Electronic music dominates both the pop mainstream and also the leftfield outer reaches of the culture spectrum. Yet the UK – still a powerhouse of this global scene, despite all the bad news about homegrown nightclub closures – has never really had an annual conference event that has stuck.
While such gatherings of most other industries involve mind-numbing days of hard sell and dry corporate presentations followed by everyone getting slaughtered in an anodyne hotel bar, a dance music conference is an aspirational leisure choice, attracting a sizable number of visitors whose only professional credentials are that they can last the distance until 6am on a midweek dancefloor.
The US has Florida’s Winter Music Conference (WMC), which has more recently morphed into the vast Miami Music Week, a vaguely ludicrous beachfront beano where the business side of things has been swamped by the mega-bucks pyrotechnic hoopla and beefy VIP poolside ‘bros’ that characterise America’s EDM explosion.
Closer to home, Barcelona has Sonar and Amsterdam has ADE, both long-running, hugely respected conferences, which attract similarly huge numbers of non-industry revellers to each city, and have become major annual cultural (and financial) calendar events.
And the Ibiza summer season is ‘officially’ launched with IMS, a conference offering parties that are as popular with casual clubbers as they are with grinning record label teams waving their all-important company credit cards.
Now, with a third successful year under its belt, there are tentative mutterings that Brighton Music Conference (BMC) might finally be giving this country its very own such yearly powwow, something that could be as good for the business types as it is for the pleasure-leisure brigade too.
After all, the compact city possesses all the right credentials: atmospheric little networking bars similar to Amsterdam’s, Miami-style rockstar-ready accommodation such as the Hotel Pelirocco, and just like MIA, Barca or Ibiza, you can’t deny it’s got a big beach, too. Plus most important, there’s an illustrious club history and lots of quirky venues.
As a former rave hack, I arrive interested in both sides of the conference coin. The BMC proper is taking place at the Brighton Dome, a suitably grand old space with enough areas for seminars, meetings and product demos to take place under the same roof.
I make a beeline for the first panel of the day, which sees my old colleague Carl Loben, editor of DJ Magazine, chair a discussion called ‘Save Our Clubs’.
Alan Miller, head of vital new body the Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) speaks eloquently about the overly conservative, often farcical approach this country can still have towards its prosperous late night economy, and what he intends to do about it. You don’t doubt his abilities to change things, either.
We kick out at 11.45am, and a sizable contingent take that as a signal to order the first pint of the day, with the Egg London crew leading the way. You can take the nightclub people out of the nightclub…
A quick tour of the Dome reveals plenty for the music enthusiast, including a large demo zone from Native Instruments. If you’re an enthusiastic UK-based young producer/DJ, BMC should be an essential two days as it’s genuinely affordable, unlike most of the more established foreign jollies.
I head over to a well-attended panel on women in dance music, and while it’s good to see so many females talking about their careers, it speaks volumes that such a discussion is still obviously needed.
By 6pm, the tug of hedonism proves irresistible, so everyone ambles across to Neighbourhood (101 St James’s St, BN2 1TP), which is just the sort of Amsterdam-style bar where the networking proper takes place each year at ADE. Brighton-based DJ/producer Timo Garcia attends decks perched alongside the beer taps, meanwhile out in the garden is more of a Miami-meets-quintessentially British vibe, with seagulls squawking above the breezy cabanas as dance industry peeps feverishly hobnob before rain puts an end to things.
A tip-off leads us to dine at The Chilli Pickle (17 Jubilee Street, BN1 1GE), which has made a name for itself by injecting some much-needed flair into the traditional tired coastal curry experience.
The canteen-style restaurant is bustling with diners, the space enlivened with the bold colours and rich motifs of the subcontinent. My minced local South Downs lamb is transformed, by way of the Punjab, into a fiery sensation, tempered by hung yoghurt and a dense potato paratha, then reignited once again with a sharp mint chilli dip.
Alternatively Goan-influenced Chicken Xacuti offers a lighter alternative, but with no compromise on the authentic heat of the spices. Serious stuff.
Fully sated, we hook up with a larger gang lured to the end of the pier with the promise of a bingo-themed party hosted by satirical website Wunderground. It’s still raining, so not the ideal conditions for walking a third of a mile out to sea, but it’s not windy or especially cold, and the sticky carpet and stained glass venue, Horatio’s, is a suitably comical location to make the sortie a winner.
The atmosphere is quite excitable, although there’s no sign of the promised bingo, so back to shore we head, for tonight’s big ticket event at The Arch, (189 King’s Rd, BN1 1NB), formerly The Zap, a damp brick structure under the main sea front promenade and a venue that is steeped in South Coast dance music lore.
Headliner Seth Troxler is the main attraction: in fact you can see his entire 2-hour set in the DJ Mag stream below. The BMC crew, being mostly of a generation who prefer to actually attend a club in order to listen to a DJ’s set, go about letting their hair down in the time-honoured manner.
The next day begins three or four hours after the last one ended. True to form, certain delegates appear slightly delicate after the night before, but are muddling through their panels like pros, regardless.
A fresh influx of attendees including some school kids are learning about artist branding and other impenetrable elements of the music machine. It’s good to hear Dutch, French and German voices piping up too, proving that BMC is being taken seriously by visitors from beyond the UK.
The reoccurring topic, as ever, is the challenge of working out how the hell to make any money now that access to music, the main commodity, is essentially free. On the surface, some people seem to be making their new models work, blinding us with talk of YouTube monetisation and clever sync deals, but others are clearly struggling with the economic realities. Plenty for the aspiring DJ/producers to scribble down in their notepads, anyway.
Highlight of the day proves to be the debate, ‘The Rise and Fall of EDM?’ which, as well as providing some inevitable wry laughs, also serves to shed light on the positive fallout from the USA’s supersize (if decades late) love affair with electronica.
As things draw to a close, we decamp up the road to Dead Wax Social (18a Bond St, BN1 1RD), to natter on, surrounded by walls heaving with reassuring old vinyl records.
Kent’s all-conquering Toolroom Records have been running a music production training Academy here for the last two days and, fresh from teaching, Funkagenda is playing an all-vinyl DJ set, although the sound levels are so low you’d almost miss it.
I duck out after a pint for the train back to London, just as the volume – at least of the boisterous voices – starts to rise. A few minutes longer and I may have been sucked in to another night out, with a rash of tempting, credible BMC events being held across the city hosted by the likes of Wiggle, English Disco Lovers and Mute.
It’s been genuinely exciting to see this fledgling event finding its feet. Having been present during the formative years of both Amsterdam’s ADE and Ibiza’s IMS, I can see the hallmarks of what is hopefully now becoming a major annual event here on the UK’s South Coast.
That would mean not only do we finally have a resource for the homegrown electronic music industry, but in turn something that will attract visitors intent on a nightlife-focused break, becoming an important date on the cultural calendar for Brighton in the process.
Exactly the kind of positive knock-on effect this relentlessly creative scene always has if it is celebrated rather than stifled, so bang on-message for Alan’s NTIA, too.
Conference highlights for 2018 include Trainspotting author, playwright and musician, Irvine Welsh interviewed about his love of music and its inspiration on his writing, BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat hosting a panel on drug testing and Brexit for broadcast with speakers from AFEM and Fabric, Hospital Records’ Sonic Surgery including a demo drop for A&R feedback, plus globetrotter Eats Everything headlining the official BMC afterparty at The Arch on Thursday 26th April.
