Once A DJ is brought to you by:

1. https://www.vinylunderground.co.uk - 10% off your next order using code onceadj
2. https://www.sureshotshop.com/ - Record adapters (including customs) & accessories
3. https://myslipmats.com/ - Custom and off the shelf Slipmats, dividers and more.
4. Once A DJ is a https://remote-ctrl.co.uk production

Other ways to support the show

1. Follow the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
2. Any feedback or questions? Hit up the Once A DJ Instagram Page
3. Subscribe to the Once A DJ Patreon
4. Buy your Once A DJ Sureshot 45 adapter clamps

This week I'm joined by Carl Loben, Editor-in-Chief of DJ Mag and a man who's spent more than three decades chronicling dance music — from blagging his way into gigs as a freelance writer for Melody Maker in the early 90s, to running DJ Mag for the last decade. I wanted to sit down with Carl because he's seen the whole arc from a vantage point most people haven't: Two Tone gigs at Hammersmith Odeon (where everyone had to leave their DMs at the door), an acid house epiphany at Glastonbury, the drum & bass evangelism that defined his 90s, and a publishing career that's covered the rise of the superstar DJ, the bottle-service era and the digital revolution from the front row.

We get into Carl's own DJing journey — the false start, the freestyle rooms in Hackney, the international gigs that came with the editor's chair — and the labels he's built along the way: Westway with Barry Ashworth from the Dub Pistols, and Jack Said What with Irvine Welsh and Steve Mac (the underground house Steve Mac, not the pop one — there's a great story in there). He's also really frank about the shifting cultural landscape: the whitewashing he and Ben Murphy set out to address with their book Renegade Snares, the wellbeing reckoning that's reshaping what DJ life looks like, and the sea-of-phones problem that's quietly killing the dancefloor.

In this episode we cover:

• Growing up between Beatles, Buddy Holly and Two Tone, and his first gig at 13 (Madness, Hammersmith Odeon)
• His acid house epiphany at Glastonbury and the unsung heroes the history books missed
• The Hackney freestyle rooms, becoming a drum & bass DJ, and almost painting himself into a corner
• Blagging his first reviews for Melody Maker and what life was like as a 90s freelance music journo
• Why Melody Maker went down the toilet and how he ended up at DJ Mag full time
• International gigs in Brazil, Ecuador, Poland and China — and learning why touring DJs burn out
• The cult of the superstar DJ and the hangover from rock and roll
• Westway Records, Jack Said What, and the realities of running a label after the vinyl crash
• Renegade Snares, the whitewashing of drum & bass, and the genre's reckoning with diversity
• Why digital was a blessing and a curse, and what happens when 20,000 tracks a day hit Spotify
• The wellness shift, the sea of phones, and his advice for new DJs trying to break through

Welcome back to Want to dj everyone.

We're here today with a man who's played a very important part in print media, DJ culture and a load more stuff that we're going to get into.

Carl Loban, editor, is editor in chief of DJ magazine.

Yeah, hello there, Adam.

How you doing?

I'm good, thank you, mate.

Yourself?

Very good, thanks.

Excellent, excellent.

So, yes, I think there's quite a bit to get into based on my research.

I don't know how you find it given your history and interviewing and stuff, but something I. I don't like to do too much research because if I do I just end up asking a load of formulaic questions.

And if they're based on the research, they're based on things that are already out there anyway.

So I try and try not to do too much.

So if there's anything that I miss that's.

That is like a glare in a mission, then do just let me know.

But with these podcasts we just basically start with looking at where did you grow up and what you first sort of musical memories, really.

Oh, all right, okay.

Well, I grew up in.

Well, yeah, West London, I'd say it started off in South London when I was three and.

And my earliest musical memories are probably things like my parents record collections which my mum was into, like Elvis and Buddy Holly, my dad the Beatles.

So between them, not too bad a birthing in.

In music.

I particularly got into the Beatles when I was a K, really.

I loved a lot of their songs and they were.

They, you know, as they progressed in their career in the 60s, they got really experimental or quite experimental as they got into the sort of flower power era and so I feel that's quite a good grounding.

But then my first independent musical love really was the two Tone movement.

Yeah.

Which I was too young for punk, but.

But when Two Tone came along when I was 12 or 13, I really massively got into it.

The Specials and the Beat and the Selector and Madness and you know, I remember buying all the early Madness singles and they were my first ever gig when I was 13, which was under 16's night Ham Smithodian.

Nice.

Where everyone had to leave their DMS at the door, which was quite a sight.

There's just this foyer of Dr. Martin shoes and why stuff Tassel shoes.

Well, I think they're fearing a bit of violence basically from unsavory elements of.

Of possibly the far right who might come in or something.

Yeah.

How was that to navigate?

I mean I was kind of too young, so there was Not.

There was no sign of that at this under 16s night.

You know, Madness did have a bit of an NF following apparently at the time, which they managed to get rid of and shake off because idiot racist boneheads were conflating, you know, the two tone thing with the skinhead sort of racist movement.

Which was so wrong because it was.

You know, the whole scar thing came from Jamaican and the rude boy thing, you know, it was.

And then.

And then in the UK it became a black white thing.

The black white thing was.

I remember really thinking that was.

That was.

That was good.

Like multiracial bands reflecting a multiracial culture in which.

Which is.

Is in.

In the UK cities.

So yeah, I really got into the two tone thing.

You know, I'd have the Fred Perry and all that business.

Our little crew at school would sing the songs and all that sort of thing.

And then when later on, I mean.

Well, and I sort of like a lot of people did.

There's a bit of journey through the.

Through the.

The pop charts, you know, but with the.

I suppose more underground music.

Well, but back then all this great stuff got in the charts.

Like all these two tone bands got in the charts and then I sort of got into a bit into the kind of new romantic thing or whatever or the post punk.

Post punk thing.

Yeah, yeah, they all got in the charts as well.

Everyone, you know, everyone from magazine to Visage to when they started off Spandau Ballet were quite cool before they went a bit mor.

A lot of these guys on indie.

Labels then to start with.

Yeah, I mean, and then there was kind of like sort of fake indie labels as well and.

Or you know, they get signed by a major after one album on an indie or something.

Yeah, but I mean the post punk thing was.

Or the punk thing was quite a revelation for the music industry and you know, shook things up and.

But you get all these cool records of getting the charts back then.

So that was.

So, yeah, the charts was a.

Was a thing and I sort of moved through indie and a bit of goth and industrial and then into acid house.

And then when the drummer bass jungle thing came along, the black white thing again came into play much more obviously, I suppose.

Yeah.

And I really loved the.

Going to some of those dances where.

Where.

And.

And it was.

It was black and white together and I massively got into drum and bass in the 90s.

So just in terms of the acid house movement then.

I've spoken to a few people on here that have been in and around that in the north and the South.

And there was someone that I was speaking to about Clink street because it.

In my.

In my head, that was like a really big sort of focal point of the movement, being there in and amongst it.

I think someone said to me there was quite a few other clubs that were really important in the movement at that point.

What's your sort of recollection of.

Of what was going off or going on?

I wasn't in London at the time.

I had my Acid House epiphany at Glastonbury Festival in the late 80s.

And yeah, I wasn't.

I wasn't living in London or Manchester or Blackburn, so I wasn't in the epicenter.

So.

But there was.

I mean, Clink street was much more kind of underground and Schumann Spectrum, which are some of the others that have been in London anyway, cited as, you know, seminal, influential club nights that help kick off the UK asset house explosion.

And yeah, they were definitely important, those latter ones I mentioned.

But they also did have their own photographers there because Clink street definitely didn't have photographers.

It was probably too dark to take any photos anyway.

But the way that the story, the history has been written has been around where there's photos of Danny Rampling at shum, you know, giving it some sort of godlike pose or whatever.

Yeah, the history hasn't always reflected exactly what's.

What went on in those early days of the Acid House explosion.

Are there any people that you think are really sort of unsung heroes of that era and that movement?

Well, yeah, I mean, you mentioned Clink street, the.

That whole thing, the rip parties where there was Kid Bachelor, Evil Eddie Richards, Mr. C, these perhaps more unsung people in the history books.

And then up north there was obviously, well, the Hacienda, but there was warehouse raves in Blackburn.

There was things in Coventry.

There was in a lot of cities, almost like simultaneously, some of them before London really, when the right sort of DJs were getting hold of the right kind of house records in the mid-80s.

Yeah.

So at what point did you start DJing?

I sort of had a bit of a false start in DJing in the.

I think I did a bit around the early 90s, but basically I wasn't very good.

And then in.

In.

Well, I'd never had any lessons or anything like that.

So yeah, no one, even, no one taught me to beat mix first of all.

So that, that was a bit like the matching up of the beats and trying to seamlessly mix one record into another.

So I'd kind of clang things and.

But then maybe.

So maybe by the mid-90s I started doing it more and I got invited to play at all these kind of underground parties near Hackney where I lived.

Sometimes in the sort of third room, the sort of freestyle anything goes room where it wasn't so such banging house and techno or whatever, you could play anything from dub to ambient electronica to weird stuff, whatever.

And then I sort of morphed into being a drummer based DJ really.

And I played at a few places but it was kind of quite a sewn up scene I found.

Do you think with those parties when you're playing that, let's not say open format.

I was talking with someone about this the other day.

What's that?

Other words that people used to always use?

Freestyle.

I don't know, whatever you want to say really.

Do you think there was kind of more pressure in a room like that or less because in a room like, because you've got this kind of like anything goes, is it harder to know how to direct it?

I suppose kind of.

But I mean it was less pressure in a way because you didn't necessarily have to make people dance because it could be the room where people are kind of sitting around and having a joint or back in those days or whatever, you could sort of be a bit more experimental, a bit more eclectic.

So no, I actually really enjoyed those, those sessions still like playing, not necessarily a four, four dance floor set.

Yeah, yeah, but yeah, so I went through kind of drum and bass and then started playing house again.

And then I got into breakbeat scene around the millennium time and really got heavily into the breakbeat thing actually for a few years.

Started producing with my mate Billy and we became the Drum Monkeys and would play at breakbeat events and, and so on.

And that was all fun and fine and dandy for a few years until about mid noughties.

There was a bit of a backlash against.

Because the, the.

That genre got kind of awash with bootlegs and it was like everyone was just playing bootlegs of everything in a breakbeat style.

Yeah, it's that scenario that I'd quite like to focus on with you in a bit actually.

Sure, yeah.

But just rolling back then.

Can you talk a bit about your journey through Journalism, Yeah.

So I went to college in Leicester.

Okay.

In the late 80s and.

And after that I was.

I was like, oh God, what do I do now?

I'm.

I like music and I like writing and I'd be reading the Enemy and Melody Maker and the music press and one day I thought, oh, I could do that.

I could go to gigs and write about them and write album reviews, whatever.

So I decided to make a.

Have a go at doing that.

And I did a few sample reviews and stuff, sent them into Enemy and Melody Maker.

The Melody Maker got back to me and said, yeah, you can start doing stuff for us if you like.

Which I was.

I was really lucky.

I was kind of maybe in the right place at the right time or whatever.

And so started writing for Melody Maker in the.

Which was kind of like the rival to NME at the time, although they were just one floor separate in Kingsreach Tower and Waterloo and started writing for them.

And I did that for the whole of the 90s, really.

I had an amazing time being a jobbing freelance music journo in.

In London in the.

In the 90s.

Do you think you got that opportunity because was it like grassroots stuff that you were writing about in those ones that you sent to them, like in Leicester?

I'd actually come back to London by this time.

Right.

But it was more.

I know it's more indie stuff really.

Like the first.

Okay.

The first review I did for Melody Maker was this band called Blind Lemon, I'll always remember him, the Marquee.

And they're kind of like a grunge, grunge band, a bit like Nirvana or something, or trying to be.

And yeah, it was.

I'd just sort of pick a gig and if I could blag it in, then I'd do a review of it and sent it into Jim Irving.

Jim Arundel, sorry, who ran the live desk.

The live reviews desk at Melody Maker, which was weekly.

So there's quite a lot of stuff went into it back in the day in those times, people would avidly read music papers.

People would, you know, almost camp outside the news agent to get their copy on Wednesdays if you were that into the kind of indie music scene particularly.

But as I had got it had me acid out epiphany.

I was kind of a bit in both camps and so I started writing more and more about dance music and Melody Maker started having a four page section in the middle of the paper called Orbit where all the dance stuff was.

So I interviewed all sorts of people from the dance scene.

So did you kind of carve your own sort of USP within the industry then, being the guy that wrote down stuff for the indie publications?

Yeah, I mean there was a few of us, but I mean I definitely did.

I almost painted myself into a corner as being like the drummer bass guy because I started just almost exclusively writing about drum bass things and people.

And I did get so into it in the mid-90s.

An interview, all the kind of like a lot of key players at the time and basically evangelized for it in print repeatedly.

But yeah, I suppose I did.

There was.

There's a few of us, I suppose at the Maker.

There was Sherman, Sherman, Martin, James, Vina, Verdi.

There's a few kind of like.

Well, people came and went but.

But yeah, there's a few key, key writers during that time, mid to late 90s.

How many of them were DJs?

Most actually, which is the same as at DJ Magma.

Most people are bedroom or budding or jobbing DJs who write for stuff.

I mean, it's kind of certainly the case for me as well.

I quite like the fact that as a music journal I'd get sent all these new bits of vinyl that were just about to come out, which was a great thing for my DJ sets at the weekend because then I could play them out as well as write about them in print if I like them.

Yeah.

It's getting on those mailing lists, isn't it?

Indeed, indeed.

And back then it felt like Christmas every day when.

When the postman would arrive and you get five bits of vinyl in the post to open or something.

Yeah.

Now these days, obviously it's all digital.

So did that era with you doing the freelance, did you.

Did you get to meet loads of different connections in the sort of DJ world then?

I mean, I guess so, yeah.

I mean from interviewing a lot of the people in.

In the dancing at the time, whether it be drum based people or people in the techno scene or.

Or whatever.

Yeah.

And then I mean, I suppose even more so with.

With DJ Magazine as well.

In the 25 years since the millennium that I've worked.

Worked for DJ Mag.

Yeah.

Were you sort of up on.

And were you consuming DJ Mag and Mix Mag through the 90s?

Yeah, I mean I started writing for DJ Mag and I think it was 97.

I did my first piece while I was still writing for the Maker around that time.

I think it was Oasis at Nebworth Time.

Melody Maker and Enemy had exactly the same front cover one week.

My theory is that the suits at ipc, the parent company, saw those two identical covers of their different titles and said, what's going on here?

We need to make a bit of a differentiation.

And they decided to take Melody Maker more down the roots of an indie smash hits right, to turn it kind of a bit more poppy and glossy and commercial, if you like.

I mean, at the time in the 90s, it was, it was like a golden era.

I felt for, for the music press and basically the new editor, they brought in a Melody Maker, took the title down the toilet.

Unfortunately, it just got more and more and people dropped, people left.

I. I carried on in there because I didn't exactly have anywhere else to go.

But then I eventually left as well, just before the millennium, by which time I'd started doing more and more stuff for DJ Mag anyway.

And so I happily sort of fell in with them when they said, oh, come work for us.

Yeah.

Was that run by one of the big publishers?

Not at all, no.

It was run by very small publishers, a succession of small, fairly clueless publishers, actually, I'd say in hindsight who didn't really understand the title because like, what one publishing company that had DJ Mag at the time, Nexus, they.

Their other titles were things like, well, one of the one I used to laugh at there was almost like I got news for you kind of.

One was Beanbag Monthly and, And you know, these other magazines like Model Railwaying and sort of magazines for really obscure.

And they've got this DJ one.

They didn't really understand it, but they knew that it made them money so they sort of left us to it really, which.

And there were some other.

Other publishers took over and then Future Publishing, who were like a proper magazine publisher, yeah, came in for a couple of years but then they sort of also didn't really understand it and announced one day they were going to sell DJ Mag and we all thought, what's the Future hold?

And it ended up, rather than Ministry of, there were two people in line to buy it and one was Ministry of Sound who said they were going to get rid of all the staff, and the other was this small independent company who said we're not going to get rid of all the staff.

And so Future sold it to the one who was going to keep all the staff.

That was around 20 years ago, Thrust Publishing.

So it's just a small independent publisher who publishes it now.

So was it that.

Was that the point at which you went full time there then?

That was around the millennium.

That was 25 years ago or whatever.

Don't remember exactly.

It was, it was kind of.

No, it's nine.

So how, how was DJing for you that time then when you started at the magazine, were you doing a lot or.

I mean I've always done more journalism.

The journalism has been my full time job essentially.

And I've done some DJing, you know, as and where, which has been.

I've been fortunate enough that it's taken me around the world as well, which is, which has been great.

I've had some great gigs internationally.

So what sort of gigs have you been getting then?

If you've, if you've, if it's just been kind of like your part time thing, what are those opportunities you've had overseas?

Some of them have been through the magazine.

Like in, in Brazil.

There was over the years various different people have, I suppose maybe they thought, oh well, getting, getting the editor of DJ Mag to come over and DJ for us might be good for our club or something as well.

And so I've had some great international gigs in that way in Ecuador and Poland and China and some of it was through the Breakbeat.

Seemed like that in China particularly there was this one promoter who really liked Breakbeat and he just book all the fake feat DJs like Stanton warriors and Tommy Hooligan and all the, all the kind of breakbeat pantheon and a couple of times it was my turn, which was a great experience as well.

And, and yeah, I mean I love that whole thing of going into a new city and having me meeting the local promoter or some people and having, having a, having a good old party really and making some new friends but also appreciating how tiring doing that was.

Yeah, at one time I thought, oh yeah, I can do this one where I go, I play in Ecuador on the.

Oh no, it's Brazil on the Friday and Ecuador on the Saturday.

It's only around the corner.

And it was, and it was obviously a 20 hour trip from one to the next.

And so it'd be like get there at midnight, play at two in the morning at four o', clock, go off to the next place, travel all night and all day and then no sleep and get to the next place and try and do the same again.

And I appreciated how, because I didn't do that every week by a long chalk.

Some international DJs do do that every week and it's so exhausting mentally and physically.

Did that give you new sort of perspectives and ideas and things for Your writing and for the magazine, definitely.

I mean, I think it helps.

Remember in the 90s, some people were suspicious of the music press.

They thought, oh, we're going to be slagged off here or something by these sneaky music journos who build nice to your face and then write horrible things behind your back.

But I think the fact of being a DJ myself and, you know, meeting people on a, on a level, behind the decks or, or in the green room or whatever, what definitely helped with some insights.

It helped me know me music better, help knowing tunes, you know, because I, I'd play them myself and, you know, recognize what they are, hearing them out somewhere before.

Shazam.

Yeah, yeah.

And just by it obviously be.

Or meet me obviously being a DJ as well, then it maybe, maybe people trust you a bit more or whatever.

And it helps if you're nice to people as well.

Yeah.

How was it in the 90s seeing the, the growth, the superstar DJ for you as a, as someone who's like sort of holistically viewing the DJ world?

I mean, I had ambivalent feelings maybe towards it because I sort of came from the.

More of the underground parties where there were no superstar DJs.

It was more, it was even more about the, the crowd, if you like, and the DJ was the person in the corner, you know, providing the, the rave soundtrack.

You didn't even know who was playing sometimes, but you're having a laugh with your mates or whatever.

And the.

Yeah.

As the 90s progressed, the, the superstar, the cult of the superstar DJs did seem to sort of build up.

And on the one hand it was, it was these very talented DJs pretty plugged into the scene who were, you know, turning up set after set and rocking a dance floor, rocking the club.

So.

Respect.

Respect.

But then it became almost less about the whole.

The participatory element of the, of the music and more, more like a hangover from rock and roll where you just watch the stage where the DJ is.

And as you probably appreciate, there's not a lot to watch with a dj.

You know, someone's standing there twidding a few knobs.

Yeah.

So.

But then.

But the, the DJ became more part of the show and the showmanship kind of came in more.

More so as well, which is.

And now that that's almost flipped, so it's the DJ who dances and the crowd just stand there filming them sometimes.

Yeah.

Which is.

Which just kills the vibe, in my opinion.

Were there any amazing DJs that you think really suffered with that Changing perspective like the night shift, because there's the 90 shift and then there's the sort of naughty shift, isn't there?

So with the people that kind of fell, by the way, because they didn't want to be in front of people,.

I think people adapted really.

I mean off in the early days, sometimes the dj, a DJ was a real nerd, almost like a, some, a train spotter sort of very, you know, could always quote you the catalog numbers of, of Salso Records or whatever.

Yeah, yeah, but, but obviously that, that being.

Being intense music lovers served, served DJs well and, and, and, and that coming out of the shadows thing was, was perhaps inevitable and I don't know, people adapted to it.

There's, there was definitely shy people who came DJs who maybe, maybe when they got on stage were more extravagant in their kind of personality, whatever.

So yeah, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't say people fell by the wayside, but, but then there's, there's, there's always a new generation coming through and some people, some old DJs not getting booked so much or whatever who do maybe sometimes have to think about getting another job or move into management or move into some other, some other place of work.

Yeah, yeah.

So when did you start Westway?

Westaway Records.

So I, I got friendly with this fella, Barry Ashworth from the Dog Pistols.

Yeah, I'd done a couple of interviews with him and we ended up starting a night in West London called the Truth in the early noughties and kind of out of that, we were getting given people's unsigned tunes and stuff and we thought, oh, why don't we, why don't we just start a label?

So we started Westway.

And it was just at the point that vinyl was starting to die out because of digital downloads.

Not die out completely, but be superseded and more people were, you know, starting to play digitally and vine and we, we wanted to be a vinyl label but we just, we were just caught, we caught it towards the end ring.

Yeah, so we did it for a few years anyway and once in the late, once by the late noises, we'd kind of stopped selling too many.

We'd only set the woods, so finally we hadn't sold, you know, 120 copies or something, so we kind of knocked it on the edge really.

But still, still remained good friends.

Yeah.

And in that time, yeah, we, yeah, we did help some new people coming through.

Being their first release was their first Ever release was on our label, all that sort of thing and we had some fun doing it, so it wasn't a waste of time.

So when you started at DJ Mag then, was there always the view to take over as editor in chief?

No, not at all actually.

I mean the, the first editor, Chris Mellor, he did it for the whole of the 90s basically.

And then there was a woman called Leslie Wright, did it for most of the noughties I was deputy editor or features editor.

And so I've done it for the last 10 years, 10, 11 years.

So you were there in kind of like what we just slightly touched upon before the kind of dark ages, if you like.

Vinyl had kind of dropped off.

Streaming was becoming a thing.

People were getting used to just going, asking the DJ for whatever they wanted and expecting they should be play it.

That whole bottle service scene was coming in the loudness was what was it like working on the magazine at that time?

And I mean you may have a very different lens on that to me because mine's pretty uneducated, but I guess that was kind of when I started DJing.

I was trying to become a DJ in and around that time, but playing stuff that wasn't trendy at the scene.

I was more sort of hip hop, funk, soul.

So things that weren't really on.

In Vogue, on vogue, whatever the word is.

So I mean what do you think of that period in terms of whether it was a dark age or a different time?

There was definitely a drop off in the, in the scene in the UK up just after the millennium there was this.

All these reports came out about the millennium eve when people would.

DJs were trying to charge ridiculous fees for the millennium and it kind of felt like it got a bit over bloated and there was a backlash and a drop off really.

And yeah, vinyl started dropping off and streaming and downloads hadn't quite made up the shortfall.

So yeah, there was a strange period I suppose, but there was still really ace records during that time.

I got into the kind of electroclass thing as well as the brake beat.

And then in DJ mag sort of grew exponentially at the time at the same rate I suppose as the scene exploded internationally and through our top DJs poll particularly we, you know, started being aware of all these like Dutch trance teachers and right, all the kind of big bigger room, kind of post rave genres, hard house and techno and whatnot.

So yeah, it exploded internationally.

We, we would cover it, we were covering more international people and it, it just kind of morphed into being becoming this humongous beast in the.

In, in.

By the mid noughties was that were.

Sales increasing everywhere then or were sales increasing in the whole.

But it was reaching more countries.

Sales of records.

You mean of.

No, of DJ mag?

Oh well, yes, post.

So I mean we've not always had sales figures but, but in, but in, in the 90s it sold very well.

There's a lot of advertising and yeah, that just, that just increased throughout the, the noughties and onwards really.

Right.

So I think, yeah, this thing we do, the top notch DJs it's now voted for by over a million people every year around the world who are into the culture and that's where your Tiestos and Calvin Harris and David Guetters and all the rest, all the rest of it feature.

Yeah, some of those DJs do play in bottle service clubs as you, as you.

As you called them.

Yeah, and yeah, that's not exactly where I came from either but they, they do have a place because sometimes those things allow that particular club to do more underground stuff elsewhere or, or similar.

Yeah.

Is there ever been anyone that's done really well in it that you've thought really.

Oh, loads of people.

Yeah.

Well that's, that's, that's through personal taste I suppose.

Not exactly meeting their music.

Yeah, yeah.

So we've kind of touched on the music digital revolution.

But what about in terms of the magazine and going from print to more digital, how was that to navigate?

Because that would have been when you were editing.

That would have been whilst you've been editing.

Chief.

Right.

Well, I was actually the first Web editor of DJ Mag actually in 99, just as websites were becoming a thing.

And so the.

Because we went through a series of publishing companies, we were quite a bit late on the digital side.

The website was a bit of a sort of afterthought for quite a few years.

The magazine was doing really well anyway, so we thought we didn't really.

And now the magazine and the digital are part of the same, obviously under the same roof.

We do events, we do videos, we do web stories, we do a magazine still.

We do these polls that are really successful.

So we have broadened out I suppose and the digital thing is now much more important than it was 10 or 15 years ago.

Yeah.

Was it easy to get it right, that sort of combination?

Or have you tried certain things that have failed?

I mean, I think the tardiness, the lateness of investing in the website wasn't the best business decision in hindsight.

But you know, we've got there in the end and now the different platforms are complementary to one another.

I suppose in a way though, if you're a bit late on it, you can let other people make certain mistakes and you can kind of learn from, from, learn from what they've done and you can see where they've established their sort of best practices.

Yeah.

And loads of money came into different music companies and stuff and some had loads and loads of investment and they do, they did produce, start producing some quite good stuff, but they didn't exactly factor in how they were going to make a living out of it or wash its own face the thing.

And it was producing some very nice journalism or whatever, but there was no way of it making money.

So I suppose, yeah.

Learning from that dot com bubble bursting was, was, was probably something that adversely came in into our favor.

Yeah.

Some of them were just ridiculously over the top in terms of what they did.

So you could have probably ended up spending a load of money on developing something that lasted a very short amount of time.

Yeah.

And that technology has just come on in leaps.

And when you think about.

Well, when I first started with DJ mag there, we only had.

We didn't use email.

Right.

There was one in the office.

There was one computer that had a CompuServe account that people would email their club listings in or their copy or whatever.

Same as a melody maker.

A melody maker used to fax in your copy or take it into the office on a floppy disk so that it could be put into a computer from there.

There was, there was no email until the late 90s.

And, and yeah, somehow still got these music publications out on time without the technology has come on in leaps and bounds.

It's the same with web technology as well that, you know, websites can do far many more things now than they could 25 years ago.

Yeah.

It's crazy to think about that, isn't it think about the days when he didn't have all this stuff that's just that easy and immediate.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean mobile phones have only just become a thing and there was no, you know, YouTube or Facebook or any social media.

So that, I mean, yeah, magazines and in the 90s, particularly before the Internet probably kicked in, people would swear by the music reviews in, in magazines, go to record shop and say, oh, read in DJ mag, you know this review by Yogi Horton of a, of a US garage track, have you got it?

And they'd maybe go in the shop, oh yes we have.

And here it is.

You can have a quick listen and.

And music reviews served perhaps arguably more of a purpose then than they do now.

Because now, now it's like, oh, have you heard the new release by so and so?

Oh, here you go.

Press a button on your computer and you can hear it straight away.

Yeah.

And it's like things are.

You've, you've not got to go through as much to publish music now, have you?

You know, yourself, but you've not got to go through any gatekeepers that might, you know, you'll get gatekeepers that have got their own motives and interests but then you'll get the people that do protect people I guess by ensuring that things that come out are quality.

Yeah, I mean that was a double edged thing I guess because I always used to think if something came out on vinyl then it has been through a certain amount of quality control.

Whereas now you get, what is it, 20,000 tracks a day on Spotify.

And so I mean number one, a supposed to keep up with all of that anyway.

But also there must be a load of dross which people, if they can just down it's democratizing in a way that anyone can do it.

Anyone can produce a record or can get AI to produce a record and upload it onto Spotify, but the quality control is not going to be there so much.

Yeah, do you have to have more staff now than vetting tracks?

Because I'm guessing that you get a lot more submissions.

We do it all ourselves.

I mean I get tons of music every day really on digital, digital downloads of different sorts and I suppose the ones that I check is a number of reasons for checking out a certain thing.

It could be that I already recognize an artist and I'm curious to hear what the new Gorillaz album sounds like or whatever it is.

Or it could be a trusted PR or trusted industry associate who sends something.

Or I might just like the name, read the PR description and think that's interesting.

Something from India.

Whatever it is, check it out.

Yeah, there's the number, but you can't check out everything at all.

And no, we don't employ staff to sit there listening to everything.

We, we just us, us music journalists still do it ourselves basically.

Much like a DJ would with new releases.

Yeah, that.

When I was DJing more, I remember I got this one tune, this RJD2 tune that's.

It's pretty funky and I felt like it should have been, should have done all right on dance floors and stuff, but I, I couldn't quite get it to work and I don't really know why.

Did you ever have anything that you were just absolutely sure was going to be huge and it wasn't and you couldn't quite place what happened?

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, quite often, you know, you pick up on a certain tune and think, oh wow, this is great.

I really think it should be a hit in clubland or whatever and you play it to death, perhaps.

And seemingly hardly anyone else thought the same thing.

Or, or maybe if, well, if you saw the reaction of dancers and people weren't into it, then maybe stop playing it.

But I mean, I'm sure there's been loads like that.

There's been loads of, you know, great music that's not become that, that big.

Has there been anything that you've, that you've heard for, that you've heard and then just thought this is going to be incredible.

And then it just blows up beyond all belief.

Oh God.

Again on the flip side.

All sorts, really.

Yeah.

You know, I remember one time, I mean, it's possibly a bit of a no brainer, but I went into the Excel Recordings office and the guy I was meeting in there said, oh, by the way, I've just got this new new tune through it.

So a remix of what's a collaborative collaboration between Dizzy Rascal and Armor Van Helden of this tune called Bonkers, Let me play it to you.

And he played it up and said it's a number one and absolutely was a number one.

Obviously it was massive.

But yeah, I mean, hearing things early on and then that's part of a music journal's job in a way to sort of hear good stuff that you think is really cool and also might be big as well, and then write about it early enough for people to read about it at the time it's coming out and then maybe it does get big.

So, yeah, all sorts.

I mean, like for instance, Milo, this milo from about 20 years ago, his Destroy rock and Roll album sort of came in on promo.

We were like, this.

This is great.

This is.

This is going to be big.

And we.

So we put him on the COVID immediately before he was probably on new.

He was really.

And.

And he sure enough, he blew up and.

Yeah, I mean, it's nice doing those things.

That's kind of like the.

The music journos, you know, Holy Grail, to be the first person to write about a certain new artist or.

Or whatever it is.

And then.

Then you can say, hopefully not too much of a snidey way.

Oh, I was the first one to write about them.

I gave him the first cover.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, amazing.

Have you got any particular features or sort of adventures that you've had through journalism that have really sort of stuck in your mind?

Oh, God.

Well, some of my international trips, I certainly had some adventures on.

In the.

In the 90s.

Quite often I'd be paired with this photographer called Brian Sweeney and we sort of had a few adventures.

A bit like Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing book, whereby he was like.

He was like me wingman.

And we'd go to these European festivals or whatever.

People would give us drugs.

We'd have a really mad crazy time.

It would all get a bit surreal and then.

And then we'd sort of limp home on whichever way we could.

So, yeah, some of those sort of particularly international exploits were some kind of mad, crazy adventures.

Definitely.

Are there any particular festivals or anything that stick out?

Oh, blimey.

Well, I mean, I always go to Glastonbury.

I love Glastonbury and always have a great time there.

In the 90s, there were some, like the early incarnations of Dance Valley in Holland and some French ones that looked like Teletubbly down, and the early ones in Miami of Ultra, some Brazilian ones, Skull Beats and Brasilia Music Festival.

What else?

I mean, you know, I've been to tons of festivals over.

Over the years and, yeah, around the millennium time, there was like, Cream Fields and Homelands where the.

There was the early Untribal Gathering.

Before that, some of the early.

Yeah.

Dance music 1.

And then just going back to labels.

Then you started.

Jack said, what?

And that's with Irving Welsh and Steve Mack.

How did that come about?

Because you guys have all got.

There's a very interesting mix of skills there, isn't there?

Yeah, indeed.

Yeah.

I mean, I've.

I first knew irving in the mid-90s around when he'd first published the Trainspotting book before the film And I'd seen.

I'd gone to.

Along to this night called Art Throb and it was sort of billed as being where literature meets electronic music or whatever.

And Irving was doing a reading from Trainspotting there.

And then like a week later or something, I was in the.

I got on the North London line at Camden and he just came, got on and sat opposite me and I was like, you're Irving, aren't you?

And we started chatting and we both found.

We both lived in Dalston in Hackney at the same time at the time and got off at the same stop and.

And I said, oh, you know, do you want to come in?

Trying to come in and have a spliff back at mine.

He said, all right, let's.

We could just go to the offie and get some cans.

And so we had a bit of a.

Bit of a sesh and sort of became.

Became sort of mates in.

In at that time.

Then he moved away to Amsterdam and Ireland and then America.

So sort of lost touch really.

But then sort of reconnected on.

On social media.

And then when he came back to the uk, yeah, we just became.

Started hanging out more and started doing.

I did some Q&As with him at music conferences and stuff.

And then at one one of them in Brighton.

I'd moved to Brighton by this time, helped introduce him to Steve Mack.

And the three of us kind of started messing around doing music things.

And out of that we started a label partly from, for the stuff that he'd been doing with Steve or other people that we knew who had a bit like with Barry, people we knew having unreleased stuff that we thought was really good as well and sort of deciding to start a label in that way.

I mean, Steve's got an insane pedigree of songwriting, hasn't he?

Absolutely, yeah.

Yeah.

Some of.

Some of the hits he's done in the past sort of 10, 15 years.

Unbelievable.

You might be thinking of the other Steve Mac.

Oh, you're joking.

No, there's two Steve Macs.

One's a pop, one's a pop producer and Steve, my Steve Mack is an underground house music producer.

Really?

It's all right, don't worry about it.

Steve's got this funny tale of when he got.

You should probably have him on, on your show.

But he got asked to go to make a record with.

With someone in.

In the Middle east and they were going to give him loads of money and when he turned up, they said, are you the pop producer Steve Mac?

And he's like, no, I'm the underground house producer, Steve Mack, and they're like, shit, we've got the wrong one out here.

And they just gave him a suitcase full of cash.

Anyway.

Nice.

Yeah.

But no, it's the underground house music.

Steve Mack, who is in a duo called Rhythm masters in the 90s and has worked with all sorts of people, and now him and Irvin had just done the music for the train spotting musical.

Nice.

Did Irving choose and sequence all the music for the film?

All right.

Like, did he have an input on the film?

Because I think with that, that, that like, that rejuvenated like Iggy Pop's career, didn't it?

I mean.

Yeah, I think so.

He.

I mean, he loved Iggy from when he was a punk rocker, Irving, and he definitely did with.

He like, he knew Primal Scream.

He's hanging out with Primal Scream.

He.

He sort of vaguely knew the underworld people and.

Yeah, so it was.

There was also a music supervisor on the film and, you know, I'm sure Danny Boyle had his own choices as well.

But yeah, famously Oasis turned it down because they thought they didn't want to be on a film just about people who were writing down the numbers of trains, the platform and didn't know.

I mean, it was a.

It was massive, wasn't it?

It turned into.

From being a cult classic.

It went.

It went huge in the.

Yeah, it was a phenomenon for sure.

Amazing.

So there's now this.

There's now this Trainspotting musical coming out July 13th.

You heard it here first.

Nice, nice.

We'll make sure we're out with this in plenty of time.

Are you still running the label then?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's a labor of love.

We don't really make any money out of it.

So I've got a full time job.

Rob, who does most of the work, actually, he's got a full time job and Steve and Irving's got about 10 projects on the go.

Always, constantly.

And Steve's busy in the studio all the time as well.

So, yeah, we kind of.

It's like a side hustle, really.

Yeah.

Do you.

Do you think when you start a label with your sort of contacts and things, is it quite quick to get it.

To get the music to the right people?

I mean, it definitely helps knowing people and.

Yeah, knowing quite a lot of people in the, in the industry.

I should stress that since the like, like we talked about earlier, since the.

The bottom fell out of the vinyl sales market, running a label could be a full time job for Quite a few people.

Because you'd sell shed loads of vinyl.

Yeah.

Or something or whatever.

And now, but now that the digital thing is not at the same level, most labels don't really make very much money or hardly any money.

There's only the top few percent that make money from record sales.

All the, the money is made through syncs and live now in the music industry as you probably established.

Yeah, yeah.

So just another project I wanted to touch on then is Renegade Snares because I was reading about that and my notes on that were sort of talking about, about the whitewashing that you wanted to address within the industry.

And was there like a real sense of duty to put something out to address that, that?

Yeah, I think so.

I mean tragically, historically over time most music genres started by, by black people, pioneered by black folk, got co opted by white people and who took the ball away and ran with it and, and you know, claimed it as their own.

And this, this I, I thought in drama, bass jungle, it was so multicultural, multiracial that there was no chance of that happening with drum and bass.

You know you had your Goldies and your Fabian Groove Riders and Bookham and loads of people.

But then suddenly around, yeah the, around a few, five or six or more years ago there was bits where kind of it seemed like a parade of white guys with black T shirts he says were coming in and, and basically taking over drum and bass and, and, and yeah, I, I certainly thought that you know what, what wasn't a good look, it's not a good look in the party as well to just have a load of white guys in black T shirts piling around.

So yeah, that was that.

And it also coincided during, during COVID as well when I was writing it, the book with my Powell Ben Murphy with the black.

The right.

The kind of rise of the black Black Lives Matter movement and I suppose increasing awareness and consciousness within the music industry about the importance of black culture and, and the pioneers of black music to the whole, to music as a whole.

Funk and disco started off as black music.

Blues and jazz and rock and roll.

Rock and roll, yeah.

So I mean you know over the years most, most of these genres have.

Well Gone through twists and turns, but invariably, not always, but invariably were started by black music pioneers back in the day.

So do you feel that like with the book, you managed to address it and get the message across as much as you need, as much as you felt you needed to.

I mean, we had a chapter about it and so I suppose so.

And there was also bits in the prologue or the intro as well.

And a lot of movies.

You know, a lot of the people interviewed and featured in the, in the book are black artists.

So.

Yeah, I guess so.

I mean, I think the scene, the drum bass scene also had a bit of a reckoning within itself as well and, and people started trying to make sure that lineups did reflect diversity, which would include having more women DJs on lineups as well.

And.

Yes, so, so people have, have more consciousness now about, about diversity, I think, which to me is only a good thing.

Absolutely.

What's next for you then?

Are there any other big sort of side projects that are on the horizon?

I'm trying to decide what my next book is going to be, which I haven't decided yet.

I mean my, my day job of DJ mag keeps me, keeps me kind of busy.

Got married last year, been enjoying married life.

I've got two kids from my first marriage and DJ regularly, still light go with my wife on, on various trips and to festivals and lots of events because I've moved back to London now from, from Brighton where I was for 15 years and I've really been enjoying being back in London as well and the rich amount of cultural stuff you can go to, from exhibitions to, to whatever, all the music things you can think of.

So I've just been enjoying being back in London for the last.

It's less than a year actually that I've been.

Been back really.

So yeah, I did a few years ago when I was in Brighton.

Think I'm never moving back to London but now here I am and I'm really loving it.

Amazing.

So one last question then.

I guess there's a couple of questions rolled into one.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing DJs and DJ culture in the modern era?

Right, cool.

I mean some people are content to sort of stay in their lane.

There's, you know, there's sometimes all these kind of like back to 95 parties and some people when they had their absolute heyday moment in, you know, in hardcore rave or in a certain genre might just stick, stick in that lane and carry on doing the same thing that they've done for the last 20 years or whatever but, but yeah but for other DJs evolving and navigating the ever changing scene can be, can be a thing keeping on top of you know, the new tech developments but also the new releases and trying to stay relevant if you like.

Yeah.

Are you, are you just big a bit playing, doing the nostalgia game or are you sort of you know, always looking to the future and yeah, there's been a bit of a reckoning within the culture itself as well.

People are now recognizing more about mental health and people looking after themselves in, in a well being sense and sort of you know, diet and sleep and that thing I was talking about about traveling the world and not sleeping for the whole weekend and yeah getting up every weekend or whatever is not sustainable in the long term.

So there's been more realization that you people have to look after themselves and, and each other actually.

So yeah, thing, things, things have a chain have changed over the years and they'll, they'll I'm sure keep on evolving.

Yeah, I think as well though with the kind of wanting to kind of like take care of yourself in stuff.

I think sometimes it's if you see it, if you see photos of like.

I remember I used to hate seeing photos of myself in certain states and it put me off getting in certain states because I was like I don't, I don't want to look like that.

And I suppose now if you go out and get in certain states there's always going to be photos of you doing it.

So you've got to think a bit more about that now.

You've not got the privacy to have that indulgence and it not be just blasted all over the Internet.

Yeah, that's true.

I mean I, I've joked about being quite glad from the 90s when I was quite a bit more wild of.

You know it was lucky that there weren't many cameras around.

Back in those days no one brought a camera out to a rave or anything.

It was.

Yeah, you know that you're lucky if one photographer would maybe turn up every 10 events or something.

No one wanted to take a camera in case he got damaged or lost.

Now of course it's all, yeah it's all on your phone and could be plastered all over social media immediately.

But I don't know if that's the main reason that less people are getting in those kind of states anymore.

It's well perhaps a combination of things to do with like the cost of living crisis and yeah the youth not having any money so much to go out to people having to much more pick and choose what they go to and people growing up, I suppose, or you know, with myself when I, when I have kids, I very much settled down as well.

Now they're a bit more grown up.

I'm having a bit of a second.

Second wind with it all, should we say?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean it's funny when.

Just going back to the phones, like my friend sent me like a YouTube video of an over mono set and I just looked at that and I just saw that there's this sea of phones.

Yeah.

And it's like the ex.

It's.

The experience just seems to be very different now.

Yeah.

I mean I say throw your keep.

Keep your phone in your pocket, you know.

Yeah.

Because the, the actual video that you get of standing there, you know, trying to be like a BBC cameraman, trying to be really still and get the best angle or the best.

When you get that bit of recording home and try and play it, it sounds like dog really, because it's not.

Yeah.

It's not broadcast quality.

It's a.

And, and maybe it's something you want for your, you know, if you're Instagram or whatever, but just, just do it for 20 seconds.

What's the point of filming the whole set when you're.

That's actually making you lose your full experience within, within the event and you're vicariously sort of living through this, this phone when you could be actually experiencing it directly.

Yeah, yeah.

So.

Yeah.

So there was just one more question I wanted to ask you which comes on the back of that.

And it's really in terms of.

Because I know, I know older DJs that are wanting to ramp up and, and still kind of develop what they're doing and, and you know, you've got all the youngsters that will be wanting to, wanting to build a career.

So is there any sort of advice generally for people, do you think about how to, how to either start or grow a career in dj and particularly when short, short form content consumption is such a big part of how people find out about DJs and about everything really.

Yeah.

I mean, I'd say first of all start your own night and, and if once you get a bit of, bit of a following or, or have enough kind of mates or wherever you're going to come, come regularly, then book, book your favorite DJ to come and you could warm up for them and then you can maybe give them your.

I was going to say demo cd, but that, but give them a USB with one of your tracks on or make friends with them.

And don't expect the label, if you get signed to a label, don't expect the label to do everything.

As an artist you have to promote yourself constantly on social media as well, which isn't what a lot of people signed up for.

And some people have had to kind of, you know, embrace talking to camera about, about whatever or you know, even, even just talking about records when they play them on for, for their Instagram or social media whatever.

So yeah, it's, it's kind of, I suppose a number of, a number of different, different things.

There's no magic formula.

You can't even buy your way in, particularly to, to the inner sanctum.

You, you have to graft and do a lot of hard work.

But then sometimes people do blow up out of nowhere.

Like that guy Fish 56, Octagon.

He just started, you know, chatting about records in his dressing gown with, on, on Instagram and got this huge following and now plays sold out gigs everywhere.

So it can heat in.

In all fairness though, with him, he pivoted.

I'd love to get him on to chat about it because I listened to a podcast he was on and he was doing a load of video content already about like cars doing up old cars.

Yeah.

So he kind of had this pivot and he had a load of skills that he'd used and stuff.

I mean he's a marketing, he's clever marketing guy.

Yeah, yeah, he was working, I don't know, he had a day job and.

He, I think it was a digital marketing agency or something.

Yeah.

And he put sort of dance tracks behind the car, sort of things that he was doing little videos about and then people would kind of rave about the, the music and so yeah, he did exactly that.

Pivot.

Pivot to doing more music stuff.

We're just gonna, instead of sort the cars.

I'm just going to talk about this, this track in my dressing gown.

It definitely like from the outside in because I've known people and I've kind of felt some ways sometimes you think why is this person getting these gigs?

Because they're, because they've started like having a cup of tea and putting a record on and dancing around.

You know, you can like you, you can sort of miss out on someone paying dues and just having a passion, you know.

But yeah, it certainly seems.

Do you think that people maybe want everything to happen a bit too quickly because they see things like that?

Yeah, I mean it's kind of that X factor hangover maybe where you Know, you can just go into a audition in front of Simon Cowell from nowhere when you've never sung in public before and he can make you a star overnight just through a TV show.

And yeah, people maybe think that there's too much thought, that there is a shortcut to fame and fortune when like you say, hard graft and years of paying your dues is, is probably what's necessary most of the time.

But that's not always seen.

But there's all these big name DJs now.

They all started in their local club or in the local pub or, or playing house parties or whatever.

Everyone's got to start somewhere and you just got to get out there and do it really.

And if you've got the enthusiasm and some degree of, degree of taste and a bit of a joie de vivre about you, then then hopefully you could do all right.

Nice.

That's amazing.

Is there anything else that we've not covered that we really ought to have?

Oh, probably, but I can't think off the top of my head just now,.

Apart from me totally my research up.

No, don't worry about that.

I mean music plays an increasingly important role in people's lives and we, we will have lots of parts about music and the music industry.

So yeah, especially when, when you know the world is going to shit around us then we, we take solace in music and, and the importance of getting to getting together in, in the sort of community feel in, at a music event is, takes on more importance as well.

So yeah, keep on, keep on being involved in music, I'd say.

Amazing.

And have you got a favorite DJ and if so, why?

I've got a few actually.

And, and some, some are from quite a long time ago but.

And the older DJs as well.

I mean the ones I always say is Laurent Garnier, Danny Taglio and DJ Markey from different from house, techno and drum base.

But then I like a lot of new, newer people as well, like Cyrita, this, this new house dj I really rate also Carl Cox, you know, and the Fat Boy Slim from the Old Old Guards.

But then, yeah, all the, all these new DJs that we feature in DJ Mag all the time, you know, we have people coming in and playing sets in, in the basement of our office once every other week and we film them for YouTube a bit like, you know, sort of boiler room styley.

And so, you know, all the time I'm, I'm sort of seeing new DJs and, and yeah, and I still love the culture so.

So, yeah, that's.

That's why I keep in it.

Really lovely, great stuff.

Well, thanks very much for your time today, Carl.

Nice one, Adam.

I've enjoyed it.

Excellent.

I'll let you get back to your day.

Cool.

Cheers, then.

Cheers, mate.

All the best.

Don't go anywhere.

Oh, that was nice.