At the start of 2022, Hotflush label founder Paul Rose aka Scuba set out on a new mission to host and curate a weekly podcast series offering fresh insight into the inner workings of the electronic music industry.
Motivated by a lack of commentary on the subject, Paul Rose has since interviewed an array of music industry heavyweights – spanning producers, booking agents, PR’s and label bosses – amicably reflecting on their careers, discussing the many challenges and opportunities that they have encountered.
Recent episodes include an in-depth conversation with LittleBig Music Agency founder Ned Beckett, detailing his time working at Warp, the changing nature of live music and becoming Aphex Twin’s booking agent.
Other episode highlights include AUS Music founder Will Saul, head of A&R at !K7 Records and curator of the long-standing DJ Kicks mix series. Appleblim discusses the early days of Dubstep and the legacy of Skull Disco. As well as conversations with Surgeon, Mark Broadbent, A Guy Called Gerald, Melissa Taylor, Cassy, Dbridge, Plastician, Levon Vincent and many more.
For us, Scuba’s ‘Not A Diving Podcast‘ has become an essential listen, enabling interested minds the opportunity to dive into the nitty gritty of the past, present and future of electronic music. Below is a statement from Paul Rose detailing the principles of the podcast series.
“I’m an over-enthusiastic consumer of long form podcasts, and had it at the back of my mind to start one for well over a year before finally getting round to it. I was motivated by the comparative lack of coverage for our area of music in the genre, and also by the fact that almost all the questions musicians get asked over the course of their careers are either boring or obvious. Slightly ridiculously, I felt that I could do better despite having zero experience of asking the questions in interviews. Like most things you think will be easy to improve, it’s turned out to be a bit harder than I anticipated but I do think the conversations add something in of themselves. If nothing else, it’s just a great pleasure to be able to chat to a like-minded person for a couple of hours every week.”
“The general policy is to try to cover more than just artists, and certainly to avoid the usual PR-driven circuit of album campaigns and tour promo. Some of the best episodes have been with people who work in the back end of the industry like promoters Rich McGinnis from Warehouse Project, Nicole Cacciavillano who helped break dubstep in the US, and the legendary Mark Broadbent (We Love Space / Cream), as well as label owners such a Chris Goss from Hospital and Will Saul head of A&R at !K7 Records. So we’ll keep trying to get hold of interesting people who aren’t interviewed too frequently, as well as some important artists who have something to say.”
As part of ADE, ‘Not a Diving Podcast’ will be recorded live in Amsterdam on Wednesday 19th October featuring BPitch Control label boss Ellen Allien.