Music Not Diving with Scuba

As you know, we're in the midst of celebrating 20 years of Hotflush Recordings. I've done a few interviews to co-incide with that recently, but I am very rarely satisfied with how an interview turns out in print. Luckily I do a weekly podcast and am taking the opportunity to interview myself (kind of) over a two part podcast, the first half of which is this week's episode. I talk about the motivations for starting a label twenty years ago, the problem with A&Ring your own material, the key developments in the period up to 2010, and the invaluable help and guidance from a man called Chris Parkinson. This episode refers to Episodes 10 (Appleblim), 27 (Chris Goss), 28 (Joe Nice), 54 (Distance). If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! We'd be honoured and extremely grateful for your contribution to developing the show. Plus there's a private area......in the Hotflush Discord ServerListen to all the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlistFor more links and other info visit the official Scuba websiteFollow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The pandemic caused havoc across the music industry, but are we making a mistake in laying the blame for the epidemic of show cancellations in particular at the door of COVID-19? In this cut from Episode 41 of the Not A Diving Podcast, Elijah details his analysis of the problems in the live space and why digging deeper always makes sense. Listen to the full episode here (all platforms). If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! We'd be honoured and extremely grateful for your contribution to developing the show. Plus there's a private area......in the Hotflush Discord ServerListen to all the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlistFor more links and other info visit the official Scuba websiteFollow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Untitled Group is Australia's largest independent music & events company, running a list of key festivals including Beyond The Valley and Pitch, and selling over 400k tickets per year in the process. Our guest this week, Fil Palermo, is a co-founder and director of Untitled, which he and his partners built from teenagers running DIY club nights into a world class promoter of large festivals booking some of the worlds biggest acts.Australia is a distinctive corner of the global music industry, and Fil guides us through the details and distinguishing features of the local market. We also discuss the mechanics of running a festival, the learning curve required to get up to speed from a knowledge base of not-that-much, diversity and variety on festival lineups, and a whole lot of other stuff as well. Untitled is a great example of an organisation showing it's possible to be serious about music, show real attention to detail in large events, and build something great without the need for corporate backing. This was a great conversation and an episode you're going to enjoy!A quick heads up that the second in the HF20 Scuba mix series will out this Friday. It's called 'Post Whatstep?' and unsurprisingly features a lot of Post-Dubstep. Tunes from Mount Kimbie, Untold, and George FitzGerald, amongst many others. It also features my single 'In Yr Dreams' which is OUT NOW. And a recent collab I knocked up with Nikki Nair called Expression which is out as a single on Friday too. If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! We'd be honoured and extremely grateful for your contribution to developing the show. Plus there's a private area......in the Hotflush Discord ServerListen to all the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlistFor more links and other info visit the official Scuba websiteFollow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Electro, IDM, techno, Warp, Rephlex, all that stuff. We talked about this stuff with Ned Beckett on episode 34 - it was a really interesting and fertile corner of the UK underground in the late 90s and early 2000s. It was also the entry point into music for this week's guest, Josh Doherty, as half of Posthuman and promoter of illegal raves in tube stations and other unusual locations. Since then, he's spent well over a decade running the I Love Acid party and Balkan Vinyl label, as well as keeping up his production output and externalising his thoughts prolifically on twitter. We discuss that electro/techno UK crossover point, the parties back then, and the parties now, the influence of the pandemic, and how the music and the scene has developed in the recent past. Josh is an underground warrior who does things his way, with little-to-no compromise. It's an approach that has served him well, and makes for good listening - you're going to enjoy this episode! In other news, we have announced some shows to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Hotflush. Full details and all ticket links for shows in Tel Aviv, Bristol, Munich, Barcelona, London, Berlin, Lyon, Copenhagen, and Glasgow are here: hf20.news/eventsIf you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! We'd be honoured and extremely grateful for your contribution to developing the show. Plus there's a private area......in the Hotflush Discord ServerListen to all the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlistFor more links and other info visit the official Scuba websiteFollow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Political stands have become a key weapon in the arsenal of music marketers. The level of cynicism and virtue signalling is beyond belief. In this cut from Episode 22 of the Not A Diving Podcast, Dave Clarke and I discuss that phenomenon, and why it's so important that when musicians talk about politics that it comes from a position of sincerity. Listen to the full episode here (all platforms). If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! We'd be honoured and extremely grateful for your contribution to developing the show. Plus there's a private area......in the Hotflush Discord ServerListen to all the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlistFor more links and other info visit the official Scuba websiteFollow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What did you do with your lockdown holiday? I was intending to learn a language and ended up just gaining a bunch of weight.Our guest this week - Detroit native Eric Cloutier - was a bit more productive than that - he embarked upon a project to reacquaint himself with a record collection that he'd been adding to for over 20 years, which ended up being broadcast to the world in a series of ten mixes entitled The Arsonist & The Architect. I highly recommend checking out those 20 hours of mixes, in addition to the two that you're going to spend on this week's episode - they are collectively a real example of a top DJ exploring a range of styles in a highly skillful manner. We discuss the project in the conversation, in addition to more prosaic matters such as the politics of the Detroit music scene, the inspirational nature of Berlin, and attempting to tease out the positive developments in the wider dance scene since the pandemic.This was a highly enjoyable conversation with someone who I know well socially, but provided me with a lot to chew on and a lot to think about. You're going to enjoy it too!As hinted at last week, we are celebrating 20 years of Hotflush Recordings this year. I started the label in 2003, so that's where we are. Already out is a collaborative single I produced with last week's guest, Distance... that's called Opposites and you can listen to that here. This Friday, a mix entitled 'Hotflush Origins' will be dropping across all platforms. You can probably guess what kind of thing that's going to be, but be sure to check it out - it's a mix I'm really happy with. And going forward over the next few weeks there will be a series of more singles and mixes - five singles in total, and four mixes. All the info for that can be found at hf20.news - there will be regular updates there, so keep hitting F5. Finally, there will be a run of shows announced this week so keep an eye out for that. If your city isn't included then fear not - there will be more shows across the world throughout the year!Patrons will be guest-listed up on request, so don't hesitate to reach out on that. It's gonna be a lot of fun and I hope to see you all for a dance at some stage before the year is out. If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! We'd be honoured and extremely grateful for your contribution to developing the show. Plus there's a private area......in the Hotflush Discord ServerListen to all the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlistFor more links and other info visit the official Scuba websiteFollow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hotflush Recordings turns 20 this year. There'll be an announcement later this week but we're pre-empting it here with an episode featuring the first 'external' artist ever to release on the label. Something I totally forgot to mention in the intro is that we've actually also made a new track, with more than half an eye on those early days of Dubstep, which is out on Friday - get it here. Always so organised on this show. Since his first Hotflush release in January 2004, Distance appeared on the legendary Mary Anne Hobbs Dubstep Warz Radio 1 show, and went on to release albums on Planet Mu and Tectonic, as well as a further 12" with us.He also played three times at our SUB:STANCE parties at Berghain, and has been a mainstay of the biggest Dubstep raves in the UK, including FWD>> and DMZ. He is, in short, a Dubstep legend. We discuss all that, as well as his more recent work with Riz Ahmed, adapting his artistic output during the pandemic, juggling family life, and much else besides. This was a hugely enjoyable conversation for me, and you're gonna love it too. If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! We'd be honoured and extremely grateful for your contribution to developing the show. Plus there's a private area......in the Hotflush Discord ServerYou could also support by buying direct from us (and wearing) a Hotflush Musicality t-shirt!Listen to all the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlistFor more links and other info visit the official Scuba websiteFollow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The music scene of the North-East of England is often overshadowed by, or sometimes even conflated with, the North-West. Everyone knows about the music of Liverpool and Manchester but there are no equivalents of The Beatles or Oasis on Tyneside. Despite that, and putting aside for one moment quite-famous names like Mark Knopfler and Neil Tennant, Newcastle has in recent years produced some of the biggest names in club music, from Patrick Topping to Richy Ahmed. On this week's episode we welcome another native of the region - Geoff Kirkwood, aka Man Power, aka Bedwettter, a dance music expert who recently completed a stint as artist-in-residence at the internationally renowned Sage Gateshead, which included the composition of a symphony in collaboration with Fiona Brice and the Royal Northern Sinfonia. We discuss his journey from self-taught house producer to performance in world-class concert halls, as well as a wide range of topics from the effect of deindustrialisation on music, to speculating what contemporary music might be performed in a couple of hundred years from now. He has releases forthcoming on Nocturne and Echocentric, and can be seen DJing back to back with Paul Woolford at King Street Social Club on 25 Feb. Geoff is a singular character overflowing with insight and stories, and you are going to love this episode. Some release news... one of our favourite producers, Anna Kost drops her full debut Hotflush release, See Life Better EP, this Friday. It's a smasher, get it here.If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! We'd be honoured and extremely grateful for your contribution to developing the show. Plus there's a private area......in the Hotflush Discord ServerListen to all the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlistFor more links and other info visit the official Scuba websiteFollow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why should the DJs get all the money?And there is a lot of it. Over a billion dollars in fees paid to arguably the least popular members of the music industry every year, mostly for "adding value" to a live event by playing other peoples' music.This week's guest, DVS1, has led a team which seeks to address that financial imbalance by providing an elegant mechanism for DJs to give some of their astronomical remuneration back to the producers whose hard work they make a living free-riding on.It's called Aslice, and you should join it right NOW. Whether you're a DJ, wracked with the guilt of stiffing so many people for so long, or a producer, hoping to pick up some of that revenue that's yours by right. You might think the above is somewhat hyperbolic, but I can stand behind the broad thrust of it. This really is a serious imbalance in the market, and correcting it will do so much good on so many levels. Which is one of the topics of this week's conversation.In addition to that, we discuss my interlocutor's roots in the Minneapolis rave scene, building the ideal party, and the relationship between his DJing, producing, and promoting. There will be NO PODCAST NEXT WEEK, so check back in on Tuesday 17 Jan. If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! We'd be honoured and extremely grateful for your contribution to developing the show. Plus there's a private area......in the Hotflush Discord ServerListen to all the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlistFor more links and other info visit the official Scuba websiteFollow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello from Tokyo... I am playing at Vent on 28 Dec and in Hakuba on 29 Dec. On New Year's Eve I will be playing all night in Toronto at Sub Division. Pretty sure that's gonna sell out so grab a final-release ticket quick. I recorded this on 24 Dec so didn't have a chance to mention the incredibly sad passing of Shaun Roberts, a really important figure in UK Underground music who gave opportunities to so many key artists, particularly through his role at fabric. RIP Shaun. This week on the show we're rounding up some of the best music of 2022, as picked by members of the Discord community and some by myself too. I also mention the best DJ set I witnessed this year, and talk a bit about the recent football World Cup and its implications for artists boycotting political regimes (yay!). If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! We'd be honoured and extremely grateful for your contribution to developing the show. Plus there's a private area......in the Hotflush Discord ServerListen to all the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlistFor more links and other info visit the official Scuba websiteFollow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.