Vinyl is also just down Broadway from Civic Center Park.
There, a line snaked around the block, but a much calmer, more experienced crowd waited patiently to get through the doors. And once through, the vibe was immeasurably different. It’s not to say that one is better than the other, but the latter certainly feels more tethered to the roots of the music. The former felt less tethered to anything at all. And both – before it was all said and done – featured performances from Sammy Virji.
At Vinyl, as Mike Dunn was wrapping up a legendary, pulsating set deep into the night and long after Kevin Saunderson had left the stage following his head-nodding, impossibly danceable performance, Sammy pulled up to the basement stage, pulling together a more classic set in line with the other DJ’s who’d already set the tone. A tight crowd encircled the British producer in the dark basement, as a heartbeat of bass pulsated its way out onto Broadway.
Sammy Virji also just released his new album, Same Day Cleaning. Listen to it below.
