Latest news with #electronicmusic
Yahoo
2 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
I was banned from my father's funeral
As a child I was terrified of my dad dying. He was wild and filled with creative turbulence, but he was my rock. After my parents separated when I was 11, I lived with him in a household that was chaotic and exciting in ways you'd expect in the artistic London of the 1970s. There were lots of girlfriends and I didn't always know where he was or when he'd be home. But we played piano duets and cooked together, attempting the Russian émigré food of his childhood. Peter Zinovieff was a pioneer in electronic and computer music, and his studio was in our Putney house – apparently the first home with a computer. He worked with rock stars like Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Ringo Starr and Kraftwerk, who used his EMS synthesisers. Contemporary composers like Harrison Birtwistle and Hans Werner Henze were family friends and concocted astonishing pieces using early versions of sampling. Whoever was in the studio that day was invited to lunch. Later, things went downhill. Money problems and messy relationships were exacerbated by alcohol addiction. But we always remained close. I supported Peter through the worst times and was relieved when he finally settled down, stopped drinking, married for the fourth time, and restarted a creative life that had been dormant for decades. He and his wife came to stay; I went to stay with them. We spoke frequently on the phone. He became a grand old man of electronic music – a nicely unlikely oxymoron. Then, when my father died in 2021 aged 88, I learnt that his home-made will excluded me, my siblings and anyone but his wife from attending his funeral. The ashes would go in her back garden. The shock of this rejection was awful. Why would he ban his children? A lack of imagination for our feelings? Or was he protecting his widow from the line-up of ex-wives, lovers, friends and relations – some hurt, some angry – who had also played a part in a long life that was, to put it politely, 'complicated'? I expected to feel grief for my beloved dad – but not to be devastated by the absence of a funeral. After all, who enjoys a crematorium? Yet I longed to go where his body was, to take part in a ceremony, to wear an item of his clothing, to be with others who mourned him. It was visceral. We are animals who congregate around the dead. Even elephants do it. But I also realised I was far from the first, or only, person to suffer this way. 'Missing, presumed dead' provokes a hell worse than bereavement for those left waiting. And the Covid lockdowns robbed countless people of the chance to say goodbye. The sick died alone. Funerals became forlorn affairs where hugs were banned. Sterile screens replaced the warmth of drink and food that normally revive mourners after a burial or burning. Who could forget the image of the tiny, stoic Queen sitting alone at Prince Philip's funeral, obeying the rules? I asked the celebrated psychotherapist, author and podcaster Julia Samuel (Grief Works and This Too Shall Pass) why we need death rituals. 'Funerals allow people to grieve together and to mark and honour the person they love. But the task is also to face the reality of the loss. The funeral forces you to know that the person is dead, something that needs to be acknowledged by the five senses. 'You see the coffin or the open coffin, you smell the flowers and candles, you hear the music or sing, you taste the food and drink afterwards. You return to these memories later and they help you to root yourself in the reality. If you don't see the person and you have no funeral, it's like with missing soldiers in the First World War – there's a surreal sense that they haven't died. You know it but you don't feel it.' 'Death is the great exposer,' Samuel has written. 'It forces hidden fault lines and submerged secrets into the open.' I witnessed this firsthand. My siblings and I didn't all grow up together, and each of us has a different story to tell. We'd rarely met as a group – there's only one photo of us all. It's 1992. Peter is roguishly sprawled across our laps. He's been drinking. We're grinning, though I can sense the anxiety beneath it. I'm the oldest, with two younger brothers, then three sisters with a different mother, and our youngest half-brother, who would die of an overdose at 27 – six years before our dad. The dramas of Peter's life didn't end with his death. They continued, shifting the tectonic plates. Our stepmother was unequivocally committed to carrying out his wishes, so we didn't gather in Cambridge as we'd expected. Instead, we met on video calls. I was at home in Greece, the three sisters in Vancouver, New York and London, one brother in the Hebrides and another in Brighton. During the on-screen gatherings, our framed faces blurred from technical glitches and tears. A two-dimensional box set of grief and bewilderment, we wept and laughed and, over the next wretched weeks, we became family in a new way. When the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's father died, she wrote: 'Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger.' In our own conversations and reckonings, there was rage – especially about our dad's drinking and its terrible consequences, his lack of support, his ruthlessness towards his children, and his blinkered approach to romantic relationships, which could make him forget everyone else. It was impossible not to talk about his marriage, in his 50s, to a girl of 18 – now the devastated mother of our dead brother. We also examined our dad's childhood traumas and the possible epigenetic impacts. His own mother was largely absent – the Russian 'Red Princess' I later wrote a book about, a British communist tailed by MI5, who saved Jewish lives in France while interned by the Nazis. When Peter was 18, his father was killed in a train crash and his stepmother banned him from the family home. But we also acknowledged our dad's magic: his ability to draw people together and inspire incredible creations; the adventures up mountains or camping on deserted islands; his fascination with both the sciences and the arts, which fuelled his brilliant imagination. He was a huge influence on my childhood and youth, encouraging me to read, write, play music and paint. It seemed entirely normal that, aged 12, I should sit beside him in his porch study on a remote Hebridean island, working on my own projects. While he wrote an impossibly complex libretto (complete with an invented language) for Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus, I drew stage set plans in felt pen. One of these was later used for the opera's CD cover. In the weeks before my father's cremation, I became increasingly distressed at being persona non grata around his death. There was no proper explanation – but we were to be kept even from his ashes. Amid the outrage and humour of the Zinovieff siblings' video calls, someone joked about staging a heist to steal the ashes in Cambridge. 'Or get there first at the funeral home.' I wrote notes every day; it helped, even when misery made reading peculiarly difficult. That writing eventually led to a novel. I imagined the escapade an unlikely group of resourceful siblings might undertake if banned from their father's funeral. Unlike Peter, the eponymous hero of Stealing Dad is a London-based Greek sculptor, and his sixth wife is nothing like my stepmother. His many scattered offspring bear no resemblance to me or my siblings. We didn't 'steal Dad'. But sometimes, in dreamy magical thinking – as American writer Joan Didion describes in The Year of Magical Thinking – it feels as though we did. I enjoy the blurring. At the time of the cremation, I was on a Greek island. There seemed little point in returning to England, although a few friends and family gathered for prayers in a Russian church in London. Instead, I climbed a mountain with my husband and dog, sat outside a Byzantine chapel and sobbed over the double loss – of my father and his funeral. Greeks found my situation hard to comprehend. Most follow centuries-old Orthodox traditions; funerals are a community matter and the ample memorials (at three, seven, nine and 40 days, then yearly if wanted) offer a continuing structure for powerful emotions. The bereaved congregate again and again, processing their loss, saying prayers and distributing kollyva – a 'food for the dead' that has been eaten at gravesides for millennia. The anthropologist Kate Fox (Watching the English) was also kept from her elderly father's cremation last year. However, she believes his intentions were generous – to spare his family the 'chore' of travel to the US and the ordeal of a 'sterile Western-style ceremony'. Robin Fox was not alone in requesting no funeral; perhaps David Bowie set a trend. Some don't want 'a fuss'. Eschewing ritual and religion might seem to 'keep things simple' in our increasingly secular society. Others donate their bodies to science. But these minimalists ignore the needs of the living. Like me, Kate Fox felt a void. 'Why did you feel deprived?' I asked. 'Because I'm human! The earliest known Homo sapiens from 120,000 years ago buried their dead. Archaeologists look for this ritual as a characteristic of being a 'proper' human. Look at the controversy of whether Neanderthals put flowers on graves and whether the small-brained Homo naledi [200-300,000 years ago] held burials.' Robin Fox was an influential anthropologist who forgot about the 'fundamental biological human need to matter to people and them to matter to you'. But his daughter was helped some months later, by her (and my) old lecturer at Cambridge. Emeritus prof of anthropology Alan Macfarlane hosted a day of ceremony, discussion and dinner at King's College, inviting family, colleagues and admirers. 'Did it work?' I probed. 'A hundred per cent. It was a social marking of my father 'mattering'.' I'm still sad that Peter's friends, colleagues and relations weren't given the chance to come together and make it clear that he 'mattered.' Sometimes I've felt irrationally dejected for not doing the often tedious tasks that follow a death – what Rev Richard Coles calls 'sadmin' in The Madness of Grief. I even feel a sting of envy when friends complain about the arduous sorting through a deceased parent's belongings. Caroline Lucas, former Green Party MP, says, 'We are rubbish at dealing with and talking about death… the last taboo.' We need to become 'grief-literate.' Yes! And talk about plans in advance. If we don't like the standard funerary fare, we can create our own death rituals – traditional or alternative; sacred, humanist or invented. Plumed horses and marching bands, Buddhist sky burials or 'cryomation' machinery. Gatherings in woods, at riverside ghats, or in brutalist-designed crematoria. These processes help guide us along grief's painful, unpredictable road. Without them, we are unmoored and alone. 'No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear,' wrote CS Lewis after his wife died. 'I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach…' Eventually, after a very long year, our stepmother gave us some ashes. All six siblings congregated on the Hebridean island our dad had loved. My cabinet-maker nephew, Tom Zinovieff, crafted a handsome oak box, which we buried on a peaty hill with the world's best view. Peter used to point there when we were young, saying, 'That's where you should bury me.' We lugged river stones, fossils and flowers as decoration and, since then, I've discovered the heart-soothing process of 'tending a grave'. We mourned the absence of our seventh member, our youngest brother, gone much too early. There followed a fierce conflagration on the beach with some remaining ashes and, by the time we'd eaten a picnic, slugged some whisky and drunk bonfire tea, I felt transformed – drained, but with a new sensation of peace. I don't believe in 'closure' but the rituals had worked. And they had a distinct flavour of the best aspects of my wild dad. Stealing Dad, by Sofka Zinovieff (Corsair, £20), is out now Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- General
- Telegraph
I was banned from my father's funeral
As a child I was terrified of my dad dying. He was wild and filled with creative turbulence, but he was my rock. After my parents separated when I was 11, I lived with him in a household that was chaotic and exciting in ways you'd expect in the artistic London of the 1970s. There were lots of girlfriends and I didn't always know where he was or when he'd be home. But we played piano duets and cooked together, attempting the Russian émigré food of his childhood. Peter Zinovieff was a pioneer in electronic and computer music, and his studio was in our Putney house – apparently the first home with a computer. He worked with rock stars like Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Ringo Starr and Kraftwerk, who used his EMS synthesisers. Contemporary composers like Harrison Birtwistle and Hans Werner Henze were family friends and concocted astonishing pieces using early versions of sampling. Whoever was in the studio that day was invited to lunch. Later, things went downhill. Money problems and messy relationships were exacerbated by alcohol addiction. But we always remained close. I supported Peter through the worst times and was relieved when he finally settled down, stopped drinking, married for the fourth time, and restarted a creative life that had been dormant for decades. He and his wife came to stay; I went to stay with them. We spoke frequently on the phone. He became a grand old man of electronic music – a nicely unlikely oxymoron. Then, when my father died in 2021 aged 88, I learnt that his home-made will excluded me, my siblings and anyone but his wife from attending his funeral. The ashes would go in her back garden. The shock of this rejection was awful. Why would he ban his children? A lack of imagination for our feelings? Or was he protecting his widow from the line-up of ex-wives, lovers, friends and relations – some hurt, some angry – who had also played a part in a long life that was, to put it politely, 'complicated'? I expected to feel grief for my beloved dad – but not to be devastated by the absence of a funeral. After all, who enjoys a crematorium? Yet I longed to go where his body was, to take part in a ceremony, to wear an item of his clothing, to be with others who mourned him. It was visceral. We are animals who congregate around the dead. Even elephants do it. But I also realised I was far from the first, or only, person to suffer this way. 'Missing, presumed dead' provokes a hell worse than bereavement for those left waiting. And the Covid lockdowns robbed countless people of the chance to say goodbye. The sick died alone. Funerals became forlorn affairs where hugs were banned. Sterile screens replaced the warmth of drink and food that normally revive mourners after a burial or burning. Who could forget the image of the tiny, stoic Queen sitting alone at Prince Philip's funeral, obeying the rules? I asked the celebrated psychotherapist, author and podcaster Julia Samuel (Grief Works and This Too Shall Pass) why we need death rituals. ' Funerals allow people to grieve together and to mark and honour the person they love. But the task is also to face the reality of the loss. The funeral forces you to know that the person is dead, something that needs to be acknowledged by the five senses. 'You see the coffin or the open coffin, you smell the flowers and candles, you hear the music or sing, you taste the food and drink afterwards. You return to these memories later and they help you to root yourself in the reality. If you don't see the person and you have no funeral, it's like with missing soldiers in the First World War – there's a surreal sense that they haven't died. You know it but you don't feel it.' 'Death is the great exposer,' Samuel has written. 'It forces hidden fault lines and submerged secrets into the open.' I witnessed this firsthand. My siblings and I didn't all grow up together, and each of us has a different story to tell. We'd rarely met as a group – there's only one photo of us all. It's 1992. Peter is roguishly sprawled across our laps. He's been drinking. We're grinning, though I can sense the anxiety beneath it. I'm the oldest, with two younger brothers, then three sisters with a different mother, and our youngest half-brother, who would die of an overdose at 27 – six years before our dad. The dramas of Peter's life didn't end with his death. They continued, shifting the tectonic plates. Our stepmother was unequivocally committed to carrying out his wishes, so we didn't gather in Cambridge as we'd expected. Instead, we met on video calls. I was at home in Greece, the three sisters in Vancouver, New York and London, one brother in the Hebrides and another in Brighton. During the on-screen gatherings, our framed faces blurred from technical glitches and tears. A two-dimensional box set of grief and bewilderment, we wept and laughed and, over the next wretched weeks, we became family in a new way. When the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 's father died, she wrote: 'Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger.' In our own conversations and reckonings, there was rage – especially about our dad's drinking and its terrible consequences, his lack of support, his ruthlessness towards his children, and his blinkered approach to romantic relationships, which could make him forget everyone else. It was impossible not to talk about his marriage, in his 50s, to a girl of 18 – now the devastated mother of our dead brother. We also examined our dad's childhood traumas and the possible epigenetic impacts. His own mother was largely absent – the Russian 'Red Princess' I later wrote a book about, a British communist tailed by MI5, who saved Jewish lives in France while interned by the Nazis. When Peter was 18, his father was killed in a train crash and his stepmother banned him from the family home. But we also acknowledged our dad's magic: his ability to draw people together and inspire incredible creations; the adventures up mountains or camping on deserted islands; his fascination with both the sciences and the arts, which fuelled his brilliant imagination. He was a huge influence on my childhood and youth, encouraging me to read, write, play music and paint. It seemed entirely normal that, aged 12, I should sit beside him in his porch study on a remote Hebridean island, working on my own projects. While he wrote an impossibly complex libretto (complete with an invented language) for Birtwistle's The Mask of Orpheus, I drew stage set plans in felt pen. One of these was later used for the opera's CD cover. In the weeks before my father's cremation, I became increasingly distressed at being persona non grata around his death. There was no proper explanation – but we were to be kept even from his ashes. Amid the outrage and humour of the Zinovieff siblings' video calls, someone joked about staging a heist to steal the ashes in Cambridge. 'Or get there first at the funeral home.' I wrote notes every day; it helped, even when misery made reading peculiarly difficult. That writing eventually led to a novel. I imagined the escapade an unlikely group of resourceful siblings might undertake if banned from their father's funeral. Unlike Peter, the eponymous hero of Stealing Dad is a London-based Greek sculptor, and his sixth wife is nothing like my stepmother. His many scattered offspring bear no resemblance to me or my siblings. We didn't 'steal Dad'. But sometimes, in dreamy magical thinking – as American writer Joan Didion describes in The Year of Magical Thinking – it feels as though we did. I enjoy the blurring. At the time of the cremation, I was on a Greek island. There seemed little point in returning to England, although a few friends and family gathered for prayers in a Russian church in London. Instead, I climbed a mountain with my husband and dog, sat outside a Byzantine chapel and sobbed over the double loss – of my father and his funeral. Greeks found my situation hard to comprehend. Most follow centuries-old Orthodox traditions; funerals are a community matter and the ample memorials (at three, seven, nine and 40 days, then yearly if wanted) offer a continuing structure for powerful emotions. The bereaved congregate again and again, processing their loss, saying prayers and distributing kollyva – a 'food for the dead' that has been eaten at gravesides for millennia. The anthropologist Kate Fox (Watching the English) was also kept from her elderly father's cremation last year. However, she believes his intentions were generous – to spare his family the 'chore' of travel to the US and the ordeal of a 'sterile Western-style ceremony'. Robin Fox was not alone in requesting no funeral; perhaps David Bowie set a trend. Some don't want 'a fuss'. Eschewing ritual and religion might seem to 'keep things simple' in our increasingly secular society. Others donate their bodies to science. But these minimalists ignore the needs of the living. Like me, Kate Fox felt a void. 'Why did you feel deprived?' I asked. 'Because I'm human! The earliest known Homo sapiens from 120,000 years ago buried their dead. Archaeologists look for this ritual as a characteristic of being a 'proper' human. Look at the controversy of whether Neanderthals put flowers on graves and whether the small-brained Homo naledi [200-300,000 years ago] held burials.' Robin Fox was an influential anthropologist who forgot about the 'fundamental biological human need to matter to people and them to matter to you'. But his daughter was helped some months later, by her (and my) old lecturer at Cambridge. Emeritus prof of anthropology Alan Macfarlane hosted a day of ceremony, discussion and dinner at King's College, inviting family, colleagues and admirers. 'Did it work?' I probed. 'A hundred per cent. It was a social marking of my father 'mattering'.' I'm still sad that Peter's friends, colleagues and relations weren't given the chance to come together and make it clear that he 'mattered.' Sometimes I've felt irrationally dejected for not doing the often tedious tasks that follow a death – what Rev Richard Coles calls 'sadmin' in The Madness of Grief. I even feel a sting of envy when friends complain about the arduous sorting through a deceased parent's belongings. Caroline Lucas, former Green Party MP, says, 'We are rubbish at dealing with and talking about death… the last taboo.' We need to become 'grief-literate.' Yes! And talk about plans in advance. If we don't like the standard funerary fare, we can create our own death rituals – traditional or alternative; sacred, humanist or invented. Plumed horses and marching bands, Buddhist sky burials or 'cryomation' machinery. Gatherings in woods, at riverside ghats, or in brutalist-designed crematoria. These processes help guide us along grief's painful, unpredictable road. Without them, we are unmoored and alone. 'No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear,' wrote CS Lewis after his wife died. 'I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach…' Eventually, after a very long year, our stepmother gave us some ashes. All six siblings congregated on the Hebridean island our dad had loved. My cabinet-maker nephew, Tom Zinovieff, crafted a handsome oak box, which we buried on a peaty hill with the world's best view. Peter used to point there when we were young, saying, 'That's where you should bury me.' We lugged river stones, fossils and flowers as decoration and, since then, I've discovered the heart-soothing process of 'tending a grave'. We mourned the absence of our seventh member, our youngest brother, gone much too early. There followed a fierce conflagration on the beach with some remaining ashes and, by the time we'd eaten a picnic, slugged some whisky and drunk bonfire tea, I felt transformed – drained, but with a new sensation of peace. I don't believe in 'closure' but the rituals had worked. And they had a distinct flavour of the best aspects of my wild dad.
CBC
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
Justice's best advice for artists: revel in your mistakes
French electronic duo Justice have three Grammy Awards, but they have no interest in going to expensive studios or working with famous producers. They insist on recording all of their songs in their home studio setup. "Non-professionalism is a very big component of the music that we make," says Gaspard Augé, in an interview with Q guest host Garvia Bailey. "Although we are not mixers, we've all always engineered and made things ourselves.... I always say you should mix it yourself. Because even if it's gonna sound less good, it's going to sound better. Because as the artist, you are the most relevant person to give that personality to your record." Justice's music has no shortage of character. They have a wide variety of musical influences, ranging from Funkadelic to Nirvana. The duo have also taken a lot of inspiration from Michael Jackson — they dedicated their 2007 hit song D.A.N.C.E. to him, and their new collaboration with The Weeknd sounds like a reimagined version of Thriller. Originally, Justice's song with The Weeknd was only supposed to be a short instrumental opening track. But in the end, Wake Me Up became a full five minute song with lyrics. WATCH | Official audio for Wake Me Up: "[The Weeknd] said, 'Yeah, can we make something like classical orchestrated music?' So we did that," Xavier de Rosnay explains. "And then we made like ten seconds of music just to show him that it could lead onto something else. And he's like, 'Oh yeah! That's cool!'... I think he liked the idea to once and for all concretize this kind of connection he has with Michael Jackson." After multiple decades in the industry, many music groups end up burning out or breaking up. But Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay say that they're bonded for life, and they could not be more in sync. "From the moment we met, it was really like a fusional type of relationship," Xavier de Rosnay recalls. "I think we met and two months after that, we were really spending all of our lives together. And that's still the same thing today.… I behave with him the same way I behave with myself. Like almost one entity." I behave with him the same way I behave with myself. Like almost one entity. - Xavier de Rosnay, on his relationship with Gaspard Augé "It's a bit crazy when you think about it," Gaspard Augé says. "And I still love you very much, so that's great — but it's a weird thing." The full interview with Justice is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.
BBC News
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Teesside DJ Boo to open Sunday's dance stage at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend Liverpool
An emerging DJ who will play at BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend has spoken about the challenges some artists face developing their from Teesside, believes musicians in the North East have to work "10 times as hard" to be noticed and there were "no access points" to break into the electronic music Sunday, she will be playing one of the biggest gigs of her career, opening the dance stage at the event Liverpool."I've worked so hard so to have moments like this is so special," she said. "It's such a huge opportunity." The artist described how difficult it has been trying to progress her career."It's felt like I've been in a video game and I haven't been able to get past level one for a really long time," she said."Coming from Teesside, we don't have those networks for electronic music."There's been no access point, everything I have done has been through trial and error." Boo said for her, the key was to just release music and "slowly being introduced to certain contacts and networks"."It takes a lot more time and a lot more effort," she said. "I do feel like you have to be 10 times as good for anybody to take notice."Two weeks after playing Liverpool, alongside fellow north-east performers like Sam Fender and Jade, she will be partnering with Relentless and Mura Masa at The Georgian in DJ explained how becoming a Tees Valley Artist of the Year has already had a huge impact on her career."Having that level of mentorship and development, especially coming from a working class background, is really life-changing," she said. Boo started to upload her music after the first lockdown and then progressed through the BBC Introducing scheme."The BBC has been so supportive. I never thought that I would be playing to such big crowds this soon afterwards," she said."I'm so excited, I have never played in Liverpool before. It is a huge opportunity."It just shows that hard work and perseverance pay off eventually." Follow BBC Tees on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
The Sun
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
As Brighton Music Conference kicks off we catch up with founder, Billy Mauseth
MUSIC fans across the country are gearing up for this year's Brighton Music Conference (BMC) which kicked off yesterday and runs until Saturday. BMC is the UK's foremost electronic music industry event, bringing together leading delegates and speakers for over 60 talks, seminars and workshops, plus networking events. BMC Professional connects music with business, bringing together thought leaders through a series of panels to discuss the future sustainable growth of the electronic music industry, networking events and access to evening parties across Brighton and Hove. The event is about plugging in the next generation and fostering new talent via a series of masterclasses, panels and talks. Ticket-holders will have access to the two-day exhibition featuring tech showcases, panels and interviews. 10 We caught up with BMC founder, Billy Mauseth to chat about the state of the UK electronic dance music scene, what to expect from this year's BMC and much more. You'll find more info here. HOW would you describe the current state of the UK dance music scene in 2025? Are we seeing a post-pandemic renaissance, or are there still challenges to overcome? Unfortunately, the UK dance music scene is not in the best place, with many venues shutting over the last couple of years. The rising costs of living and difficulties putting on events have also added to the problem. 10 People don't have as much money in their pockets now so many are only going out once in a while compared to regulalry attending gigs and club nights. However, I am also seeing some new venues opening and promising promoters coming through the scene which gives me hope. The next generation still loves music and wants to put on their own nights and do things their way. 10 WITH the rise of streaming and social media, how do you think artist discovery and development has shifted in dance music compared to a decade ago? Without a doubt promoters use social media platforms to see how many followers/likes artists have. A lot of acts are now booked based on this, not on their musical talent. These days you definitely need to be on top of your socials, which is a shame as music should be the most important thing in my mind. THIS year's BMC promises some exciting additions. Can you tell us what's new in 2025 and what you're looking forward to? We're really excited about the new format of this year's event. Instead of having one main venue, we'll use numerous ones to expand the programme. The New Health, Wellbeing & Lifestyle programme in collaboration with Skiddle will take place at The Harbour Hotel. Horizon will be the new space for sessions geared towards DJs, Producers and Promoters. The Tempest will be the place for industry-related talks, the A&R Sessions and the official BMC Welcome Mixer in association with AFEM. The Lazy Fin will host breakfast networking sessions and workshops. In total, I think we will be spread across 10 different venues for our talks, the A&R sessions, networking events, industry breakfasts, 1-2-1 meetings and club nights, but don't worry - they are all close together and within walking distance. Some of the artists we're looking forward to see include: 808 State, Angie Brown, Arthur Baker, DJ Rap, Fatboy Slim, Fat Tony, Hilit Kolet, Jess Bays, Jumping Jack Frost, Marcia Carr, Paul Oakenfold, Ray Keith, Smokin Jo. And also, we'll have over 240 industry-leading professionals taking part in panels and workshops, A&R Sessions with 28 leading A&R professionals giving one to one feedback and multiple Networking events at some of Brighton's best loved venues, so there's lots to look forward to. HOW has BMC evolved since its inception and what role do you think it now plays within the global electronic music industry? BMC is more about content and networking now. When we launched 13 years ago, we were more of an exhibition with over 70 exhibitors and one theatre. We now have around 10 exhibitors and four theatres. I really hope we are recognised as one of the 'must go to' events in the industry calendar, especially here in the UK. HOW do you balance the commercial and cultural aspects of the conference – particularly in fostering meaningful conversations while supporting innovation and business? We do a lot of research, talk to a lot of people in the industry and are always on the look out for the next big thing. We also go to a lot of other events and check out what other people are up to. 10 WHAT do you see as the role of small clubs and independent venues in nurturing the next generation of UK DJs, producers and promoters? This is such an important issue. We work quite closely with the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) and this is a topic we'll be covering at BMC this year. All the big stars started out in small venues and grew their fanbase from there. So it's important to support them and encourage the next generation of promoters. MANY iconic grassroots venues have closed in recent years. What can the industry – and government – do to better protect these spaces? There are grants and help you can get for this. The NTIA who also work closely with the government to lobby for support and the Association For Electronic Music (AFEM) are both great resources for to help anyone with this. If you're struggling, please contact them, if they can help you, they will. 10 HOW important is the relationship between local scenes and global recognition in dance music? Can grassroots culture still influence the mainstream as strongly as it once did? When I started in this industry, society didn't take us seriously - it was always looked at like it was just a hobby, a bit of fun, it wasn't a career. So there was no real help for people like us, people wanting to get into the electronic music industry. I'm glad to say things are different now. The electronic music scene has reached the mainstream and become popular globally. It's now seen as a real industry and generally accepted - that's a good thing in my mind. It all starts in our local areas and eventually it all goes towards influencing the national and global scene. ARE there any standout grassroots initiatives or venues you think deserve more attention right now? PRS have got some great grants and incentives for grassroots artists. I would check that out. It's also worth talking to the National Lottery funding - you will have to fill out a load of forms, but you could walk away with a fair bit of help and potentially money for your career.
