Not A Diving Podcast with Scuba Scuba

The pandemic is a topic of conversation we studiously avoided for the first year or so of the podcast, it just seemed a bit boring and predictable. It was shit, basically, and there's only so much you can say about being locked inside for 18 months.
But what if you suddenly became a successful DJ in 2019? That was some of the worst timing possible, and must've posed a series of challenges to keep it going, both professional and psychological.
This week's guest had to deal with exactly that scenario, and he just about managed to come out of the other side. The pressures of success aren't intuitively easy to imagine from the outside but this particular case probably isn't that hard to empathise with. Work for years to achieve your dreams, manage to do it, and then face the prospect of it all going up in smoke through the most bizarre social circumstances in living memory.
Don't worry though, it's not all Covid chat this week, we also get into the music, some technical stuff, more discussion of the state of Techno today (the main theme of the show in recent weeks), and some much-needed detail on the scene in Spain.
Regal is a great guy and you're gonna enjoy this one!
If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! There are two tiers - "Solidarity" for $4 a month, which features the show without ads, regular bonus podcasts, and extra content. And "Musicality" which for a mere $10 a month gets you all the music we release on Hotflush and affiliate labels AND other music too, some of which never comes out anywhere else.
You can also make a one-off donation to the podcast using a card, with Paypal, or your Ethereum wallet! Head over to scubaofficial.io/support.
Plus there's also a private area for Patreon supporters in the Hotflush Discord Server... but anyone can join the conversation in the public channels.
Listen to the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlist
Follow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Afro House is not something we've covered in depth on the show to date, but this week we welcome one of the UK's foremost exponents of the form.
Kitty Amor was born in London, but cut her musical teeth running nights as a student Nottingham where she and her associates were instrumental in bringing the second wave of Grime, Funky, and other key London genres out of the capital.
Her sound as a DJ was also developed during that stint in the midlands, and upon returning to London she made a success in establishing herself on the scene, and put herself in a great position to kick on when the international opportunities came knocking as they inevitably did.
We discuss the challenges of getting started in the industry, the influence of musical parents, the peculiarities of running student nights, taking advantage of the time in lockdown, and the nature of the scene today.
Kitty has some great stories and you're gonna enjoy this episode!
If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! There are two tiers - "Solidarity" for $4 a month, which features the show without ads, regular bonus podcasts, and extra content. And "Musicality" which for a mere $10 a month gets you all the music we release on Hotflush and affiliate labels AND other music too, some of which never comes out anywhere else.
You can also make a one-off donation to the podcast using a card, with Paypal, or your Ethereum wallet! Head over to scubaofficial.io/support.
Plus there's also a private area for Patreon supporters in the Hotflush Discord Server... but anyone can join the conversation in the public channels.
Listen to the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlist
Follow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Join us at the D:U:2 listening party -> https://scubaofficial.bandcamp.com/merch/d-u-2-listening-party
Listen to the awesome Laurus Ascending EP by Bodhi -> https://ingrv.es/laurus-ascending-ya4-9
It's been a while since we had a promoter on the show, and this week's guest is one of the most influential in Europe since the turn of the century.
Having spent his 20s servicing in the military and fire brigade, Danny Whittle joined the Renaissance team direct from the job centre and since then has been running parties mostly in Ibiza but in other places too, including a memorable detour to Bondi Beach on Millennium Eve.
We get deep into his legendary 14 year stint running Pacha were he essentially invented the enduring trend of season-long DJ residencies on the island, and all of the benefits and problems which have come with that approach to music polices on the island. And we talk about his current job, programming the 'small' 1500 cap venue Chinois.
As well as interrogating the pros and cons of the current dance scene, we discuss the parallels with the late 90s, and of course cover what was one of the few major successes of what was supposed to be the biggest party night ever, that Bondi Beach rave with Carl Cox.
Danny is a real legend of the European club scene and we get a lot of info here that you can't get anywhere else!
If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! There are two tiers - "Solidarity" for $4 a month, which features the show without ads, regular bonus podcasts, and extra content. And "Musicality" which for a mere $10 a month gets you all the music we release on Hotflush and affiliate labels AND other music too, some of which never comes out anywhere else.
You can also make a one-off donation to the podcast using a card, with Paypal, or your Ethereum wallet! Head over to scubaofficial.io/support.
Plus there's also a private area for Patreon supporters in the Hotflush Discord Server... but anyone can join the conversation in the public channels.
Listen to the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlist
Follow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Are we partying like it's 1999? I mean what it was actually like in 99, not how Prince imagined it might be back in 1982.
Millennium eve was supposed to be the best thing ever. I was beside myself with excitement for months beforehand, possibly years. But when push came to shove, my group of friends didn't even bother going to a rave and spent an underwhelming evening drinking warm champagne on Brighton Beach before attending a number of deeply boring house parties.
The subsequent inquest carried out in the pages of Mixmag, DJ Mag, and the rest suggested that our experience wasn't unusual. Promoters lost unfathomable amounts of money that night and the overall impression was that an enormous bubble had prematurely burst with the least fanfare possible.
The current landscape lacks a similar finishing line, but the bug-eyed faux enthusiasm and lip-smacking commercialism which seems to define everything in the dance scene right now definitely has a similar feel to the end of the 90s. But what, if anything, is going to let the air out this time? 1999 was also the time that our guest this week, Steve Bug, and some of the Superstition Records gang from Hamburg started Poker Flat Recordings, one of the labels that would define the minimal sound that emerged from the wreckage of Millennium Eve.
Steve has been pretty outspoken in his interviews of the last few years on above topics, so of course I wanted to get him on the podcast to talk about it. This conversation dovetails nicely with last week's episode with Radio Slave, in which I noted that 'if something is shit, then you should say it's shit, and this [the current dance scene] is shit'.
There is a reasonable degree of constructive comment in this episode though, as well as the doom. I think there is anyway!
If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! There are two tiers - "Solidarity" for $4 a month, which features the show without ads, regular bonus podcasts, and extra content. And "Musicality" which for a mere $10 a month gets you all the music we release on Hotflush and affiliate labels AND other music too, some of which never comes out anywhere else.
You can also make a one-off donation to the podcast using a card, with Paypal, or your Ethereum wallet! Head over to scubaofficial.io/support.
Plus there's also a private area for Patreon supporters in the Hotflush Discord Server... but anyone can join the conversation in the public channels.
Listen to the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlist
Follow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

At what point does criticism of changes in culture become overly reactive? This is a question I've wrestled with continuously over the past couple of years, but I can't get past the conclusion that if something isn't good then pointing that fact out is never really a bad thing... right?
My conversation with Radio Slave this week doesn't pull any punches on what is wrong with dance music currently. It's no longer cool. Social media is rewarding the wrong stuff. The history of the thing is being trampled on and turned into something that bears no resemblance to the original vision.
But over the top of all that is a sense that good things are still happening, and that maybe it wouldn't take much for the forces of commercialism too be swept away and something great to emerge. Kind of like what happened after the turn of the millennium, a period which felt quite a bit like it does now.
We also discuss the new Radio Slave album, the changing nature of running a label in this space (Rekids, in this instance), and try to anticipate how it's all going to develop... positive or negative!
Matt Edwards is a don of the scene and you're going to enjoy this conversation!
If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! There are two tiers - "Solidarity" for $4 a month, which features the show without ads, regular bonus podcasts, and extra content. And "Musicality" which for a mere $10 a month gets you all the music we release on Hotflush and affiliate labels AND other music too, some of which never comes out anywhere else.
You can also make a one-off donation to the podcast using a card, with Paypal, or your Ethereum wallet! Head over to scubaofficial.io/support.
Plus there's also a private area for Patreon supporters in the Hotflush Discord Server... but anyone can join the conversation in the public channels.
Listen to the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlist
Follow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's the week after the week before.... no guest this week, but a deep dive into my experiences with live electronic music in the audience as well as being on stage myself.
And on stage I was, last week in London, Bristol, and Manchester. Huge thanks to all of you who attended the shows, had so much great feedback it's been a bit overwhelming actually. If you missed it then there will be more later in the year!
If you're into what we're doing here on the pod then you can support the show on Patreon! There are two tiers - "Solidarity" for $4 a month, which features the show without ads, regular bonus podcasts, and extra content. And "Musicality" which for a mere $10 a month gets you all the music we release on Hotflush and affiliate labels AND other music too, some of which never comes out anywhere else.
You can also make a one-off donation to the podcast using a card, with Paypal, or your Ethereum wallet! Head over to scubaofficial.io/support.
Plus there's also a private area for Patreon supporters in the Hotflush Discord Server... but anyone can join the conversation in the public channels.
Listen to the music discussed on the show via the Not A Diving Podcast Spotify playlist
Follow Scuba: twitter instagram bandcamp spotify apple music beatport

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.