I didn’t get round to rounding March up, as I ended up being busy as hell. So I’ve decided to skip that month entirely and we’re getting stuck into April instead.

Let’s dive in.

Music Recs

So, I ended up picking up what must be the most outrageous vinyl I now own at a flea market here in Berlin the other week. Matterhorn Project’s hit single: MUH! An incredible mix of electronic music and those classic Swiss cowbell sounds, this is 5 euros I’m not getting back. The seller even included “bit of a monster” as on the sticky for the vinyl and boy did he have a point. And whilst you’re here, check out the 1994 re-edit for the club now in 4/4!

Blame The Mono’s Pace Refinery EP is a fast-paced hard groove stormer of an EP with an addictive energy. Stand out track: Skip The Line with its beat-switch halfway through.

I picked up the Tidy Trax TDV 25 compilation the other week with Tony De Vit’s greatest hits on it. AKA the father of hard house, the man’s signature sound is still influencing a lot of hard house tracks to this day. Stand out track: any of them, they’re all great.

Flevans’ Where I Hide is house with a touch of sultry jazz to it. Both one for the dinner date and the day party, I recently rediscovered this when assembling a playlist for a birthday party I DJ’d at a few weeks back.

Finally we have Hedchef and Tom Place’s Exosphere. It’s the one I kick off with in my latest mix and for good reason too, there’s a certain mystery and intrigue to the beginning of the track. You’re not quite sure where it wants to go and then it drops into the first beat and you’re immediately like okay here we go.

Out And About

Boiler Room’s 2026 AI Report

Boiler Room dropped their so-called “AI Report” a few weeks back to seemingly little fanfare. There’s a lot to dive in here and criticise but the most glaringly obvious is the irony of Boiler Room, a company whose success is founded almost entirely on social media and the filming of events, to come out and criticise “the algorithm” and phone addiction.

How Big Tech Co-opted DIY – and how to Fight Back

Darren Hemmings published an interesting thinkpiece on how the tech industry has actively worked to hamper the collectivism that fuels creative spaces and how they try to sell their products as “the only way to break into the music scene” in an attempt to get you addicted to them. There’s a certain importance to word and mouth communities and we should fight to protect them. He says 2026 is going to be a year of reckoning for the music and tech scenes and to be honest I have to agree with him.

Meet the Young Wikipedians Writing the Front Page of Music History

Kieran Press-Reynolds wrote an entertaining article on the world of music in Wikipedia and how even there, it’s not safe from the divisive politics of the real world. One of the big problems Wikipedia faces is the idea of being “too soon” to documenting the goings on of the music scene in that you run the risk of actually creating the genre you’re trying to document.

A (working) framework for bulding collective power in music

Finally, we have Brodie Conley and his idea for a framework to fight back against the growing power of big tech in the scene. Whilst I find some of his 12 points in the framework a little vague at points, it’s nice to see people speak out to try and build collective power into a scene that’s been victim to the aforementioned efforts of big tech to hamper such a motive.

Bonus Content

Moyn finally released the aftermovie to their 2025 edition of the festival. I’m heading there this year and can’t wait to see it in person. The setup reminds me of Sisyphos and Kater here in Berlin and they’re two of my favourite clubs in the city. It’s a shame that this will be the festival’s last year, but I’m glad I will get to see it before it goes.

Shai Space is one of Peckham’s latest spaces and they have been delivering the goods recently. Ruby Savage’s set is one of my favourites of theirs and I highly recommend giving it a listen. With Palais and Jumbi in the area as well, Peckham is really turning into a great place for a night out in the city.

Discogs has started a new video series highlighting collectors and their intriguing tastes in records. I love the new energy that’s being pumped into physical media and seeing more and more coverage of it is filling me with hope that people are starting to value music in a more deliberate way again. Discogs’ first episode is about an American who is really into the uniquely English northern soul sound.

Fantastic Man did a mix for Kalahari Oyster Cult’s Sizeable Mix series and it’s a pleasant housey ride from beginning to end. Lots of saucy IDs in this mix to desperately Shazam from my tinny laptop speakers.

Finally, it’s a self plug, and it’s my latest mix. I decided to up the pace with this and push 150bpm. After facing “heavy criticism” from fellow peers that my typical 120bpm pace is no match for their 140bpm USBs that they brought with them to the Pirate Studios session, I tried to see how I could go even faster.

Until Next Time

I’m still experimenting with what I want this blog to be so I appreciate any and all readers out there tagging along for the ride. One of the things I’m particularly enjoying at the moment is diving into more long form content in a bid to bring my screen time down on social media (looking at you, Instagram), so I’ll try to highlight more of the stuff I’m seeing out and about in the coming months.

Feel like there’s something I can improve on? Feel free to reach out! Comments are always open and socials will be linked below.

Until next time, you two-stepping champions.

From your social media feed, to the corporate messaging apps, to software engineers’ code environments, and even in the Google Doc I’m writing this in; these tools are ubiquitous.

And if you haven’t heard of these tools yet, just log into LinkedIn or Twitter and you’re sure to get bombarded by the stuff. Which is why I’m not going to dive into the world of it at all and focus on one place where I think it a huge waste of time.

Music.

I go into a little bit in some of my recent roundups, but this time I am going to approach it with the same question from the title: what’s the point? It will be a listener’s perspective as I don’t work in the industry, nor does my composition from my school years qualify me as a musician, so I can’t comment on what it’s like within the industry itself. However, I don’t think that difference matters much, and I hope this post will explain why.

The news recently has been a mixed bag: Mozart AI has received funding for its AI generative music tool, Deezer has released an AI generated music detection tool, Sony is culling “deepfake songs” from streaming services, and the British government has backed down from allowing AI companies to be granted copyright to British music. And I feel that the overarching question of WHY we are actually doing this is missing from so much of the coverage.

So, let’s pose the question again: what’s the point?

Gen AI

To start, let’s talk a bit about what generative AI is, and how it works (from a very high level).

I have a degree in data science and studied language models during my time at university so have a relatively educated grasp of how the technology works. I’m not going to dive into the technicalities as there’s enough already online about the nitty gritty of it, but an overview is called for here.

Generative artificial intelligence is a category of machine learning models that produce an output based on the data they have been trained with. By passing an obscene amount of data through these models, they can “learn” a probabilistic model of the data they have been trained with.

“Learning”, in this context, is where the model takes a “token” of the data (say, a word), and builds a map of all the connecting words that precede and follow it and their respective probabilities of how likely that connecting word is to precede or follow it.

For example, you could train a model on all the words in fairy tales. Then, looking at the word “upon”, the words “once” and “a” are going to have relatively high probabilities given that a lot of fairy tales start with “once upon a time”.

With this trained model, you can then give it an input, and it will use the input to then generate a response based on the likelihoods of the words that follow that input.

This is the “generative” part of generative AI. It creates output based on the probabilistic representation it has of the training data it has been supplied with. And these tokens don’t have to be words, and can be made to represent anything like images and sound. The premise is the same.

And before anyone comes for me, this is deliberately an incredibly simple and generalised description of the technology. There’s loads more to this and the models actually generate much more complex probability representations between all the tokens it sees in the training data. The models build probabilistic mappings between words, the sentences they’re in, the paragraphs that follow, and the tone of voice that the word is written in. The mathematics behind these models are genuinely quite impressive.

But for this post, this explanation is as much as I’m going to give as it highlights the main point I want to make with this.

It’s all probability.

There’s no actual “knowledge” in these models (relative to human knowledge), it’s all probabilistic representations of the data that those models have been trained with. And then the outputs are just what is likely to be the answer to the given input. To put it bluntly, it’s a guessing machine.

Which is often why I find the terms machine “learning” and “intelligence” can be a bit of a misnomer for what’s actually going on because it suggests that we can equate what this tech does with human intelligence and learning processes. But I would argue that they’re not the same: would you rather hire a human that “knows” a given speciality or someone that is just really good at “guessing” what someone with the speciality would output?

And with these models being trained on so much content that humans have written, of course it’s going to be very good at emulating what humans would expect to hear given an input a human has given it.

However, with all probabilities, it’s sometimes wrong. And this shows itself in the form of “hallucinations” or where the model predicts an output that is not what was expected. This is most obvious in the infamous pictures of people with more than five fingers.

It all reminds me of the Chinese room thought experiment. Say you’re a non-Chinese speaker in a room and you are passed notes in Chinese under the door. You have a computer that tells you, in your native language, step by step instructions on how to answer these notes and what Chinese characters to write down and pass back under the door. Your notes are the perfect answer to the note that you were given initially.

Do you understand Chinese in this experiment or are you just following step by step instructions on what to write given an input?

And now apply this to generative AI, does it actually “understand” what you’re telling it, or does it just use step by step probabilistic sequences to provide an answer that it assumes the user expects?

Pros Of The Tech

I wouldn’t be surprised if you would assume, following the description, that this technology has few general use cases. However, it most definitely does. Most notably in the world of technology itself.

Lots of tools (like Claude Code and Github Copilot) are trained on huge amounts of code data. Github especially trained its models controversially on all the code that has been stored on its site without getting permission from the codes’ uploaders. So these models have built vast and detailed probabilistic representations of code, their contexts, and their engineering patterns.

This can then be used to generate code that is likely to follow a given input and that’s quite useful as an engineer, as writing software tends to follow common implementation patterns so it was already highly likely that you were going to write that anyway.

This has been a huge development for the software engineering industry as it means that engineers can write code much faster than they could already. Of course, there’s the question of hallucinations, and so care must be taken to ensure the output code is actually what is required. But I often use these tools in my day to day to sketch out proof of concept ideas much faster than I would have previously needed to as I can trust that the models have seen enough proof of concepts of similar types in its training data that it can more reliably output a proof of concept that would suit my specific use case.

And this ability to output a response given a particular use case in a field of common patterns such as software development is really powerful as it means you can save a lot of time letting the computer do work that may have been long and boring before. Like software testing.

Another example of this technology being used well is in the field of software security. These models can take an input of all the code of a given system and can output where the security flaws are likely to be. This gives security researchers a step up in defending systems against attackers as, previously, many of the issues would have had to be found by humans and missing one could result in a successful attack against the system. This could of course be used by attackers as well to the opposite effect and allow them to find similar security holes in systems to exploit. Cybernews on YouTube has an excellent video of this genuinely happening with Anthropic’s Claude model.

So, there’s no surprise that generative AI is mostly built and used by tech people as that’s where these models are most effective.

However, there’s one thing to note about the world of tech and that’s that many people represent the industry by ONLY the output of the people involved. It’s often very tempting to quantify the output of a software engineer by the lines of code that they write. After all, that’s what they’re there for right? Building software. You could naively say one bricklayer is better than another because they’re faster at laying bricks. The same could be said of software engineering, but you would be ignoring so many other factors like infrastructure knowledge, stakeholder familiarity, and codebase quirks, all of which are key to developing good software.

This coupled with how quantifiable other aspects of the tech industry are like number of customers, ad revenue, and profit margins; means that the industry often views itself as the product of individual outputs. And this can then lead those to assume that other industries are similar in that regard and drive tech people to then build generative AI solutions to other industries.

Like music.

Generative AI In The Music Scene

So, where how could you use this technology?

To Listen To

If we were to look at music from a really high level perspective, there are some similarities to the tech industry here.

A musician produces songs, the labels sign musicians with songs, songs are uploaded to streaming platforms, we listen to songs on these platforms, and charts rank the songs. It’s all songs.

So, if this is what the music industry is, then lowering the cost of producing the songs is a no-brainer for anyone looking to maximise the profit made behind songs by having these models produce them. You can cut costs on musicians and the time taken to produce songs and the staff required to maintain a roster of musicians and the recording studios they require.

But is this all that music is?

Because if it was just about songs, why is it that companies are driven to create AI generated profiles of the fake artists behind the songs? Would that not imply that music is MORE than just songs?

Take Xania Monet, for example, an AI generated “musician” created by Telisha “Nikki” Jones. Her top song How Was I Supposed To Know has 13 million streams on Spotify at the time of writing which is an impressive feat for any artist.

But what does it say that, for a tool that focusses so heavily on pure output, that an “artist” was created behind the music to give it a face? Because once you create a “person” behind the music, then you could argue that it’s now no longer about the songs and more about the person behind it. And their music is the way to emotionally connect with them.

But there’s no one to connect with.

So, you could only imagine that the listener, eventually, will want to connect to the person behind the music. But when there’s no one there, then who are they going to connect with? Because isn’t that what art is, connection via a creative medium? I remember when I first heard Lose You To Love Me by Bombay Bicycle Club at Lost Village 2021 and, to this day, it’s a very personal connection I have with the artists. Would it have been the same love for the song had there been no one there to connect with? Probably not.

The other side of this, is the concerning rise of right-wing AI generated accounts that have started popping up, some affiliated directly with political parties. It adds this other layer of discomfort to this technology that the only people that seem to be using it for music are those with seemingly deliberately malicious intent.

And this begs the question, what if all the streams that these artists are getting now are only short term hype because of the novelty of such technology? Once the technology becomes “yet another thing that tech can do” and the media hype cycle ends, won’t people get bored of this lack of connection and move back to human made music? This is a familiar cycle we all witnessed with NFTs and the metaverse (which Meta is shutting down permanently soon), so what if AI generated music for human listening is just a short term fad?

Well I imagine it wouldn’t be if the music was genuinely something that people enjoyed listening to. Let’s take this Xania Monet again and give her (its?) top track another listen to.

Well, it sounds like shit.

The vocals don’t sound real, the piano riff is weirdly crunchy, the melody is nothing novel, and even the “artist” itself looks weirdly wrong. It doesn’t feel right. The uncanny valley of music.

Drew Meadows is another such “artist” and it’s even more obvious on his Spotify profile and his songs also sound like shit.

And here’s another demo I found on Twitter about an open-source model that can generate music. It also sounds like shit. The individual stems lack any kind of personality, the melody is generic, the timbre sounds artificial, and none of it really seems to gel together.

Go on and give the Suno AI homepage a browser and try out the demos on there. None of them sound particularly good, it’s all generic nonsense with voices that sound off. And if you ask me, this is all kind of expected with how the models are built with the aggregated amalgamation of all its training data. It will ONLY ever produce generic outputs, as its internal probabilities are only ever going to tend toward the absolute average. And average in music is generic.

So, what’s the point?

To Parody

“Parody!” you may hear someone say at this point. As previously stated, the models are good at taking an expected output and factoring in a given context that’s provided. This can be used to a relatively comedic effect of inserting more interesting vocals into songs.

The AI Homer Soulseek flood of 2026 is a good example of this, where the file sharing platform Soulseek was somehow flooded by a single user uploading thousands upon thousands of tracks that had an AI generated Homer from the Simpsons voice instead of the original vocalist. You can picture the user now, desperately searching for that one track they really want only to find out it has Homer’s voice instead. I can’t lie, I find that pretty funny.

For all of about a minute.

Then reality sinks in, and the user keeps searching, only to find more and more Homer AI vocals on the tracks that they want to find and this inevitably becomes this frustrating rage inducing loop of the user losing trust in the discovered songs. So the original parody is lost in a sea of anger as you start to understand that your search has gotten that much harder because any given user can flood the entire system with essentially garbage all at the click of a button.

Gabi Belle, in her aforementioned overview of AI generated music, touches on this topic and makes a very good point: the whole idea of parody is now boring if you can do it at the click of a button. The entire point is to learn music, the instruments, the theory and then apply a given nuance in such a creative way that it becomes entertaining. Weird Al Yankovic is one of the legends of parody, and rightly so, because he uses music and lyrics in such a way that has me still singing “my bologna” whenever The Knack comes on.

The absolute pinnacle of modern musical parody, if you ask me, is the melodica cover of the Jurassic Park theme that caused such a storm when it came out 14 years ago and is still quoted in memes today. Its vague backstory has you questioning whether it was intended to be an earnest performance and that adds a comedic layer to the performance that is missed when there’s no effort required in making it. A click of a button is inherently flippant.

To Have On In The Background

The final use case of which I can conceivably imagine is the world of royalty free background music. Because there’s no “human” involved, then it could be argued that there’s no copyright on the music so can be used royalty free in monetisable content.

But is it truly royalty free?

These models need to be trained on real, human-made music and will definitely have some form of copyright required to do so. You are profiteering off of the backs of unpaid musicians by training these models so you must have some form of copyright to do so. The lawsuits are still ongoing and are likely for a while due to how different the scenario now is with this technology, but there is 100% going to be some form of legal requirement for copyright to even train these models. So it’s not technically royalty free then.

And then, this completely ignores the fact that royalty free music already exists! Any avid YouTube binger like myself is more than familiar with Kevin Macleod, whose royalty free tunes soundtracked so much of the platform’s early days and is still used in videos to this day. And he’s just one of many artists out there who are happy to give it away for free. If this music is destined to be used in the background of the true content you want to monetise, why would you use legally questionable AI generated music that sounds like shit?

So, please tell me, where is the use case?

The Reception

It’s getting increasingly obvious that many online are getting tired of the content.

The top comment of Belle’s video is someone lamenting about the extra effort required nowadays to check whether something they see or hear online is AI generated and many other comments tend to agree. Jacksfilms also demonstrates the experience of discovering that something online is AI generated and it’s not a positive one. Logging into Twitter is the same, and my feed is aflame with people dunking on the “clanker brained gooning over AI slop”.

And because it’s so easy to produce, it’s getting exhausting to have to check because any content anywhere nowadays can be AI generated. It adds yet another frustration to the growing enshittification of social media because, what was once a fun way of sharing interesting content with your connections online, is now just a slog of having to check whether something you see is AI generated or not and the eventual disappointment when you realise it is.

Social media (despite its flaws) is arguably one of the most incredible products of the tech industry from the past decade and a half that allows people to connect with each other across the world and is something I rely on to remain in touch with many of my friends from home. So, it could be argued that this content flooding our feeds is the cannibalisation of the product by the tech industry by making normal people less interested in using it. They’re digging their own grave.

And this is being reflected in business, many businesses have started hiring for “storytellers” to differentiate themselves from the slop by having a human write text that doesn’t sound like AI generated output (how this differs from a good copywriter I don’t know).

In music too, Bandcamp has outright banned AI generated content, and Deezer has released this AI generated music detection tool to help others identify the slop. It’s clear that both companies see this as what the market desires and view the tech as threats to their business models.

Spotify, in its journey to ruin its reputation further, has yet to follow down this path, especially after the controversies surrounding their “curated” playlists for background listening that are claimed to be filled with AI generated trash.

Outside of the music scene, others are beginning to also call out the bullshit that these AI companies are pushing like the recent Delve controversy about them falsely issuing out compliancy certifications which, for other such nerds like me, is a HUGE issue for which the law can fuck you up. We’re talking about healthcare compliancy and the necessary privacy implementations to ensure that confidential patient data is kept safe and secure. Serious stuff!

Back to the music though, is there anyone that actually listens to AI generated music?

Well, apparently a lead investor in Suno AI does:

What does it say about a business when their best customer is themself?

That’s like paying yourself to clean your own house and claim you made money, it’s not how business works. And the sheer audacity to proudly announce that you don’t value music beyond anything that doesn’t suit your immediate need is a remarkably shallow view of art as a concept. That’s openly admitting that you never want to feel challenged by a creative medium. Viewing music as something that only serves you.

It’s so divorced from the dreams of anyone creative.

The Big Picture

You can’t ignore the pretentiousness of hating on it all though. To claim that I know better than so many people building and using this technology is a bold stance to take.

After all, I used to feel such marvel at this technology when I was doing my data science degree, what’s to stop others in dreaming of a better world with it. I remember working on this translation model that we were using in groups to translate English to Japanese and back to English again. I thought it was crazy that these boxes of silicon could do that.

But I began to feel justified in my belief when I started learning about the actual business of generative AI and the finances behind it. If you’re anyone who has been following any sort of tech news in these past few years, you would know of what I talk about when I mention the AI Bubble.

The circular financing deals that power this monster of an industry. How Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and all the data center companies are all pumping money into each other to raise the stock price and drive more money into the industry.

We all know it’s rotting, and we all know something bad is going to happen out of the other end of it. We’ve seen it before in the mayhem that has been the last 20 years of on-and-off financial crises that are decimating the financial future of younger generations. Ed Zitron covers the industry in detail and goes through the financials with such a fine toothed comb to lay bare just how bad some of these deals can be.

For one, Nvidia, the giant behind most of this boom, has begun financing companies on the condition that they buy Nvidia tech which smells an awful lot like what Enron did back in the day with its creative accounting tricks. But don’t worry, guys, they’re not Enron!

The industry in general feels like they’re pushing this tech as the future, whilst ignoring any evidence to the contrary for the present. They’re not taking stock of what people want right now.

The tech world has basically been spending A LOT of money to build kinda useful things over the past 20 years. Almost unnecessarily, as the solutions they’ve delivered are comparably small considering the cost. Take ride hailing apps, for example. At the end of the day, they’re just allowing people to request a ride from a person in a car remotely. As much as there can be some complexities to the system, the premise is relatively simple. Uber’s total investment totals $13 billion. Does it cost that much to build an app that is physically not much more complex than ringing someone and requesting a ride?

Well, because the output is actually quite useful and the benefits have improved things like pricing, rider safety, and convenience, many see the cost as necessary to reap the rewards.

Wouldn’t the AI companies then be incentivised to really sell the potential future of this tech then instead of trying to deliver desired results today? If tech has always delivered “what was eventually needed”, then doesn’t that excuse companies to pursue more nefarious outcomes because we believe that this industry has never let us down before? Didn’t this happen exactly like this with NFTs and the metaverse?

The way that this tech has delighted the LinkedIn type is only expected. Those that see this tech as costs being saved with innovative solutions you think you have done cleverly because the AI has had you believe that you were being oh so clever about it. These AI tools are inherently designed to be positive to you, as that means you’re more likely to be drawn to it as it feels more like a friend due its friendly human output.

Weights can be adjusted in this tech, and you can manipulate the mathematics to result in a more positive output that pleases whoever is using it. And this, in turn, improves the likelihood you’re going to talk about its benefits to others. Because it never questions your belief system. You don’t need to go far to start hearing the stories of those being driven to do dangerous acts due involvement with generative AI.

There’s such a cost of this technology to society, and I am struggling to see the long term net benefits. On top of the horror of the aforementioned self harm, there’s the environmental cost of data centers, the aforementioned poisoning of global financial systems, and the promised unemployment crisis of replaced jobs (which is somehow sold as a good thing). People have started even outsourcing their thinking to this technology with many online joking about how they can’t live without the tech any more. And we’re meant to be excited by this?

As a tech worker myself, it’s definitely made my job faster though. Sometimes overwhelmingly so. But it’s definitely improved my productivity. Even if it has dimmed the pride I so often feel when completing a well done job as it’s not really all due to me now any more, is it?

Finishing Off

Where were we again? Oh yeah, music.

It’s true that it’s tempting to see music solely through the output of musicians and ignore the infrastructure encompassing them like the music schools, instruments, online communities, and the venues like concert halls and clubs. Without the armada of workers running labels, managing artists, promoting events, and managing venues. And all of their staff in the background. It’s tempting to only see the scene through the songs themselves.

And if you do, then you would believe that generative AI is exactly what we need.

But it doesn’t seem like that’s the case at all. So, why are we doing this?

What’s the point?

I’m going to end this on a gorgeous quote by Kate Anderson from Aardman, the Bristol based animation studio. In their latest video with the Wall Street Journal, Anderson ends the video with the following:

“It’s all about the soul, the human input. And I really don’t understand why you would want to, kind of, have a machine to do that”

Which, on paper, sounds idyllic, until you realise that the city doesn’t actually salt or grit the pavements and simply walking to the shop is akin to going ice skating with all of the danger, and none of the fun.

Anyways, I thought I would try starting out with the music this week. Hope you enjoy!

Music Recs

When I first came across this 14 minute long house track, I wondered how on earth you could keep it interesting for that long. But Snad has done it with Dispo on his latest EP on Smallville Records. Fourteen minutes of dreamy bliss, it’s a wonderful track to put on in the background when doing something relaxing.

Keeping with the relaxed mood, we have Kloyds’s New Love EP. This popped up during a Spotify radio binge of Tourist, and I fell immediately in love with Kloyd’s beautiful use of chord progressions and trills that remind me heavily of Bonobo and Four Tet. Stand out track is Nothing Could’ve Made Me feat. Winifred.

With a serious change in pace, we have Pondi Map’s Lowblow up next. A wild 150bpm rager of a track, I’m addicted to the energy in its powerful buildup.

Anish Kumar has new music out this month with his AK Cuts: Vol 2 EP that’s filled with housey rollers. Kumar has gone from strength to strength in recent years and this EP really shows off what he’s capable of. From heavy stompers like Occam’s Razor, to the south-Asian inspired more disco-y groovers The Hearts Wants a Heart, the man has a skill and he’s not afraid to show it.

And finally, we have Mark Farina’s Greenhouse Construction continuous mix, which has slowly become one of my all time favourite mixes. Fun and energetic, I love putting it on when cooking or having people round.

Out And About

Generative AI (Again)

I’ve been seeing a lot of noise about generative AI in music this month and I don’t quite know how it makes me feel.

Deezer has announced that it is demonitizing AI generated music on its platform, another huge win for the industry. They claim that they are “the first (and so far only) music streaming platform to explicitly tag AI-generated music” and the “the majority of AI-music is uploaded to Deezer with the purpose of committing fraud”. They also used this post to announce the release of their latest AI-generated music detection tool and offer it up to partners.

This follows the Bandcamp annoucement from the previous month and demonstrates an incredibly negative reception to the development of the generative AI boom getting involved in the music industry. For a company to go out and claim that AI-music is primarily used for fraudulent reasons is a brave statement to make and clashes with what seems to be keen investor interest in the scene. And publicly release a tool to combat the production of more of this music.

London’s Mozart AI has closed a $6 million investment round in the past month. The company claims to be “the AI music creation studio built for your inner artist” and features functionality like MIDI sequencing and synthesiser creation. And whilst $6 million investment is peanuts compared to the billions that OpenAI seems to require to survive, it’s still a remarkably positive sign from investors that this is the next big thing.

An aside, I find the following from Mozart AI’s CEO Sundar Arvind’s rather interesting: “We’re building a world where a spark of creativity […] can be transformed into a fully produced, monetisable song”

There is a certain irony in his choice of words, what with musicians struggling to earn money from their music on streaming platforms.

What is it, exactly, that he is trying to imply with his statement on Mozart AI? That a musician’s worth is based on their monetisable output, or is it that the quantity of output is what’s holding back musicians from earning more?

But all this investor hype is at seemingly complete odds with what people actually want from the music industry, Gabi Belle’s deep dive on AI in the music scene really questions what is actually being created by these tech companies and Belle makes a point to criticise the soullessness of the music actually being produced with its complete lack of human connection.

All of this leaves with me with this uncomfortable feeling that has me questioning: what is all of this for?

One thing I will say is that the recent news of AI-music flooding Soulseek that mimics real tracks only with vocals replaced with an AI generated Homer voice is actually quite funny.

Steel City Dance Discs at Berghain

Last Friday, I hit up Berghain again with a few friends to catch the Steel City Dance Discs (SCDD) night at the fabled Panorama Bar. This was my third time in the infamous club and it was an absolute blast. The standout set was Ma Sha’s with its furious energy and pumping beats.

Sadly, though, I felt that the two iconic German hearthrobs, DJ Heartstring, fell a bit flat. Having seen them only a few months previously at Haus der Visionäre also in Berlin, it felt like there was little difference between the sets. Two of my friends agreed agreed and said it felt quite generic.

Is this hard house revival finally losing steam? I still remember Marlon Hoffstadt’s It’s That Time exploding onto the scene and being played everywhere. I was obsessed with it.

@groovesbygustedand I’m still eating it up every time #rave #hardhouse #hardgroove #dj

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

And then you see content like the above by GrooveByGusted, and you really start to wonder, is this all just a trend? I’ve started going off a lot of the hard house / eurotrance (whatever you call it) coming out in more recent months, because I find that it’s all started to sound the same.

Which is a shame, as I quite like the genre. Maybe it just needs another Tony De Vit to really shake things up.

Bonus Content

Go ahead and call me a performative male if you want because I love Geese. Since coming across their latest album, Getting Killed, on NTS last year (performative) I have been binging them all year, picked up a copy on vinyl (performative), and gave their latest Tiny Desk Concert a listen (performative). So, if you like their sound as much as I do, I’d check this out as it’s a lot of fun. And for those asking (probably no one), Taxes is my favourite track from the album.

I picked up tickets to Dekmantel again this year (can’t wait to go back), and I’ve started my research into who’s playing. Started with Ellen Allien and Dr Rubintein’s b2b mix from Whole Festival 2025 and its energy was a real boost in the gym.

My YouTube recommendations have been getting better and better over the past couple of months, and this little gem popped up talking about the Hoover sound which should be no stranger to anyone who’s into electronic music. A fascinating dive into history, I’ve been getting more and more synthesiser recommendations recently and I’m started to worry that my bank account isn’t ready for the inevitable modular synthesis addiction that’s brewing.

And finally, I’ve had the pleasure of coming across Logan Daniel McDonald on YouTube in recent weeks and he uploads these gorgeous, ambient soundscapes that I’ve been whacking on whilst at work. They’re absolute delights and I highly recommend checking them out. McDonald’s latest is a live recording from a park!

Until Next Time

I was out a fair bit since being back in Berlin and I’ve ticked off most of the major clubs now in the city, so I may start dipping into talking about them in a bit more detail soon. Including Berghain. There’s a real difference in the clubbing life between my hometown of London and Berlin and it’s tough to compare them like for like. Both have their upsides and downsides.

But until then, enjoy the music, and I’ll be seeing you soon.

I was inspired to take the break after meeting another Berlin resident at Stone Techno in July who told me that I needed “an exit strategy” for Berlin winter. And coming back has me realising he made an incredibly good point. This is a grey city and the cold and dark does not make it a more inviting place to be.

However, still got a few exciting bits and pieces to talk about. Enjoy!

Out And About

Bandcamp has announced that it’s banning AI produced content on its platform in the past month. The content they are referring to is either: “Music and audio that is generated wholly or in substantial part by AI”, or “any use of AI tools to impersonate other artists or styles”.

This is a huge win for the music community.

From the deplorable AI produced “We Are Charlie Kirk” right-wing slop to the scarily accurate outputs from Suno AI, the world of generative AI in music has been progressively getting more depressing. It’s gotten so bad that I find that I’ve had to research songs that I like to double check that they’re not produced, at least in part, by some generative AI model. This lack of trust doesn’t make finding new music any easier and the gall of the people who use these generative AI “tooling” to classify themselves as musicians is frankly offensive to artists and listeners alike.

And nothing compares to that feeling when you discover that something has been genuinely produced by AI. Crestfallen doesn’t even begin to describe it. It is not a good feeling. Jacksfilms does a good job of explaining what this is like.

Bandcamp, however, seems to be making movements in the right direction. And this is the second time in recent years that the company has done something positive after it announced it would continue the Bandcamp Friday initiative it started during Covid to continue supporting artists. In August of last year, it announced that it generated $3.5 million in one day for artists on its platform.

This is all in despite of the drama following its back to back sales, first to Epic Games, and then to Songtradr. Both of which, raised eyebrows in the music community. Firstly, what was Epic Games, a gaming company, doing buying a music company? And secondly, Songtradr proceeded to layoff a number of the Bandcamp workforce in the sale with a large percentage of the Bandcamp workers’ union: Bandcamp United, being removed in the process. Both parent companies didn’t seem to have the best interests of Bandcamp in mind.

Unfortunately, even though it has seemingly no positive effect on the music community, this generative AI story doesn’t seem to be ending any time soon. In fact, it seems like companies are trying harder and harder to get people into using these models. Recently, in the span of a week, I received three emails from Google trying to get me to start using Google Gemini. For a tech that I’ve heard being described as “the future”, it seems like they’re putting in a lot of effort to get people to even use the tech in the first place.

So this begs the question, what is all of this for? This tech is clearly causing issues in the music community and it seems like these tech companies are desperate for more people to use it. So what’s the point? Communities don’t want its output, and people aren’t giving it input.

This is why it’s so refreshing to have companies like Bandcamp stand up and say no.

Now just to wait for the rest of the companies to do the same.

Music Recs

Came across this jaunty little number from Camoufly this past week. It has this infectious bounce that I can’t get enough of. The rest of the album is also worth a listen but this is my favourite.

I’ve started getting more and more into radio lately, and I tuned into Nadia Wise and Laurel’s breakfast show on Refuge Worldwide the other day, on which, they played this saucy beat from Gombeen & Doygen. A sultry groove.

The Myd remix of At The Party by DRIFT is an punchy, acidy, housey track with an undeniable energy. The break may be a little rogue, but I quite dig it to be honest.

I love Elkka, the woman never misses, and her latest release is a favourite of mine already. Bouncy, happy, energetic, what’s not to love.

Bonus Content

My friend Pearl has started her own radio show and her debut episode aired this week gone. Get Ready With Me Radio “captures the essence of girlhood” and “emphasises what makes it so special to be a woman” with DJs taking the helm whilst the group get ready for a night out in the background. This first episode is great fun, and I love the idea of mixing a DJ set into the girls getting ready for the night ahead.

With some of the boys I’ve been on nights out with, I can’t imagine a straight men’s version of this would last longer than about 5 minutes.

Another friend of mine, Mbarr, has also released his debut mix on Soundcloud. With a cracking track selection, it’s a good one to put on to get the energy going.

Until Next Time

The chaos of the winter break is past, and we’re slowly climbing our way out of the dark hole of the year that is January. Winter, however, is the best time of year to go clubbing if you ask me, so there’s big things ahead.

See you on the flip side.

A bit of a quick one this month due to the typical familial priorities around this time of year and I’m heading off for a few weeks at the end of the month.

Out And About

Rowan’s could be closing???

The absolute icon of North London nightlife is under threat by yet another flat development. Its neon signs were a welcome sight on my way home from late nights in the city when I lived in the area. And coming in as a mix of a bowling alley + arcade + pool table hall + karaoke rooms + dance floor, it really was a one of a kind night out that catered to everyone and anyone.

And now it’s facing the very London threat of being developed into (probably luxury) flats.

Why are we always facing the same question? Why is it always the nightlife instituions under threat and not the city’s empty office blocks? The ex-Wetherspoons Coronet is just around the corner and that’s a gigantic building, why not turn that into flats instead?

True, there is an argument to be made to clean up the area in front of Rowan’s, the bus station exit of the station, with its open air drug use and relatively high crime statistics for the area. But turning Rowan’s into flats is a small step in that direction here.

It feels like Islington is developing a bit of a reputation with permitting the threatening of nightlife institutions when you factor in the Compton Arms debacle. The pub has been in that location for over 200 years, was visited by the likes of George Orwell, and Islington allowed its license to be threatened due to noise complaints.

What is the end goal here? Vast swathes of luxury flats with no nightlife and pubs that don’t make a noise? Wouldn’t that negatively affect the prices of flats in the area? It’s exhausting having this conversation over and over again.

Music Recs

I’ve been diving into some French labels this month.

DANS LA ZONE’s NECTAR VA VOL. 1 compilation is a saucy collection of tunes from their own label. With housey hitters like Von GDK and Wigs on it, it’s a delicious bop from beginning to end. Stand out track is Tourman - Sigur Interval.

D-Nite’s The Drift Zone on the Toulouse based Cluster Traxx label is a punchy EP with a flying pace to it. Non-stop energy, it’s a fantastic ride. Stand out track: The Drift Zone (Tom Place’s remix is also pretty good).

Staying heavy, we have Harba’s Despair EP and his debut EP is full of twisty techno hitters. It’s nice to have so much choice in the techno field nowadays instead of the stereotypical “boom-boom-boom” and Harba’s EP is exactly the kind of stuff I’m enjoying right now. Stand out track: Waggle.

Coming back to the house we all know I’m a sucker for, we have Maruwa’s remix of Paranoia Agents by Aniano and Rub Db on Home Again’s label. Home Again is a Berlin day festival based in the east of the city in the titanic RSO club. Only having discovered its label recently, I was pleased to see it also delivered a similar quality to that of the festival.

Finally, we have the Hardfloor remix of Zack Meads’ In Awe. I’ve had people ask me what a “roller” is before, and this is exactly what I would define it as. Imagine it’s 4am, the casuals have gone home, the dance floor is full of energy, and the DJ whips this out. You can’t help but dance.

Bonus Content

Dived into this depressing tale of the rapid monopolisation of the ticketing industry this month. And yes, it’s about Ticketmaster and Live Nation, two companies I’ve yet to hear anything positive about in recent years. Ticketmaster being the company that saw heavy regulation following the chaos of the Oasis ticket drop.

I went on a bit of a D-Nite deep dive this month and unearthed this saucy mix from the man. It’s a real ride from beginning to end and accompanied my jog the other day perfectly. Don’t let the start fool you, it really picks up.

Until Next Time

January is likely to also be a short one, as I’m away for most of it. But I will see if there’s anything interesting I hear on my travels.

See you on the flip side.

In a blog post from the other day, Renate announced that they’re not closing down and, instead, have reached “an agreement” with the landlord to continue on as a club.

The post is in German, and I know most people reading this may struggle to understand it themselves, so whack it into your favourite online translator to understand more.

And I recommend you do, because something feels off about this announcement to me.

If you were to read the Mixmag coverage of this reopening, you would imagine that the club and the landlord reached a pleasant agreement in which the club was offered the privilege to continue on as a club and everyone goes home happy. However, if you read the (translated) blogpost from Renate themselves, a very different story is told in which Renate are profusely apologising for their hurried “publicised statement that had not been sufficiently agreed on internally” [1], this is in reference to their original closing announcement (blog version no longer available online).

They go on to “retract their public statement and apologise to the landlord” [2] because of how “overly pointed” the statement was, how it “omitted important aspects of the ongoing discussions” [3] and how it “resulted in personal attacks” [4] against the landlord.

In their defence, they talk about how it was published in a “highly emotionally charged situation” [5] and that, now, “misunderstandings were clarified and the foundations for a new collaboration were laid […] accompanied by the establishment of a new operating company and a structural realignment of the club” [6]. They will also still close after their marathon 86 hour NYE party and won’t take bookings in the new year, but they will “regroup after […] and carefully plan [their] next steps” [7].

All in all, this is excellent news for the city, with its growing Clubsterben issue.

But, something is off about all of this.

When you compare the translation to their Instagram post announcement below:

It’s immediately clear that they’re saying different things. On Instagram, it seems as if it’s all happy days and that Renate and the landlord came to the aforementioned pleasant agreement. But then their blogpost on their website talks of how the landlord was personally threatened as a result of the initial closing announcement and Renate apologise as they feel partly to blame for that.

Why the difference in announcement?

What actually happened? Why does this blog post smell like legal speak?

Well, to start, let’s take a moment to talk about this mysterious landlord.

Gijora Padovicz is his name, and he’s developed such a name as a real estate investor in Berlin that an entire website has been dedicated to tracking his investments. According to the Padovicz WatchBlog, he’s been “working since the 90s as a buyer and a renovator of entire blocks of flats - above all in the Friedrichshain neighborhood”. They claim that he’s “closely connected to the Berlin Senate” and that he “was granted half of all the subsidies for the renovation of old buildings [in Berlin].”

For context, after the wall came down, Berlin offered loans to investors to rebuild the city as vast swathes of it were uninhabitable. The city still does this to this day as the city is facing a housing crisis.

However, where Padovicz makes a name for himself, is how he renovates with the alleged intention to replace the tenants with “more lucrative clients” and sometimes even refugee families. TAZ, the source for that last statement, is a prominent left-wing newspaper in Germany and also tracks Padovicz’s investments in the city.

The WatchBlog says that the man is a “destroyer of living spaces” by employing “rent increases, destruction of social structures and ultimately displacement” to “upgrade the inner city” with the subsidies earned by the renovation program. One of Padovicz’s latest developments is when his company cleared out a queer feminist squat on Liebigstraße 34 in Friedrichshain as reported by ND Aktuell, who also run a profile on Padovicz and his investments on their website. Squats are also widely regarded as a key aspect of Berlin culture and squat evictions are so controversial that a 2 day war broke out between the authorities and squatters in 1990.

To get an idea of how much of an influence this man’s investments have had on Friedrichshain, one of the areas at the forefront of the city’s gentrification conversation, the WatchBlog displays a handy map of the city with properties marked as owned by his companies. His collection is vast.

This man is well-known, and not entirely for positive reasons. And his prolific involvements in the city’s rental market raises some questions with what’s going on with Renate.

After all, this was the man in charge of the company that shut down Watergate, Berlin’s clubbing loss in 2024.

This is the second time one of his clubbing properties have been involved in closure controversies and it leaves me with the burning question: what’s actually going on?

What are the details of this latest agreement? Why does the blog post announcement feel like legal speak? Was Renate offered the opportunity to stay open given the requirement that they publicly apologise to Padovicz’s company after genuine personal attacks? What happened between Padovicz’s company and the Renate team? Was the club ever meant to close? Why is this only being announced now, so long after the original closure announcement? Were Renate just making it out as if they were going to close? Was it for publicity? Why do the announcements differ, especially in the different German and English languages? Is it to make Renate look better in the English version to the inevitable international attention that comes with said publicity? Does this have anything to do with the controversial A100 motorway expansion that threatens the existence of the club? Are the closures only happening so the land can be sold to the state at the increased cost of the land due to the gentrification?

Or is something greater at play, seeing as Watergate closed almost a year ago, yet still stands empty and adorned with the club logos today?

Something just doesn’t sit right with this latest announcement. I feel like we’re not being told the full story here and I am left with more questions than answers.

At the end of the day though, I am pleased with the announcement. The city’s nightlife could do with some good news and Renate staying around a little longer is very good news if you ask me. I’ve been three times now and I find it to be a very solid night out in the city. The crowd can be a bit hit and miss, but the club space, energy, and music have all been exceedingly good. It’s an old housing block just by the Elsen Bridge in the east of the city, and most of the old accommodation aspects have been kept on to inspire the club. It feels like a house party, with small and intimate rooms, and staircases between the dancefloors. Nooks and crannies galore, it’s great fun to explore the little secrets the club has.

If you do find yourself in Berlin and fancy a night out, you wouldn’t go amiss with choosing Renate.

[1]: “die Erklärung in der veröffentlichten Form nicht ausreichend intern abgestimmt war”

[2]: “Wir nehmen diese Erklärung in der veröffentlichten Form daher zurück und entschuldigen uns bei dem Eigentümer des Grundstücks”

[3]: “Sie war inhaltlich zugespitzt [und] ließ wichtige Gesprächsdynamiken aus”

[4]: “in deren Folge es auch zu persönlichen Anfeindungen kam”

[5]: “wurde aus einer emotional sehr aufgeladenen Situation heraus getroffen”

[6]: “Dabei wurden Missverständnisse geklärt und die Grundlagen für eine neue Zusammenarbeit geschaffen. In der Folge konnte eine Einigung über die Verlängerung des Mietvertrags erzielt werden, begleitet von der Gründung einer neuen Betreibergesellschaft und einer strukturellen Neuausrichtung des Clubs.”

[7]: “müssen wir uns nach Silvester zunächst sammeln und unsere weiteren Schritte sorgfältig planen”

The lack of daylight also makes this time of year one of the best to go out. Beating off the winter blues by sweating it out in a dark room with pounding basslines and light shows to allow you to forget that you haven’t seen the sun in a week.

If you think about it, we’re essentially plants that have to pay taxes.

Anyways, onto the music.

Out And About

Performative Audio

The Prodigy’s Liam Howlett talked to Mixmag about their new era of music following the death of their original front man Keith Flint and he made a note to share his dismay with the relationship between the electronic music scene and social media: “Social media is turning dance music into fast food”.

There’s an unavoidable truth to this with artists opening up about how exhaustingly content focussed their hobbies have become just to try and get reach. In fact, it’s gotten so important in artists’ careers, that entire marketing agencies exist just to service their growing social media need.

And as much as it easy to lament about how “social media is ruining things”, I can’t deny that I find out about tours and nights out on social media long before I hear about them anywhere else. It’s almost vital to staying on top of what’s going on and where for all the artists, collectives, clubs, and festivals that you follow. Artists need to be on social media to exist, and we (as fans) need to be on social media to follow what’s going on.

Yet, we all hate it here. And it’s only getting worse with enshittification.

Instagram accounts have now started mocking the desperate attempts of some artists to grow their audiences in the manic and tragic stunts that they post of themselves. The satirist Marco Cariola on Instagram will often post roundups of “cringe moments” highlighting the performative nature of the scene:

The esteemed Kiwi duo Chaos in the CBD also post such roundups from time to time, and the eclectic array of content artists can stretch to some wild performances.

And all of this for an industry whose primary output is audio, and not video.

It really does ask the question, what on earth are we doing here?

Klubsterben

The Germans have a term for the ongoing slow decline of clubbing institutions around the world: Klubsterben. It directly translates to “the death of clubs” and is a little too touch on the nose for the current scene.

And speaking of dying venues, the Berlin club Renate has announced its marathon 86 hour long closing party at the end of the year with names such as Ben Sims, Amy Dabbs, and Lewis Fautzi on the lineup.

I’ve been twice to the 18 year old club this year and it’s a real shame to see it go. The crowd can be a bit hit-and-miss with my first visit having a great energy, and my second being mostly large groups of men and tourists. However, I love the house party feeling to the place with its many small rooms and nooks and crannies you can explore.

The place also champions putting on small acts and resident DJs which is a welcome sight to see in aforementioned race-to-the-top social media frenzy of today. When I lived in London, the club night was often decided based on lineup, whereas with Renate, I go for the club instead of who’s playing and learn a few new names in the process. Amy Dabbs is a fantastic DJ I discovered through going there.

We need more places like Renate. Where you go for the club and find new artists through it. Bring back resident DJs and going for the sake of a night out instead of just following names.

Yet Another Superclub

London’s getting yet another large venue: Arc, and it’s in Olympia of all places which is previously only really known for being a conference venue. I’ve been there for that very purpose and, despite it being a beautiful building, it’s a relatively run of the mill large space with a surprising lack of good transport connections nearby aside from the Mildmay and District Lines.

It’s also slap-bang in the middle of a boujee bit of town with house prices being, on average, above £2 million. So, lord knows what the noise complaints are going to be like.

I can’t help but think that the city doesn’t really need any more of these venue types. There’s a whole host of these large places available but all the new developments still seem to be on yet more large and vapid places.

The comments for Mixmag’s respective Instagram post are in agreement, with many calling for more small cap or 300-800 person venues.

There’s just this constant race to the top at the moment in terms of everything in the scene. Venues need to be as biggest ever, artists need the largest following, music needs to be streamed the most, even vinyls need the most amount of pressings possible.

It just feels like there’s this prevalent, exhausting belief that “bigger is always better” but I just don’t think it’s what people are really calling for any more. I would love to see a new drive into having more venues instead of big ones, varied lineups instead of just big names that are guaranteed to sell out, interesting records to be released instead of just your generic-big-name-pop-star.

Just something new, and fun, and interesting.

Music Recs

I’ve gone a bit heavier this week and we’re starting off with Samaran’s latest release: Moscow Madness. A certified roller of a track, this is a heavier continuation of his <Insert City> Madness series to which the beloved Paris Madness belongs.

Getting even heavier now, we have 10010’s BREAKIE EP and my favourite track from it: BREAKIE BOYS ft. MONVCO. A full throttle breakbeat journey, it’d be a great mid set twister.

Stepping up the pace yet again, we have SPFDJ’s debut album Heel Thyself on her record label Intrepid Skin. My track of choice from the EP is The Hot In Psychotic and it’s unstoppable energy. She was a last minute choice for us at Dekmantel in 2024 and very quickly became our favourite set of the weekend.

You are unlikely to be surprised when I say this, but I’m a huge fan of NTS, and ddwy were a guest on Flo Dill’s NTS Breakfast Show a few weeks back. They did a live, more ambient set on the show itself but made a note to say that their latest EP Beaming Backwards has got some more energy to it so of course I snapped up a vinyl of it. The album titled track is my standout with its dreamy energy.

I’ve been waiting for this one for a while, but the British duo Franc Moody have finally released their latest album: Chewing The Fat. The whole thing is a groovy delight and my standout track has to be Good To Go. This is one for fans of Barry Can’t Swim and Anish Kumar.

The other week I found myself in Munich, and I thought I would get out of work early to hit up a shop I’ve developed a real interest in: Public Possession. Record label, fashion, interior design, and cycling equipment all rolled into one, the entire store oozes style (even if the physical location is surprisingly bare inside). Whilst there, I picked up Eden Burns’ latest album And The Make Believers, and I think it’s one of the first times where I preferred the B side over the A, with my standout track being Slow Thing.

Last but not least, my Headache record turned up this month. Anyone familiar with me knows full well just how much of a grip Vegyn’s alter moniker has on me and it’s become a go-to in my listening rota at home. Thank You For Almost Everything is his second album under this moniker and it’s absolutely fantastic. The first track Nineteen Sixty Five is my standout from this, but to be honest, I would just listen to the whole thing if I were you.

Bonus Content

I did a mix myself this month gone. I thought it had been a while and I felt like I needed to make the eye watering amounts I spend on Bandcamp worth it. Progressive house is a love of mine at the moment so if you’re feeling a little proggy, feel free to dive right in.

One of my favourite b2b partners, DJ Ironing Board, also did a mix and this one’s an absolute heater from beginning to end. If you want your high tempo energy fix, this is a must listen.

I finally got around to listening to Derrick Gee’s sunset mix in the Elbphilharmonie building in Hamburg and it’s one of the best track selections I’ve heard in a while. Had this on at work and made for a great morning soundtrack. Definitely recommend getting this on when you’re in a rut.

Until Next Time

I picked up Ableton Live 12 Suite in the Black Friday sale and have been getting stuck into it. If you want to hear some of my previous work you may need to go all the way back to my GCSE work from 13 years ago. It was described as “Michael Nyman-esque” by my mother at the time which was bang on the nose with my then obsession with him.

So, until I’ve got something better to show for it, you’re going to have to enjoy that for the time being.

My aim is to make it monthly (the weekly roundups from a year ago were way too much effort) but to include a mix of music and non-music stuff.

So, without further ado, let’s dive in.

Out And About

What’s up with festivals releasing their lineups so early nowadays?

This week, alone, we have Boomtown, Love International, and Dekmantel Selectors releasing their lineups. And last month we had Coachella releasing theirs. I’m not sure about any of you, but it all seems a bit early for me. The winter darkness hasn’t quite got me to start thinking about next summer yet but I’m almost being forced to because these lineups are getting these conversations started now.

Almost as if that’s the whole point.

One of my favourite writers, Shawn Reynaldo, talked about this last year (paywall), about how festivals are releasing lineups earlier and earlier to try and get people to lock in with theirs before the competition get their lineups out. Festivals are becoming noticeably more expensive with Glastonbury at almost £400 (~450 EUR) for its 2025 edition and, coupling that with the seemingly never ending cost of living crisis, this results in people going to fewer festivals than in previous years. So getting ahead of the game is a clear advantage here.

But I feel there’s a certain ruthlessness to this and it’s the almost antithesis to what a large part of the electronic music scene was founded on: Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect. The way that festivals are climbing over one another to get to peoples’ wallets reminds of how the zombies in the World War Z film crawl over each other to get to the humans.

It’s weird, it’s uncomfortable, please stop. At least wait until the body of summer just gone is cold before hyping the next one up.

There’s just this real negative smell to this whole deal and it’s leading me to ask whether the current economic outlook is really that bad. It’s such a stark indicator that something is really wrong in the music industry currently and I’m struggling to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Where does it go from here? Will we get 2027 lineups before summer 2026 even happens? Will I have to dive into my savings just afford to go to a festival now? Is Glastonbury now genuinely just for the super rich?

Who knows.

The Meaning of Vinyl

I also attended a panel talk at Pastiche this week gone about record store culture in Berlin hosted by Chloe Lula, with David Fogarty (of Transmigration and Sound Metaphors), Sabine Hoffman (of Oye Kreuzkölln), Soela, and Kamyar Keramati (of Kimchi Records) on the panel. Whilst the discussion did revolve heavily around the specific record store culture of Berlin, a lot of it was about vinyl culture in general and what these flat pieces of plastic meant to them, from both a professional sense working in store, as a DJ, or personally.

There’s a few points that I would like to discuss from the panel.

To start, the future of record stores and what it could look like was one of the topics mentioned. The panelists were generally optimistic about the scene itself, saying that spaces like Pastiche and their own record stores served as physical meeting points for those interested in the culture. They also talked about how “young people” coming into the stores after vinyl sets go viral were also giving them hope into the next generation of diggers.

However, I found that the panelists were often relating the younger diggers’ entryways into the scene to their own experiences and many lamented about how few younger people there are in the stores and claimed that the future may be at risk due to that. Personally, I think this is a naive take, as all of music has gone through some pretty fundamental changes in the past decade so relating record collecting today to how it was 10, or even 5, years ago is missing a few key details.

Like Spotify.

Ten years ago, Spotify was still growing, and it sold itself as this one stop shop for all the music you’ll ever need. I distinctly remember the hype around it and how aghast people were when you didn’t have an account yourself. “You can literally listen to anything on there.”

But now, it’s becoming evidently clear that people are beginning to become fed up of services like Spotify. From alternative streaming services guides to people questioning the investments of the multi-billionaire ex-CEO, it really feels like people are slowly getting sick of the rental economy where only those at the top are making any money. Your subscription price keeps increasing, but artists are constantly talking about how little they earn from such services. On top of that, you don’t actually own anything when it comes to Spotify. You pay money for the right to listen to the music, so when you stop paying, you lose “your” music.

And I believe that this is beginning to manifest in people starting to collect records. I’ve recently had a friend of mine purchase her first ever record, she doesn’t even own a player, and another is also beginning to grow his collection, and also doesn’t have a player. And they both give the same two responses when asked why they did this:

1. I want to actually own my music

2. I want to support artists that I like

They’re bang on the money if you ask me. Bandcamp sells vinyls and has been dropping their fees on their Bandcamp Friday series. Some artists claim that it’s been a lifeline for them and “keeping the lights on in their homes”.

And it becomes your music. You don’t need to maintain a subscription to be able to listen to it.

This is where the scene is headed if you ask me. More and more of my friends are starting to collect even though it’s more expensive than Spotify and every time it’s for the two reasons mentioned above. It’s becoming common to have a collection and I think people are beginning to appreciate having one. And as much as most of the purchasing is done online, this will eventually bleed into the physical stores once people start getting as addicted into digging as my bank probably assumes I am.

On the topic of the online / physical store divide, as much as people talk about how the attendance in store is dwindling, no one seems to be making much noise about the rampant elitism in the scene. Online, it mostly manifests itself as toxic Reddit communities so as long as you don’t spend your life engaging too heavily with these Subreddits, then there’s no real impact to your record collecting experience. But in real life, it’s hard to ignore it.

Even I feel judged walking into these record stores, and I’ve got a goddamn blog about this stuff. I often find that the atmosphere can be stiff and unwelcoming in store, especially the more niche, genre specific ones (looking at you Sound Metaphors). And there’s this odd pause that some people do after talking to you about a given artist / track / album / mix / compilation / technology / soundsystem where they’re almost waiting to see if you know what they’re referring to. And if you don’t (god forbid), then it’s like you’ve failed some test and they’re now “the more knowledgeable one”. To be fair to the stores themselves, the staff are commonly the more welcoming people. It’s the surrounding clientele that I find that are the largest perpetrators of this kind of nonsense.

This prentetious undercurrent was running amok in some of the questions posed to the panel after the conclusion of Chloe’s questions. One guy (it’s almost always men) asked what got the panelists into record collecting, DJing with vinyl, and running their own stores which is a great question, only to finish it with “because it’s an addiction, isn’t it?” and your classic wink wink nudge nudge.

Buddy, it’s not about you, you didn’t have to say that last bit. You had a perfectly good question already.

This always happens in panels. Questioners with a mic love having the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of the given field and ask super specific questions that mostly serve to validate their own knowledge and you can tell they’re doing this because they will often continue their questioning after the panelists have given their answers as if they expected the answers they received.

You’ve asked your question, now get the fuck off the mic.

There was a literal networking session after this panel talk where I imagine you would have all the opportunity in the world to have these lengthy discussions with the panelists in person. Why do we have to be witness to your dick swinging?

As you can probably tell, this absolutely enrages me. This also happens in tech panels, which is where my career lies. But until this elitism is addressed and newcomers are marketed as being welcome to the scene, I struggle to imagine how those just starting their collections are going to be jumping at the opportunity to be surrounded by what can be such an oppressive culture.

To round off what is now becoming a bit of a lengthy rant. The panel was interesting and thought provoking, that unfortunately left out what I think is the best bit about record collecting.

The experience.

There’s more I would like to say about this one day. But, there’s something different about showing someone a piece of music on a vinyl compared to anything digital. It’s something physical you can hold and refer to when talking about what that music means to you. It’s much more effort to use and transport these flat discs compared to just pulling out your phone and queueing something on Spotify. So when you do do this, it adds a certain weight and meaning to the music you’re hearing. And this is what it’s all about.

After all, inconvenience is the price of community.

Anyways, onto the music.

Music Recs

Starting off with one of my favourite artists, Anish Kumar, and his recent collaboration with Baalti on their new project: Stunt Doubles. Their “part 2” EP is the selection this week with The Fastest Boxer In The East as my favourite from it. A fun, desi house beat, it’s got this addictive drive to the bassline.

Decided to treat myself on the last Bandcamp Friday and I picked up Andre Zimmer’s Saved My Life EP and Demi Riquismo and The Trip’s Don’t Go Away EP on vinyl. Both of them are progressive house boppers with some hands in the air moments. Invisible Sandwich from Andre’s and Don’t Go Away from Demi and The Trip’s are my top two favourites.

I’ve been following Asa Tate (previously known as Tech Support) for quite a while now with his Inside Out EP being one of my earliest Bandcamp purchases. His latest EP though, Replica, has become a recent favourite, with Replica being my top track from it. It’s got this incredible energy that I would kill to hear on a dancefloor soon.

And to wrap up this month’s (short) selection, we have Moderat’s self titled debut album and Skee Mask’s Resort album. Both of which were unexpected birthday presents! I’ve never sat down and given Moderat the attention they deserve so this was the perfect opportunity to dig in, and what a delightful album that is. Skee Mask’s I had never heard of before, and I was blown away by the production quality. Interestingly, I found that it’s nicer to listen to it on a vinyl than digital, and I’ve not quite worked out why…

Bonus Content

So yeah, October is my birthday month, and to celebrate in Berlin I ran another Satsuma Sessions for it and had a number of my London friends to visit. As nights go, this was a mess with the bar running out of alcohol pre midnight (although I was low key proud of that), but it was a lot of fun. Fortunately, I had the foresight to record the set, and posted it last week. So if you fancy listening to 3 hours of questionable mixing and repeated tracks, then dig in!

And final bonus content for the month, is Caribou, Floating Points, and Fred Again’s drumless NTS show. They charged a fee for every percussion in a track they played which I thought was a fascinating exercise to get to know your music better. No idea what I would play but it made for great listening.

Until Next Time

Well that was fun. See you in a month.

“We can’t be,” I say. “The instructions online literally told us to go this way.”

“Where are the signs,” a friend of mine pipes up.

We are standing not far from the entrance inside the Zeche Zollverein, a vast complex whose purpose was once a coal processing plant that dates back to the mid 1800s. A visually enchanting place, we are transfixed by the industrial monoliths towering over our heads interspersed with trees whose density rivalled that of a forest.

Another friend walks over to me and we stare down at Google Maps together. “Where are we going again?” she asks.

“I think it’s that way,” I point northwards. We begin to make our way through the complex, passing over train tracks and under gangways criss-crossing above our heads.

“Hold up,” says one, a little ahead of the rest of us. “Can you hear that?”

We tilt our heads up to the sky and listen out. A soft and rhythmic thumping drifts towards us with the wind.

A friend points to another path where a smattering of people clad in a variety of black clothing are marching in the same direction. “They look like they’re also going there.”

We carry on and the thumping gets louder. Hihats, snare drums, and pumping basslines start to take shape. We’re definitely on the right path now.

The right path to Stone Techno.

Coal Plants

Stone Techno is a boutique techno festival in the Ruhr region city of Essen. Or as some like to call it, the Birmingham of Germany. A relatively boring town in the west, it’s home to the megalithic ThyssenKrupp company and criss-crossed by motorways I became very familiar with throughout my youth, with the A40 being the main route from the UK to my family hometown in Germany.

The city was once a city of industry and, with that, comes the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the aforementioned Zeche Zollverein nestled in the north east. To stop it going through the typical decay that such abandoned industrial complexes are so often subjected to post-shutdown, the state of North Rhine-Westfalia bought it and declared it a heritage site, to the surprise of many. Since then, the iconic Shaft 12 has become an icon of the region and had its heritage site upgraded to sit amongst places such as the Taj Mahal and Machu Picchu.

It’s also a fantastic place to host a techno festival.

The Location

We wander up to the eastern entrance to the site and the pounding beats beyond the walls are now clearer than ever. After a quick search, we are in and take stock of the map.

Four stages are dotted across a thin strip of land hugging the southern side of one of the Zeche Zollverein buildings in the north of the complex. In order from east to west: Salzlager, Eisbahn, Werks-Schwimmbad, and Kokerei.

Salzlager was where we started, and featured a corridor-like setup under some overhead piping elevated above the ground. A lighting rig had been assembled underneath it with strip lighting running from end to end, close to one of which stood the DJ, with space behind for dancing. Sadly, it’s a bit bare during the day, but it’s at night where the stage really comes alive. The lighting array serves for a hypnotic experience where I often found myself feeling like I’m taking off with the music. Transported to another dimension.

Wandering on, we came then across Eisbahn which sat under more piping with a tall chimney stack to the side. Set in the round, dancers were arrayed at all angles surrounding the DJs in the middle. Eisbahn was a good day timer stage with a mound leading up to the old water pools that served as the actual Eisbahn (AKA ice rink) in the winter for locals. Tired techno two-steppers rested their feet on this mound but could still enjoy the beats emanating from the stage below.

Onwards to Werks-Schwimmbad which was where we spent most of our time over the weekend. This stage featured artists whose playlist genres can be found on either side of the techno / house distinctions, like BASHHKA, Marie Montexier, and Helena Hauff. So we ended up lovingly calling it “the house stage” which made for a pleasing irony in that you could argue we spent more time listening to house music than techno at a techno festival.

Werks-Schwimmbad was situated at the end of the water pools and had both a forward dancefloor situated under the old behemoth moving platform and a backward stage raised a little behind the DJ and over the pools. The difference in dancefloor setup allowed dancers to have two unique perspectives of the DJ and crowd and we particularly enjoyed standing on the platform behind.

Finally, we wandered onto Kokerei which was situated opposite the swimming pool at the back of this northern part of the complex.

You heard that right, this festival has a swimming pool. And yes we did get in it.

Back to Kokerei though, and this was visually one of the most stunning stages. Flanked by towering buildings whose functions are a mystery to the dancers below, the stage featured scaffold encasing the dancefloor. Screens had been mounted onto the side with the DJ in and the trees behind with dancers below made for a gorgeous backdrop during sunsets. One of my favourite moments of the weekend was beneath said trees behind the DJs on the Saturday during Rene Wise’s set. The sun was beaming through the branches and the set made for an energetic afternoon.

The Lineup

I have to admit, techno wasn’t my forte, but I have a whole new appreciation of the genre coming away from that festival. The way artists were crafting their sets to connect with the location’s energy made for a fantastic way to experience the genre at its best. I found it hard to tell, was it the location matching the music or the music matching the location?

On Friday, we started with Arthur Robert at Salzlager and excellently set the tone for the weekend. Cassy and Ryan Elliott at Werks-Schwimmbad which featured an absolute arsenal of housey tunes. Ogazon and Marron at Kokerei for a gorgeous sunset set. And ended with a bit of CINTHIE at Werks-Schwimmbad followed by DVS1 back at Salzlager. The Berghain resident mixed up an absolute storm and ended the first day on a high.

Saturday was a later start starting with an electric set from BASHHKA in Werks-Schwimmbad, hard hitting heavy house beats thundering thundering under the old works above. Deetron and Tasha on Salzlager next (whose set I’m still waiting to be uploaded to YouTube) followed by that aforementioned Rene Wise set at Kokerei. Finally finishing with Blasha and Allatt (who blew our socks off), and Marie Montexier, at our beloved house stage.

Soft Crash kicked off our Sunday stepping session, followed by Josey Rebelle and then back over to Salzlager for Carista. She was the first act we saw the previous year at Dekmantel and wanted to see her again. Alarico and Objekt were on after that, a quick stop off for Ben Klock (who took me somewhere else, oh my god), and finishing strong on Helena Hauff. And where else would that be, but the house stage.

A masterclass from beginning to end, the festival lineup was one of the best curated I’ve seen in a long time. The diversity that the techno genre has to boast of was in full form and it was a lot of fun to witness new ways you’d never experienced before.

And Sunday was where I really noticed just how many FLINTA DJs I was seeing. In a time where most lineups just seem to be filled with white men, I found that Stone Techno had smashed getting diversity right on a lineup.

The Logistics

Seeing as this is a relatively new festival, with 2025 being its third run, I figured that I might as well describe a bit of the logistics of how we did the festival.

As mentioned before, it’s in Essen, in the Zeche Zollverein complex in the north west of the city and there’s no camping. It’s a bit out of town but it’s relatively easy to get there with the tram from central, so we stayed in town. For public transport, there’s an app called Zäpp that can get you tickets, or you can get them at stations, it’s pretty easy.

Accommodation wise we stayed in a rental apartment in the Frohnhausen area, just east of the city centre. The area itself wasn’t the nicest part of town but it was functional and only a short tram ride away from the Rüttenscheid area where there’s a nice market and some brunch spots that we hit up to fuel for the festival.

Getting home, we bought shuttle bus tickets in advance, and unless you’re staying close to the festival site itself, I would recommend doing so too. It’s dreamy being able to immediately plonk yourself on a bus and relax on your way into town. They run through the night at regular intervals too.

We tried to book lockers for all three days of the festival, but sadly the Saturday ones were sold out. As much as it wasn’t a huge pain point in the day, it did make me realise it’s better having one than not. Didn’t need to worry about carrying your jumper for later with you and it allowed us to bring swim clothes for the pool.

Speaking of, what a delight that was. Sunday was an absolute scorcher so a friend and I jumped in to cool off in the surprisingly refreshing, stunningly clear, and wonderfully clean water. Lifeguards were on hand to keep watch but they were still relatively relaxed and were good people to chat to throughout the day. In one conversation, I asked whether they had any issues throughout the weekend and was told there were none at all. Which for the people of a techno festival, was quite the pleasant surprise.

The small market between Eisbahn and Werks-Schwimmbad was solid, if a little limited. All dietary requirements were sorted for and the bratwurst truck filled a fantastic niche at a festival. For when you know you should eat but don’t want too much and don’t want to spend a fortune.

Travel to the city was fortunately quite easy for me as I already live in the country, but for those who flew from London, they had flights from Köln Bonn airport which was easy to get to and from Essen by train.

We debated getting tickets to the after parties, but by the time we had decided to go for it, all the tickets for the onsite Mischanlager had sold out and only the tickets for the in town Weststadthalle remained. As much as it’s impressive that the Mischanlager sold out so quickly another venue was required, it definitely seemed like one option was far superior than the other. Mischanlager is onsite and the night starts as soon as the main festival is over. And Weststadthalle is a small concert hall in town. So attempting to rally for a night in a standard looking concert hall 20-30 minutes away because we couldn’t get tickets to the club right there in the atmospheric Zeche Zollverein building complex was not the most appealing prospect to us.

Also, we had so much fun during the day, I never once felt like I missed out by not going.

Final Thoughts

As festivals go, this was a good one.

The tightly curated lineup coupled with the absolutely insane scenery made for an incredible experience. The crowd too were on top form and everyone I came across was delightful and a fountain of knowledge about the music. Such was the obsession of the crowd.

However, there were some drawbacks. Travel instructions could have been a little clearer (we did actually get a little lost on the first day), the market could have been a little more diverse (eating six bratwurst is fun but you eventually get bored), there could have been more water taps (and we weren’t allowed to bring in our own refillable bottles?!), and there could have been some more chillout areas. There was that aforementioned mound which was nice, but aside from a smattering of seating behind Kokerei, there really wasn’t much else for taking a seat and relaxing a little.

It’s still worth it though.

And they’ve promised to make improvements for next year already.

I’m excited to see what comes next for Stone Techno.

—

Writer notes: after all my chat about being better with writing more, it seems that I have slacked once again this summer. In my defence, I’m in the process of starting a small night in a bar here in Berlin, but that’s still in its early stages right now. Feel free to pop me a follow on Instagram if you’re interested in finding out when our next one is!

I struggled awake and croaked out, “What?”

“Bro, aren’t we going out today?” It was my flatmate.

Rolling over, I lunged at my phone and stared groggily at it.

“Oh shit, we need to get going,” I exclaimed. Jumping out of bed, I ran around my room getting ready. “I’ll be with you in just a mo, mate.”

We definitely didn’t want to leave it too late today.

After all, it was Record Store Day.

—

The first ever Record Store Day was in April of 2007 in the USA and was designed to celebrate record store culture and the community surrounding it. Originally inspired by Free Comic Book Day, whose goal was the same with comic book stores, it has grown from strength to strength in the years following and has spread worldwide.

I had first come across the day in the UK, when I started building my own collection of records. It was a friend of mine who had given it to me after he had won a raffle during our university years. “I always win these things,” he joked at the time.

But he never actually wanted it. And through a conspicuous line of inquiry from yours truly, he had passed it onto me.

“Score.”

—

My flatmate and I showered and wolfed down some food in a desperate attempt to fend off the growing hangover. We had stayed out way too late the night before drinking in some stereotypically cool bars and attended a pop up shop for Steel City Dance at Giri. DJ Heartstring and KETTAMA were even in attendance for a predrink before their Berghain sets (we didn’t even try to get in).

We headed downstairs, my flatmate grabbed his bike, I jumped on a Lime Bike and we pootled down the U12 route with me pointing out Watergate as we crossed Warschauerbrücke. My flatmate asked me what it was like inside as we pulled up the traffic lights. I mentioned the beams, the windows, and how much I loved that smoking area. “Yeah I’ve heard about the smoking area,” he says. “Saw it on the way over.”

As we pulled into HHV in Friedrichshain, we took stock of where we were visiting. It looked like every Dalston resident’s dream. This place sold vinyls, Salomons, jackets, and home decor and gadgets including the latest range of AIAIAI headphones.

I turned to my flatmate, “have you heard of socks_house_meeting on Instagram?”

A blank facial expression greeted me (he doesn’t have Instagram).

—

Record Store Day is one of my favourite days of the year. You go around and look for fun music in cool shops often situated in pretty hip places of the city. It’s a great way of supporting record stores and the community around it and everyone you meet is just as interested in music as you are.

A number of record labels also time exclusive, limited run releases for the day too and digging through them and seeing all your favourite artists is a great feeling. “They have something coming out today? I wonder what’s on it!” And there are some pretty big players releasing music; we’re talking A-Ha, Air, Black Sabbath, Blur, Charli xcx, Fatboy Slim, Taylor Swift, Rage Against The Machine, Mel C, Lil Uzi Vert, and Ice-T to name a few.

We also can’t forget, that these events are normally paired with pubs, bars, or breweries and who doesn’t love a drink listening to music. Because there are often events too, in 2023 I attended the event at the Truman Brewery in Brick Lane and there was live music and DJs playing all day.

It’s a day that’s totally dedicated to music.

—

I pulled out a record, it’s Ebi’s Space Teddy Collection on the Transmigration label. I had recently become obsessed with the label after stumbling upon Elliptical Headz’s record at a fair last year. Fortunately, my flatmate had found a player and I worked my way through the throng over to him. “I like the label, let’s see what’s on this.”

Sharing the headphones, we nodded along.

“I found a few things too, check these out.”

More sharing, more nodding.

I bought my find and then we jumped on our bikes to move on to Rough Trade in Neukölln. We meandered our way over the Elsenbrücke and we spotted Renate (which I hadn’t been to yet at that point), OST (which I had), and Else (which wasn’t open yet).

“They’re close!” my flatmate said as pulled up to a traffic light.

“Yeah, I had no idea Else was just across the river from the others.”

—

Not to get too emotional about it all, but it’s a day where it really begins to feel like a global community. So many people come out and are willing to talk to others. Beers help of course, but being amongst so many people who can get weird and nerdy over common interests is something I recommend everyone to do.

The record store social media accounts pop off, with posts coming from all of the places the movement has reached in the world. True, it’s mainly North America and Europe, but there’s also Japan, Australia, and Mexico too.

And clips of events start circling too, DJ sets on sun terraces, bands in record shops, and street food markets in brewery gardens.

—

Sadly, Berlin’s Record Store Day seemed to be a little more limited than the global socials were showing off that day and we pulled into Rough Trade to see it remarkably quiet for such an important day for this kind of store. It’s a stark comparison to its British counterpart which saw a whole array of shows and events happening in each store.

We quickly browsed the big name releases for the day, and then moved on. We had a street party to attend and booked it around Tempelhofer Feld with the sun shining shining in our faces.

—

As much as I know there are two record store days in the year, the April day is the one I look forward to most. It lines up exactly with when the weather is beginning to really improve and there’s a chance you could be outside in the sun. Which has been my fortune for the past few years.

—

And we were basking in it as we pulled up to Dodo Beach in Schöneberg. They were throwing a street party that day and it was the perfect weather for it. A stage was at the end of a long line of stalls, with a bar, Bratwurst stand, a wrap stand, and some seating behind it.

We grabbed ourselves a drink and sat listening to Shybits, who were playing at the time.

Later, we had a brief gander around the shop and popped outside again to meet some friends. Shybits changed out for The Roxies after that and the crowd went wild. And all walks of life were in it, from the veteran rocker still donning an original piece of merch from back in the day, to the ambient enthusiast with a huge bundle of new records under his arm, to the young parents bringing their child up on hand-me-down classic jazz records mum has been collecting.

It’s days like this that make up the highlights of my year. A worldwide collection of people coming together to bond over a shared love of music and maybe cut a shape or two on the same day. It’s similar to festivals for me, spending time just to enjoy pure joy and creativity.

Our world is becoming darker and darker by the day. Everything from the dangers of social media being realised, to the fascistic developments of geopolitics, to the demonising of migrants, to the willful ignorance of genocide, to the ever growing threat of yet another world war, to inflation, to transphobia, to the manosphere, to the danger generative AI poses to our unsuspecting grandparents, to late stage capitalism, to the dwindling independent creative industry that is free from corporate overlords, to the absolutely pitiful streaming returns that musicians earn from the giants like Spotify and Apple Music, to microplastics, and to the fact that I now pay close to a tenner just to buy olive oil.

But it’s days like these, where you can forget all of that and just turn your head up to the sun and bask for a moment. The beer has started to tickle your mind and the music washing over you is beginning to sound glorious. Two kids have started their own little mosh pit in front of the stage and another is madly ripping the air guitar behind them. The aging rocker and his mate have lit up a joint and are talking about how “it’s been so long.”

And you can take a moment to just escape everything and enjoy yourself. A moment of respite in the chaos.

Apart from the young parents who are now dealing with a smelly nappy situation.

What a day.

Bring on next year.

London has come under heavy fire in recent years about its dying nightlife with the mayor, Sadiq Khan, even creating a new task force to try and combat the issue. The position was previously taken on by the “Night Czar”, Amy Lamé, which came with its own share of controversies.

So the city’s scene doesn’t really look like it's in a great position.

And if you, dear reader, read my last post, it would seem my thoughts on the matter agree with this statement. Drumsheds has been London’s largest nightlife project for quite some time and seeing my peer’s reactions to the venue today suggested to me that it’s not really succeeding at being the change the city needs. Or even giving people hope.

However, in some of my final nights out in London, I think my opinion has been changed.

Let me tell you about where I went.

Dekmantel Club Tour at Venue MOT

If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know I love both Dekmantel and Venue MOT. The former I went to for the first time last summer, and the latter was a beloved hangout when I lived in London. There’s a lot to love about both.

So when Dekmantel announced their 2024/25 club tour with their London edition at Venue MOT, it felt right to go.

And it was a lot of fun. With Fafi Abdel Nour, Marie Malarie, NVST, and Piezo playing, it had a full range of electronic selections on offer.

But what I wanted to talk about here is how the party really suited the venue, and vice versa.

I’m not sure where I first heard this, but Dekmantel was once described to me as “a festival by DJs, for DJs”. I’ve said this before but everyone who attends, works, and plays at the festival is totally and utterly obsessed with the scene and all it stands for. And this energy is carried well into the festival’s club tour. The lineup selection on that night maybe wasn’t the biggest on the tour but it was well selected and you could tell when each DJ was playing as their unique styles really shone.

And Venue MOT was the perfect place to host it. A theory of mine is that the less accessible a club is by public transport, the better it is. And in my opinion, MOT takes the cake on this. True, it can be a real nightmare to get to and from the venue, but once you’re there, it’s incredible. Everyone else has made the same effort to be there like you so everyone is as into the music as you.

And that’s how I believe the two complimented each other so well. You had:

• A party that’s run and attended by people obsessed with electronic music

• In a venue whose regulars are obsessed with electronic music

A perfect match up if you ask me.

You could also tell it was working well. The club was full early, no one was drunk and disorderly, people were polite and friendly, the dance floor was easy to navigate, and people stayed long into the night. No walk-ins just looking for a good night and not caring about the lineup like in some of my Phonox experiences.

I could have stayed all the next day there to be honest.

All Our Friends at Limehouse Town Hall

My friend and I stood before the big wooden doors of Limehouse Town Hall and waited for our turn in line. It was the second weekend into January and there was a cold bite to the air. We edged closer subconsciously to stay warm.

“Hope we get inside quickly,” my friend murmured.

When I was first told about All Our Friends, the “offline party”, I had initially been taken aback. The concept of a party without a social media presence or even a digital ticketing system gave me a distinct old school impression that somehow felt fresh. Surely, the lack of either would surely mean that the party wouldn’t be easy to find or even attend, was my first thought.

But here we were, standing in a queue outside the venue.

It was a different friend of mine, over a year prior, who had first shared this party with me. Funnily enough, it was in Berlin where I now reside and write this post from. But at the time, he told me that ticketing was done via emailing in and reserving your spot. It’s only once every few months and they even do food there if you’re hungry. There’s also a no phones policy and it’s all vinyl DJing. What a concept, I had to go.

We edged closer to the front.

It wasn’t until over a year later when I found myself in that cold, January queue in Limehouse. Which, if you ask me, isn’t one of London’s most attractive districts. An ex-industrious part of town filled with big roads that’s still relatively badly connected with its distinct lack of bridges to the Southbank, overlooked by the impressive Canary Wharf towers of glass and steel that were as barren and dark as this cold Saturday night.

We finally reached the front, and after a short briefing by the bouncer about the rules like no phones, consent is key, reach out if someone is making you uncomfortable; we were in.

Entering, it definitely felt like we were entering a very Victorian town hall fit with the white walls and wooden flooring. A desk had been erected half down the entrance corridor and organisers were taking payments for tickets. Onwards and up the stairs we headed, onto the floor where the party was taking place.

Two rooms greeted us, the first was the bar which was staffed by what looked like friends of the organisers which I loved. Next to the bar was a seating area made up of sofa cushions with people lounging about all over them, I can attest they were very, very comfy. At the back were tables with the scant leftovers of what appeared to be a very tasty meal.

The second room was the dancefloor and cordoned off from the bar area by a thick curtain. Entering this room we were taken aback by the beautiful decorations that had been installed. Stunning tapestries, lights, and plants were filling the space with dancers bopping along between it all. I had no idea which DJs were currently playing but they filled the space with a fantastic selection of funk, soul, and house music.

But what blew me away the most about the party wasn’t the setting, the lack of social media, the no phones, or the vinyl. It was the people.

Every single age group from early twenties to sixties and seventies and beyond were in attendance. And everyone was sporting unique and wonderful outfits with every single piece suiting the vibe. I’ve also never met a nicer group of party people too. Earlier, the cloakroom had sadly been full so we were winging it and hiding our coats under a table, hoping that no one would steal them. Talking to people, however, I realised we were in totally safe hands. Everyone was approachable, talkative, and friendly and no one was being left out.

I’ve always been an advocate for a good smoking area and, as much as Limehouse Town Hall’s was rather harsh and simple, it was the chattiest and friendliest smoking area I’ve ever been in to date. Everyone was truly invited.

Once again, I could have stayed there all night.

Phantasmagoria at Gaffe

Last year at Dekmantel, I had the honour of running into Kate at VTSS’s set at the Radar stage Saturday night. A fellow Londoner who also loves electronic music, our groups mixed easily and became friends for the rest of the festival.

She’s also one of the organisers of a night called Phantasmagoria that runs from time to time in London.

Having started in 2024, it’s already had a slew of solid parties in a variety of locations, including a houseboat for one party!

Fortunately, in January of 2025, I got to go and experience the party first hand.

This party took place in Gaffe, a very new club near Wandsworth Road Station in Clapham, which is not a particularly typical location for a club to be. It’s down a short road into an industrial estate and is situated under the arches of the tracks above. With a capacity of around 200, it’s delightfully intimate and cosy. A simple bar and a line of toilets take up the front room, with the dancefloor towards the back.

That night, I also had the pleasure of meeting one of the cofounders of the club, Jay, as he happened to be working that night and were asking clubbers a few questions about how they got there.

“It’s to help with our licensing application,” he tells me after I take interest in why he was inquiring. “If we know how people get to and from here, we understand how we affect noise in the area. And we can use this information in proving to the council that we can handle a late night license.” I remember remaking how forward thinking this was at the time.

Continuing our conversation he tells me about all the plans he has for the venue. Hosting Sunday seshes for people who want to go out that day. “Like Berlin,” he says.

And they seem to be doing that right. Their Sunday Service party looked good from the stories I saw on socials of the event.

And back to the party, what a layup. Phantasmagoria is well suited to the venue and provided an intimate, homegrown vibe to an experience that is often regarded as hedonistic or seedy. With independent artists showcasing work in the corner of the room with small workshops like drawing on the paper table cloth, it felt more like it was a night for friends and family. Kate and the other organisers were running around talking to what seemed to be every person in the room.

Plus the music was incredible, everything from house to heavier techno pounded through the incredible sound system there.

What a home for this gorgeous group of family and friends.

And, like every party I’ve talked about here so far, it made me want to stay all night.

What Do They Do Right?

So, to summarise, they were three unique and different parties:

• Dekmantel: a night for people obsessed with the scene, putting up a fine selection of artists specifically catered for a crowd who want to see good artists

• All Our Friends: a party trying something different, where the focus isn’t on “booking the biggest names”, but on creating the best vibe a clubber could ask for

• Phantasmagoria: a fresh take the inclusion you can foster in a night out, specialising in making everyone feel like friends and family

And, as much as similarities could be drawn between them, they all excelled in their unique and interesting takes on what it can look like to “go out”. This is what I was drawing on when talking about potentially needing some difference when venues like Drumsheds can seem exhausting.

Could this be where the future of the night out is heading?

In a very digital age, I think there’s a hunger for something more fresh, personalised, and analogue. From people discussing the rise of board games (this is a fun read), to the rise in run clubs, to even the literal lack of phones out at All Our Friends. People seem to be enjoying the digital distancing and the embracing of more closely knit communities. All Our Friends may have had the rule set in stone, but neither of the other parties had much, if any, “phones out culture” (aside from the recording of private memories).

And each had a community associated with their event. Dekmantel had music lovers, All Our Friends had those “in the know” of the party who followed its rules, Phantasmagoria had their friends and family and all its new members.

Stellar experiences through and through.

Conclusion

There’s lots to like here, in a world of ever more depressing nightlife news, seeing some thrive in this current situation is a pleasant sight to see. All Our Friends even noted at the door that they may start having to put a harsher cap on people attending because it was so popular.

I truly believe there is something to learn from all of these parties. Recent news has been pointing to the over reliance of social media and digital clout to succeed in the industry. But I say that I think a significant number of people aren’t actually looking for artists with that. Maybe these parties show that if you build a unique and interesting space and environment for a tightly knit community of people who all want to be together in person…

We may actually put our phones down for once.

“Make Drumsheds IKEA Again,” says the cap.

It’s a few weeks into the new year and I’m mindlessly rotting on my bed scrolling through Instagram. I’ve just come across a post advertising a limited run merch drop by the promoters Keep Hush, a jungle / drum and bass party crew known for their iconic green lighting in their set recordings. The merchandise is a simple cap with the aforementioned words on it.

I chuckle and send it on to a few of my friends who react in similar fashion. It quickly gains a lot of traction online with numerous artists and fans reposting the cap to their followers. But, like all modern viral trends, its time in the limelight fades as quickly as it gained it.

It’s stuck with me since though.

This merch drop follows a rather tumultuous season for Drumsheds. I attended the Bicep x Hydra event at the beginning of December and we left with a rather sour taste in our mouths. Then, the following weekend, the UKF event was reportedly carnage with 2+ hour queues and stories of overly aggressive security. A petition was created shortly after this night to “hold the venue accountable” demanding refunds.

And now that the backlash has grown to the point where people have started to create physical items of clothing mocking the venue in only its second year of operating. It has become evidently clear that something has gone wrong. Clubs are currently shutting left, right, and centre in the UK yet people are still finding good enough reason to mock this new venue.

Where has it all gone so wrong? Why aren’t we celebrating new venues any more?

Well, this is what has stuck with me for so long now.

Maybe Drumsheds was better at being an IKEA than a nightclub

The Venue

“Fifteen thousand people?”

They were staring at me incredulously.

“Yeah,” I say, not quite believing it at the same time.

We are stood outside Landsberger Allee station and exchanging clubbing stories whilst finishing off our last cigarette for the evening. I had made some new friends at the Four Tet night at the Velodrom and my newfound Kumpels were listening to me talk about what the nightlife was like in my old home city.

“How does that even work?” one of them questions me.

“Not particularly well,” I reply.

“Is it even fun?” another asks.

“Sometimes?”

As you can tell, I’ve rather gone off the venue now.

Coming away from my last attendance in December of 2024 for the Hydra x Bicep: CHROMA IN THE SHEDS night, I (and many of my compatriots that night) left rather dismayed. For as much as the venue is an outright spectacle it just wasn’t what we wanted from the night. Other venues, we felt, ticked our boxes better which in turn resulted in better nights out.

So I want to talk about what the venue does right and, more importantly, where it underperforms.

The Pros

As I stated above, Drumsheds is a spectacle through and through. I showed some of the pictures and videos I had taken at Drumsheds to my friends from the Four Tet night and they noted that yes, it does look pretty cool to be there.

This spectacle only grows when looking at the lineups because you have to admit, they’re absolutely stacked. That Bicep night had me running from room to room, attempting to catch all the artists I wanted to see play. And it’s like that almost every weekend with each of its parties. I remember when the first season of parties was announced in 2023, I couldn’t quite believe my eyes.

One of the things I particularly love about the lineups (especially with the Hydra events), is that it’s often a combination of relatively big names and more up and coming names which I find so often lacking nowadays for events of that size. The big names draw the crowds in and both the smaller artists have a better crowd to work with and the crowd get to discover cool new artists to listen to.

And when you combine all of the above together with its nice and early finishing time of 10:30pm, it sells itself as a real experience to the more amateur clubbers. It introduces new people to a scene that really needs them at the moment in a literally spectacular way and guarantees the “big” in a big night out for them. For those who may be more intimidated by the idea of the “underground electronic music scene”, this guarantee is a real sell for actually committing to the motive. It lowers the bar to entering the community to a very accessible place for those who may not have always been interested in going out like that but were keen to try.

It also makes creative use of empty property in the city that would otherwise rot away. IKEA’s gone now, so may as well use the building for something. As much as it is likely to eventually end up turning into yet another block of luxury apartments, seeing such space go to a culturally beneficial use is inspiring.

The venue genuinely has the right setup, the right idea, and the right attitude to become this role model for nightclubs across the world. Its bold ambition to create this centre of music and culture in an ailing commercial building is a real testament to people’s creativity to create something good out of something forgotten.

I’m still not going to go back any time soon though.

The Cons

Now this is where it starts to get juicy. And long, bear with me.

Starting with the basics, it’s just too many people. And this creates so many issues.

At the Bicep night in December, shortly before Bicep were due to come on, I fancied a break outside to get some air. Two friends of mine decided to join me and off we marched from our relatively central spot to get to the doors.

I’m not joking when I say it took 5 full minutes to just leave the crowd. It was wall to wall with people and attempting to push through them was a nightmare and a half. Sweaty, overheating faces rolled their eyes at us with exasperation as we pushed through their little throngs. For a space so large, people were packed pretty tightly and heated the place up to an almost extreme temperature. And let’s not start about trying to get back into the crowd.

People, or should I say human bodies, are also excellent absorbers of sound. And when you put a small festival’s worth in one room, they’re going to eat any and all sound that’s in there, and Drumsheds is where you really notice it. I’m usually one for ear plugs in venues, following tinnitus in the family and a distinct dislike of ringing ears, I’ve taken to bringing a pair to every night out. However, I didn’t need them in the main X Room as the sound felt like it was coming out of a bluetooth speaker at points. I remember watching a TikTok when Drumsheds first opened where it was mentioned that the venue knew about the sound absorption issue back in 2023. It’s a shame that it seems they haven’t been able to fix it yet.

Let’s talk about travel next. In short, getting there is a mission and getting back is carnage. We barely had time for pre-drinks (arguably the best part of a night out) and then we had to sit on public transport for a solid hour to get there. Leaving is so much worse as the only travel away is a train that runs every 10 minutes from one station (good luck getting an Uber). We were fortunate to have the idea to leave early from the Bicep night and made it to the station with relative ease in about 15 minutes with a coat check stop included. However, the other half we had left behind didn’t have as good a time getting out with the venue only letting people out in stages. It took them an hour just to get to the station.

Once you arrive at the venue, your ordeal isn’t over as you enter into what can only be described as airport style security. It’s true that venues need to take a proactive step in ensuring that clubbers are safe inside, but I was nigh on strip searched going in before being marched through a metal detector. The girls in the queue over from me had makeup confiscated, expensive stuff too. What harm does eyeliner pose? There are also roughly 16 security queues you could join there and you would think that this would at least make the experience quick. Well you would be wrong, an extra half an hour was added to our entry into the venue despite the 2-3 staff they had per queue.

And despite all of that security madness, I was offered drugs within about 4 minutes of getting inside.

One of the more poignant things that I’ve been discussing with a dear friend of mine is why the venue seems to lack that certain charm that Printworks oozed. And after a lengthy discussion, we think we have it.

The building isn’t actually that interesting.

Its prior use was infamously an IKEA and it was custom built for IKEA. So it was built with IKEA’s philosophical tricks in mind like walking shoppers along a maze to encourage them to buy more things and removing windows to make them lose their sense of time. It was built for one capitalistic reason: to spend. And capitalism isn’t anything new, so its history is utterly uninteresting once you get past the various forms of meatball jokes.

Some may argue: but hasn’t its repurposing given it a more interesting story now? Well I’m not sure I agree. Yes it’s true, that it’s no longer a place to “buy buy buy”, but has its overarching capitalistic purpose actually gone? There’s an odd poetry in how the aisles of flatpack furniture have instead been replaced by walls of corporate sponsorships and logos. It’s a surreal feeling walking along those halls and trying to convince yourself that this “underground scene” you once fell in love with all that time ago hasn’t sold out quite yet. And the brands aren’t even that “cool” and “underground”, I remember Budweiser being a sponsor.

Finally (I’m ranting I know), I mentioned Printworks before and I’m going to mention it again. Drumsheds never expressly marketed itself as “Printworks 2.0” so some would say it’s unfair to make a like for like comparison. But I sadly don’t agree. As much as the team at Broadwick Live may not have intended for the venue to be directly compared to its predecessor, I felt that the clubbers and media most certainly did. And this is where I believe the venue fails the most.

To start, Printworks’ building was honestly fascinating. The tall central printing hall with its marvellous array of walkways and that weird booth bit that stuck out on the left (if you’ve been you know the one) had you wondering what it was all for. This used to be a printing press, why was this room so big? And I would often catch myself wondering what stories had been printed here, what history did this place witness?

Printworks had all of the pros that Drumsheds has today. It was a pioneer in the Big Night Out Guarantee with its insane lineups and even promised a fantastically early bedtime.

And Drumsheds followed an infamous back and forth of Printworks announcing closures and then suddenly getting extensions. Almost like it was following in the venue’s footsteps.

Therefore you can’t help but compare the two places, and Drumsheds sadly comes out worse here. I can’t really see myself going back in the near future (without including the physical distance involved), and neither can many of my clubbing peers which is a worrying sight. As much as we may have individually had our issues with Printworks, we always went back. This doesn’t seem to be the case for Drumsheds.

Rant Over

Printworks opened in 2017 and it pioneered the idea of London’s “bigger is better” with its roughly 6000 people capacity. True, Ibiza is known for their superclubs, but London at the time was lacking in this department so Printworks was a welcome sight.

When I first went in 2019 I was blown away with just how cool it was to be surrounded by so many people indoors of all places. Its lineup was so good week after week that it kept pulling in more and more people and this was what it did so well.

Big.

And Drumsheds has come along and said “why not bigger???” and ran with it. But I’m not sure it’s been having the effect that I think it’s been trying for. As much as I went on a bit above about my gripes with the venue, I just wanted to get across everything that I felt it underperformed in. They’re all individually excusable offences if you ask me, but combined make for quite an exhausting and uninspiring visit.

And most of that is compounded by just how big the place is.

It’s just too many people.

And this is where I begin to question, have we gone too big here?

So what do I want instead?

Something Different

And that’s about it really.

It’s not that I hate Drumsheds and don’t want it to exist (I was joking earlier about turning it back into an IKEA), I just don’t think that it’s really adding anything new to a scene that needs something new. It ran on “big” in every sense of the word and now that charm has worn off for me. All the little niggles that were so easy to initially look past are much more glaring today.

But what to do with the place? I say keep it for now, but please make it a more enjoyable experience.

I want to be wowed with big rooms and amazing lineups and I want to take my newbie clubbing friends there for their first big night out experience. It gets so much right but also so much wrong at the same time.

I’m not suggesting things like “Drumsheds is solely responsible for the transport arrangement” at all, it would be unfair to. But if the venue were more worth all the little niggles, I wouldn’t be so hesitant to return.

My follow up post to this one will go into detail about other parties that I believe are “doing it differently” well.

“But what would you change, Phil?”

As someone who doesn’t work in the industry I can’t really offer expertise or experience here, but there are things that I think could work well in a venue like that.

Firstly, logistics, make it a much smoother entrance and exit experience. Security is absolutely necessary but make the search feel less like airport security. It felt close to an interrogation going in. At least let people take in makeup.

Secondly, the rooms, make them more interesting. They’re essentially big window-less boxes with screens at the end. Screens can be cool when used well but I find they can often steal focus away from the music. Maybe a light show could work well instead. I found that the latest addition to the Y Room was neat with the rolling ticker tape displays above the dancers. It was a fun new addition that I felt added to the room and it worked well for the space, it added some new audiovisual experiences, and wasn't just a screen.

Another new interesting thing that could be done to the X Room is adding verticality. The walkways that were present in the 2023-24 year were a fantastic way of adding interest to the space. Maybe more vertical space could work well in the room and give people alternative places to experience the space from.

Thirdly, more variation outside of the rooms. The rooms are three boxes at the moment and all the seating / chill out areas are in the smoking area and the bits between the rooms are essentially empty space and bars. Printworks’ second hall alongside the main room was a great place to sit with friends and chat whilst still being able to listen to the main room. More of this please! Sometimes it’s nice to sit down and relax and maybe even make some new friends in the meantime. Having all the seating outside means that you’re subjected to the elements and that made for a rather harsh experience in December.

And finally, the people. As much as it pains me to say this, it’s just a few too many people. Granted it’s an insane experience being in a room with 14,999 other people in it, but it makes the venue a logistical nightmare. As I’ve said before, the sheer volume of people makes all the little niggles all that more worse and cutting this down could really benefit the venue.

To Conclude

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for listening to me rant away. I had such high hopes for this place when I first went and it saddens me to have lost that magic optimism I once had for the venue. I hope to regain it some day.

So to conclude, I’d like to clarify that I have nothing against the Broadwick Live team and what they do. The work they do for the electronic music scene has been nothing short of miraculous and there’s lots for them to be proud of there.

However, saying that, I think that Drumsheds needs a long and hard look at. As much as it may still seem to work on the surface with the events they’re posting from the current SS25 season in full flow, the fact that none of my clubbing peers are overly keen on returning is a telling tale of the venue’s potential future. Word of mouth is a powerful force in the electronic music community.

In fact, I don’t actually recall whether any of the AW24 season shows actually sold out. I’m sure there must have been a few, but I could always find tickets to the upcoming weekend’s shows on the few times I checked even only a few days in advance. This is a far cry from the year prior where the Bicep x Hydra show sold out completely within minutes months prior. I remember vividly as I was trying for a ticket.

So Drumsheds, make me want to come back. After all, for those readers who know me, I do love a Big Night Out and your halls are (almost) perfect for it.

One Last Thing

In a weird twist of fate, after initially finishing this post, I came across a few Instagram posts from Drumsheds covering their SS25 season and I had the urge to take a look at the comments and see what people were saying in there. And to my delight, I saw many commending the improvements that venue has been making. It seems like they’ve been taking on the feedback from the AW24 season and have done a lot of work to improve the venue especially in the queueing department.

One can only hope that it isn’t too little, too late though.

A middle class lad in his late twenties dissatisfied with his relatively stable and social London life packed up his bags and headed for Berlin to, according to him, “go on a new adventure” which we all know is code for “finding yourself” without admitting that you share a goal with a 19 year old backpacking around Thailand.

Why Berlin? You may ask.

“It’s not as gentrified as London yet and I can afford my own flat,” you will hear him say despite his overwhelming naivety about how messy the Berlin housing market is.

“London has gotten a bit samey for me and I like how Berlin has retained its ‘edge’ and originality,” he says even though his Vinted wishlist is already full of only black clothing and he’s been debating bleaching what’s left of his rapidly vanishing hair.

“I want to experience the electronic music scene there as I’m a big fan of electronic music and Berlin’s the ‘techno capital’ of the world,” and well this goes without saying. Let’s see how he fares with how late they start here despite his dislike of being awake past 6am.

It’s all just one big stereotype isn’t it.

Upcoming

Anyhow, expect more from me. I’ve missed doing this. Got a few London ones in the works but I want to start talking about this fantastic city that I’ve been itching to move to for close to a decade now.

So yeah, watch this space.

For my avid readers, you may have sorely missed my post from last week, don’t fret! It’s here today!

However it may be my last Five Track Friday for the time being. Sadly, these posts take a fair bit of time to write and it’s eating into time I’d like to spend DJing (to the insects in my bedroom) and producing (badly). Rather unfortunately, I do actually have a full time job so finding time to invest in my electronic passion is already few and far between already.

So I’m going to take a break from the weekly post for now. But this means I will have more time to write the more long form articles that I prefer to write. I’ve had a few ideas bouncing around my head recently which I want to put to paper so my posting will reduce in frequency for the time being.

But without further ado, let’s dig in.

Out And About

I was sent this Guardian article about the dying idea of the big and spotaneous nights out this week and it got me thinking about the state of the scene today. I feel that the journalist, Emine Saner, correctly points out that price is a big factor in the changing energy of the scene. Things are just way more expensive nowadays and this can be a bit turn-off when it comes to suggesting a night out. And Saner also notes the rise of the “day rave” and how people are prioritising sleep more which is definitely a pattern I’ve started noticing amongst my peer group.

However I feel there are certain factors that she missed that I also feel contribute to this fading idea.

Firstly, bang for buck.

Day raves aren’t only good for early bedtimes but they also tend to have pretty stacked lineups that often beat what clubs have to offer. I’m heading to Drumsheds next weekend for the HYDRA X BICEP event and there are 23 DJs playing that day. I only paid around £45 for my ticket and it gives me a whole selection of acts that I can go and see. However, on that same night, the Confidence Man DJs are playing at Phonox for around £25 but only for 3 DJs. True, they’re completely different events so it’s not the best comparison to compare them like for like. But if you’re trying to convince less frequent “big-night-out-friends” of yours to come with you, which seems like the better offer? 23 DJs for £45 and bedtime by midnight? Or 3 DJs for £25 and a potential 6am bedtime?

Secondly, and I think this is one of the biggest factors affecting the dying idea of a big night out, is renting.

Your biggest night out lovers in a given city will be those aged 22-30 and they’re also the most likely to be renting in that city. And with rents ever increasing to the eye watering levels that they currently are in London, it’s becoming ever and ever harder to find a good rental flat. Not only does it impact your spending money for a given month, but high rents also tend to push people further and further out of the city. This, in turn, increases the likelihood that friendship groups will be living further and further away from each other, which increases the necessary investment into spending time as a group. It’s no longer a simple task to hit up the local pub, you now have to factor in a 45 minute journey and when the last train runs. And why would you scupper your meticulous plans with a spontaneous night out?

I think this is why areas of London like Hackney and Clapham are so popular, as rents in those areas tend to be pretty steady across the entire borough so it ever so slightly increases the chances that you can live within a walkable distance of your friends. Shame that’s changing though with my recent browsing of Hackney flats returning an average of £1200 a room. Also they both have nightlifes even if Clapham’s is limited to Infernos and Cafe Sol (ew).

Anyhow, I think it’s a tough one. On the one hand I’m loving the rise of the day rave and day clubs as I do appreciate a good night’s sleep. But on the other hand it’s sad to see the slow demise of the grassroots venue and the spontaneous night out. It’s a classic adage that “the spontaneous nights out are the best nights out” and I do hope that we build local communities again one day that can enable this.

Let’s dive into the music.

Five Tracks

Going through the acts for next week’s Hydra event at Drumsheds, I came across Icemorph’s We Got This which is a delightfully dreamy breakbeat track. It’s released on Bandcamp under the ever mysterious CloudCore label who only allow (reasonably priced) purchases for a week before locking it behind a £999 payment. I’ve joined the Discord server and I’m intrigued to see what else comes out from them…

Next up is Joe Goddard and Laima’s Rapid Fire which is heavy house beat. This one popped up in my Release Radar Spotify playlist last week and I love how energetic it is.

Lawrence Harts’s NoMoreLuv4U comes in third this week with its ethereal chords and garage-y wubby bassline. I find that this style of crisp, clean, and fast house music to be very popular nowadays and Lawrence Hart is a pioneer in the style.

This next one is for the nu-disco / disco house lovers and it’s the club mix of Golden Boy by Lifelike. Gorgeous disco beats on a classic house track, what’s not to love with this. The slow rise into the drop is a real hands in the air moment.

Finally, we have Lucky Star by LUXE (who is also playing Drumsheds next week). A fast but light techno track, you can hear the acid influences in the riffs in this one. Intriguing and addictive.

Bonus Content

I’ve got some great bonus content for you readers this week. I came across Silkybeatz on Tiktok recently where he had posted a clip of this short documentary he produced about the state of the dance music scene at the moment and the issues that are plaguing it. I love his discussion with Kiku about the state of phones on the dancefloor and the role social media has on promoting events.

Until Next Time

Well, until next time. I’m not sure I’ll do weekly posts again for the time being. It really does eat into my week but I did enjoy doing them. As I said earlier I much prefer writing the long form over the short as I feel I can spend much more time researching the topics and getting really into it.

I hope you enjoyed the recommendations I shared and I will definitely be sharing more in the future.

Until next time.

Hope those of you who tried for Glastonbury last night were lucky, and if not, I hope you’re lucky on Sunday instead!

Out And About

I gave this fascinating interview with Nardwuar a read this week where the interview tried to “out-Nardwuar” Nardwuar. If you didn’t already know, Nardwuar has a knack for finding out rogue secrets about those he’s interviewing, especially things the interviewee have probably never mentioned before. This, combined with his endearing charm and fun outfits, makes for a totally unique interviewing experience, for the interviewee and the audience.

The stunned reactions he gets from those he talks to have become viral hits in and of themselves and compilations have been thrown together showcasing his in depth knowledge of the scene.

Whilst Nardwuar mostly interviews hip hop and rap stars, he’s also recently done an interview with Fred Again! I’d love it if he started interviewing more electronic artists, I would be fascinated to see what he unearths about someone like Four Tet…

Five Tracks

Got an acid-y groover to start this week off. Sohrab’s Fool’s Demise is dark and brooding with a squelchy drive powering through it. The synth riff gives this ethereal charm to the piece.

Mi Amor by Swales comes in at number 2 this week and it’s a fun house beat with varying melodies throughout giving it a pleasing complexity. I’m absolutely hooked on the chord stabs.

Stepping up the BPM, we have SAY IT RIGHT by DJ CDQ at number 3 which is a fun and fast remix of Nelly Furtado. This kind of hard house is very “in” at the moment and I’ve seen calls to brand this style as “tiktok music” as it often performs well there. Personally, I think it’s fun.

A proper house groover in next at number 4. Adrien’s Calvet’s Begin has a real drive to its 4-to-the-floor beat and the addictive bassline gets me moving.

And taking it back to one of my earlier finds for the last track, we have Hamdi by Nachtbraker. This one is a real summer beat that always gets me smiling.

Bonus Content

Got an album that’s a must listen this week. Salute’s most recent release TRUE MAGIC is an electronic music masterclass. His unique production style and sound is just magical from beginning to end. No one quite doing it like him.

Until Next Time

As you can probably tell, I’ve been low key rushing these posts as I panic do them before work on Friday mornings. Whoops. I’ll see how I go in the future as I’m debating resorting to just the long form and dropping this shorter form style as it takes up so much time. Keen to hear thoughts on this so if you actually read this please do let me know.

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed!

See you next Friday.

Another week another bout of obsessively listening to bleeps and bloops.

Let’s dig in.

Out And About

Not much to talk about this week, but I did read Bandcamp’s article on The Great Tech House Revival. For a genre that was so fundamental to me getting into electronic music whilst I was at university, it’s nice to see it coming back. There is a lot in the article I resonate with, especially with the points about how the genre became a bit formulaic. You can spot a tech house track a mile away almost literally at a festival with generic 4-to-the-floor beats and a pumping bass.

Without hating on individual artists (or Toolroom where I found these tracks), listen to these three tracks and tell me they don’t sound really similar.

I can hate all I want, it’s still a fun genre, but it has gotten a bit same-y over the years.

Anyhow, onto the music.

Five Tracks

Starting off with another housey number, Forever Pleasure by marma is a fun little bopper. With ethereal chords and dreamlike but energetic quality, it goes without saying that this gets me moving.

Deadmau5 is back this week with Re_Jaded, a beautiful 12 minute rendition of his Jaded track that has you floating along with its transcendent chords. Brings tears to my eyes.

Pat Lok is an artist I’ve been follwoing for some time and I was reminded of his track thru 2 u the other day. A fun summer banger, it reminds me of warmer (and especially lighter) days of partying in the sun.

A more esoteric addition this week is Headache’s The Beginning Of The End. A more ambient, spoken word track by Vegyn’s alter moniker, you initially think the lyrics are mostly nonsense, but give it a listen again and think. There’s something relatable about them…

And for the last track this week, we have Change This Pain For Ecstasy by Rex The Dog. Its rolling energy is addictive and I love that siren that kicks in on the first drop. A proper roller.

Bonus Content

Stumbled upon this absolute banger of a playlist this week, having not heard of rare groove before I decided to go on a bit of a hunt on Spotify to see what I could find. And wow I’ve fallen in love with this genre. Smooth, easy listening, it’s the perfect accompaniment to a morning cup of coffee.

Funk Assault did an absolutely WILD 10 hour set for Resident Advisor recently and I can’t help but jump around it and marvel at the vast array of genres present. I’ve had it on in at least three workouts recently and I’ve never been bored. This one requires locking in for the long haul.

Until Next Time

To the (few) readers, please do send me music! I’m always keen to hear what everyone has been listening to. Link it below or find me on my socials which are linked below the email.

Hope you enjoyed!

See you next Friday.

Winter is rapidly approaching and it’s getting proper dark outside now which is quite the slog. Thanks to climate change, however, I’m still finding that I can go outside without an actual coat which is maddening.

Anyway another week another Five Track Friday.

Out And About

Salute tweeted about an idea of his to throw small cap, no phone parties and it got me thinking about the state of parties and mobile phones at the moment. This discourse is not a new one by any means but I think it’s good that more and more mainstream DJs are beginning to talk about it. There’s little that’s more annoying than trying to enjoy a moment on a night out only to look up and see a sea of people motionless holding their phones in the air.

And I’m guilty of it too, I love recording snippets that I can watch back the following day. But I personally find that the sheer prevalence of such sights is beginning to detract from the scene in a major way. Gone are the days of “living in the moment” and now it’s all about “capturing the moment” instead. The focus has shifted to the DJ and away from the experience and whilst I love it that DJs are getting recognised for their craft, I think there’s more to nights out than just the DJ themselves.

I hope this energy continues and we see a refocus on creating an experience, instead of a spectacle.

Kyle Chayka wrote for the New Yorker about why’s he quitting Spotify recently and a lot of his qualms with the service echo my thoughts exactly. I remember the days when I first started using the app over 10 years ago and I was blown away by just how enjoyable the whole listening experience was. It came with a blindingly fast desktop app that had all the music you wanted to listen to on it and the free service was actually okay back then.

Nowadays, it’s an AI generated mess with a disastrously slow desktop app and its “recommendations” are basically shoving the same music you already listen to back down into your gullet. I used to love browsing the official curated playlists and discovering a fantastic array of new music however most are now just algorithmically generated with some playlists even getting accused of being filled with AI generated songs.

In my opinion, I listen to music for the musicians, not the music. This idea of “passive listening” that Chayka argues Spotify is driving towards is not something I align with. I don’t want to listen to anything, I want to listen to what people have created and what people have curated.

Finally, Holden Seidlitz wrote about The Dare for the New Yorker too. I’m intrigued by this artist, he came mostly out of nowhere and I first became aware of him when his track Girls started going viral on Tiktok.

I’m absolutely loving this newfound trend of “fun dance pop” which artists such as Confidence Man are pioneering at the moment. With simple, catchy lyrics and addictive riffs, it’s the perfect antithesis to a lot of the world’s more depressing recent news cycles. I would even argue that Charli XCX’s Brat album also fits this description and it’s roaring success speaks volumes about what people want to hear at the moment.

People want to dance, they want to be silly, and they want to have fun.

Anyway, onto the music.

Five Tracks

Deadmau5 is not an artist I would usually associate with house-y beats, but his track Charlie can’t dance is exactly that. With a delicious background breakbeat and an acid track that would make 90s producers salivate, it’s getting first pick of the week today. I just wish it was slightly longer, it’s a hard life trying to get jiggy with it in just over 2 minutes.

Llewellyn’s For The Weekend on Gerd Janson’s Running Back label is a gorgeously uplifting italo banger. With a soaring riff and pumping kick drum, it’s a delectable hands in the air moment.

Fatima Yamaha is best known for his track What’s A Girl To Do (which is arguably a top track of all time) but on a recent deep dive on his Bandcamp page, I came across And The Wes. An energetic stomper of a track, the driving synth riff has me bouncing along to it.

Carrying on with the house theme, Gene On Earth’s Fan Man is on his recent EP The Velvet Edge that I came across on Resident Advisor’s summer themes roundup. I’m absolutely hooked on this “waft” vibe (according to RA) that’s hitting the charts at the moment. It’s the kind of house you can just bop along to and would work well at a day rave. Try not to sway along to this one.

Finally, Tim’s Symphony by Younger Rebinds was a shazam find from the Todd Terje set in Phonox last week. Again, it’s a house track (surprise surprise from me) and it was a sublime addition to his day time set. Another italo house hands in the air banger, you’d think I’d never actually put my hands down during a set (and you wouldn’t be wrong).

Bonus Content

Not much in terms of bonus content this week but I did give Josey Rebelle and Ben Sims’ set from Field Maneuvers a listen this week in the gym. With pumping techno from beginning to end, it’s an energetic journey and one I would recommend putting on during a workout.

Until Next Time

I’m seeing Barry Can’t Swim tonight which is going to be a treat, can’t wait for that. And with November kicking off today there’s a whole feast of events I can’t wait to attend in the coming month.

Shazam baby, I hope you’re ready.

See you next Friday.

I’m blaming me moving out of my flat. However, I’m back to it and have got a few things to share today.

Out And About

Firstly, Jackmaster passed away two weeks ago. His name was one of the first I came across as I ventured into the world of electronic music over 10 years ago and he was overwhelmingly popular amongst my peers. DJs all over my socials have been posting their heartfelt messages. The Resident Advisor obituary by Gabriel Szatan is an excellently written cover of his tumultuous history and I would do it a disservice by saying too much. I highly recommend giving it a read.

Chal Ravens has written an intriguing piece for The Quietus about “The Academisation of Rave” where she talks about the rise in people talking about nightlife in a world where nightlife is dying. There’s an irony in there somewhere about me, an amateur blogger, writing about how another writer has written about other people writing about raving.

I personally don’t see the issue with this academisation, if you ask me, I would say raving is an art form in its own right and art history is fascinating. The scene has been around for 40+ years now and in that time trends have emerged and died only to be replaced by new ones. I think it’s exciting to go back in time and see how things have changed in a scene I am so passionate about. Also, the pioneers of the scene are still alive! Let’s document what we can now so that we can preserve its roots and history for our children.

Anyway, onto the music.

Five Tracks

Jersey are a French pair I first came across on Tiktok a while back (an annoyingly good place to find new music) and I really enjoy their energetic take on the “stutter house” genre that’s become so popular recently. This, combined with their addictive mastery of social media, make them pioneers in the modern electronic music scene.

This next artist was a Reddit find of all places. Von GDK is a delightfully house-y artist that oozes groove and Catalystic Neon Funk is a fun little saucey number by the French producer.

private browsing is an intriguing find this week who, according to his Spotify page, released six albums in six weeks which is an impressive feat. Each album differs from the next with some closer to rock and others definitely more electronic. I can’t seem to make heads or tails of the artist and I love it. aura debt is my highlight track from him and it’s a gorgeously low key house-y track.

Bandcamp is quickly becoming my go to place to find music and I look forward to every Bandcamp Friday. In their latest Bandcamp Friday they talked about Glass Beams, an Australian trio that infuses Eastern elements into a rather jazzy style.

I’ve recently become a big fan of what I like to call “mysterious techno” which I loosely define as techno with a bit of tension in it and Djembuka by Sepbtt fits this description perfectly. There’s a certain pleasurable anxiety to the track that would send a dance floor into a spin.

Bonus Content

This weekend I’m off to see Todd Terje! The Norwegian artist has been a long time love of mine and I’ve even managed to get my dad addicted to him. Ever since I got my ears round Inspector Norse all those years ago I couldn’t stop listening to him so to say I’m excited is an understatement.

However, I have no idea what to expect. In my research I couldn’t really find any live sets from him that aren’t at least 10 years old. But I did come across this set from Oya Festival 2014 which made for a perfect afternoon’s listening.

Until Next Time

November is going to be a good month, I think I have 8 gigs planned so I’m hoping for some good finds. I’ll try not to miss another week in the mean time though.

See you next Friday.

Got some exciting tracks that I would like to share. But first, I thought I would also talk a bit about what I’ve been reading this past week too and seeing out and about.

Firstly, I’ve been powering through The Secret DJ’s first book “Secret DJ” and it’s been a great insight into the life of a DJ and the trials and tribulations that come with the career. Often, I find electronic music journalism talks about the culture from a more objective standpoint and The Secret DJ’s first hand account of the scene is a totally new perspective on the scene.

Pitchfork has a good article on the recent court case deciding whether or not a dembow riddim rhythm can be copyrighted. So far, copyright has always been on the melody, not the rhythm, but this trial could change that. I was recommended this article by Shawn Reynaldo in his First Floor newsletter and I highly recommend giving his Substack a read too.

First Floor

A newsletter about electronic music and the culture / industry that surrounds it.

By Shawn Reynaldo

DJMag is reducing the frequency of its print issues from monthly to quarterly in a move that echos the “pausing” of the Mixmag print edition many years ago (which has yet to resume). As much as DJMag talk of “tripling the shelf life” and having “an increased number of pages”, I can’t help but feel they’re doing this because print journalism doesn’t play the role in journalism it used to have. I always enjoyed picking up a copy of Mixmag / DJMag at WHSmith’s for a long train ride and I hope that print journalism is here to stay a while yet.

Ableton has announced their latest product: Move. A small and portable beat machine with what looks like a whole arsenal of features attached. And goddamn do I want it. I wonder if it’ll make my simple 909 beats sound any better than the desktop software…

There’s been talk of the Berlin clubbing scene potentially on its way out. With Watergate and Wilde Renate shutting this year, the city’s crown of clubbing capital is without a doubt under threat. Rents are rising fast in the city and many are pointing the blame of the clubs shutting at the infamous landlord Gijora Padovicz. His notoriety has reached the point that some have started tracking his behaviours on the rather interestingly named Padowatch blog. I’m just glad I got to witness Watergate before it shuts.

Finally, Field Day is moving to Brockwell Park! This is following from what I’m hearing is a sale from the All Points East crew to the Brockwell Park festivals crew. They’ve got a new look too which I’m loving. I went in 2023 to the festival and thought it was alright, I wonder how it’s going to change with the move.

Five Tracks

As always, we’re starting strong, and CC:DISCO!’s new track Yes Papi (Miami Daddy Theme) is a big house beat. The Australian producer’s powerful kick drum powers through the beat hypnotically with the bass bouncing alongside it.

Terrence Parker’s Help Is On The Way (TP Unreleased Re-Edit) is a soulful Chicago house hands in the air stomper. It’s hard not to love a gospel house track.

AK SPORTS has dropped an absolute weapon of an EP recently and my personal highlight is Motherfkn Breakbeat which has a wild array of hard and powerful breakbeats throughout. Can imagine this causing a storm in a sweaty warehouse.

Throwing it back to one of my earliest finds, Selee by Super Flu is a psychedelic journey from beginning to end. The percussive elements have me in a trance and I can’t recommend the Line Rider music video enough.

And lastly, we have Maximum Flavour’s Workout Buddy which I discovered on the Attack Mag’s “House Music Under 1000 Plays That Needs To Be Heard” playlist on Spotify. Another house hitter with a tight beat and catchy riff. I love that they’ve created a playlist for tunes with under 1000 plays since Spotify no longer pays out for any fewer plays any more. I see the business sense behind the move but for a company that claims to support the music industry, I can’t see how it’s meant to help up and coming artists.

Bonus Content

Just because 5 tracks is never enough.

Dekmantel have recently uploaded a fat playlist of the sets from the festival in July and I’ve been hooked on the CEM & Mama Snake set which I witnessed at UFO 1 on the Sunday. The track at 46 minutes bewitched me at the time and a lucky SoundCloud comment revealed it to be Rotary-XL by Aloka which went straight into the monthly playlist.

I’ve also been absolutely rinsing Ben Böhmer’s latest album and I can’t wait to see him in November at Ally Pally in London. I never knew electronic music could be so emotional.

Until Next Time

Two for two, let’s hope I remember to do it again next Friday. Hope you all enjoyed another weekly roundup of tracks I’m obsessed with. Lots on this next week as I move out of my current flat but I reckon I can pull five tracks out of somewhere.

Also if you’re reading this, let me know if you like the weekly readings bit at the beginning. I’m thinking of experimentung with the format of this weekly post and I’m keen to hear what people think.

See you next Friday.

So I’ve decided to change tack.

Instead of a monthly round up, I thought I would do weekly, and limit the coverage to only 5 tracks. Which arguably makes both the writing and listening processes way easier.

So without further ado, let’s dive in.

Getting Jiggy With It

Starting us off strong, we have Peace, Love & Dancing by 100 Poems from his album Balearic As A System Of Belief, a project by the DJ Mike Wilson. Gloriously euphoric, this track is one uplifting rise after the other. I can’t quite get enough of just how happy this track makes me. My only criticism is how much fun it would be being played a just little faster at maybe 120-125bpm instead of the listed 110.

The next track I wanted to highlight was one of Jamie xx’s latest from this new album: In Waves. Following the almost relentless dropping of singles over the summer leading up to its release, the album is finally out and it’s a fantastic listen from beginning to end. My stand out track is Breather and I’m a fan of how it almost rolls through its various melodies and takes you through a blissful journey from beginning to end.

Going old school now, I’ve recently been reading a lot more about electronic music culture and its history. On a recent holiday I powered through Rave On: Global Adventures in Electronic Dance Music by Matthew Collin and found the chapter on Detroit fascinating. Of course, upon returning to London, I went on a deep dive into the artists mentioned in that chapter and rediscovered the gem that is Strings Of Life by Derrick May. A track that has been remixed time and time again since its release in 1987 and can be found in many sets from around the world. It deserves a place in the electronic music hall of fame.

Bandcamp deep dives is one of the ways I love to spend a weekend. And in a world where algorithms and recommendations shove themselves in your face and turn you into a more passive discoverer of music instead of active, Bandcamp does away with this and simply presents itself as is and uses its elite cohort of writers and editors to personally recommend what to listen to instead. I relish the challenge of diving into the site and seeing what I can discover by myself, which brings me onto my next track: Chief (Unreleased Version 1) by XCOR which I found on a label binge a few days ago. Originally released in 1996, this track had a recent repressing and listing on Bandcamp and is a heavy house hitter from beginning to end. The energetic and deep bass pounds throughout the song and leaves me in a trance.

Not only do I recommend digging through Bandcamp, but I also highly recommend attending your local vinyl fair and seeing what they’ve got going on there. The other week I attended the Black Gold Vinyl Fair in Hackney Wick and had a dive into the many stalls. I may have left £90 down but I found some absolutely wild records in the mean time. Elliptical Headz’s River of Trance is a rare track from 1993 that had a repressing in 2023 and currently lists 0 (AKA <1000) plays on Spotify which doesn’t happen very often. A pure roller from beginning to end, it hits heavy and it hits hard.

Until Next Time

Thanks for coming along to a first Five Track Friday. Will I be organised enough to continue doing this? Who knows. It’s a bid to write more regularly and produce more interesting content for my many readers (AKA friends and family I’ve forced to subscribe).

I’ve got a few heavy weeks of music incoming which I’m looking forward to and I’m excited to see who and what else I discover.

See you next Friday.