Hayley: Whether you’ve been handed the AUX at a house party, you’re on the decks at a city centre venue or you’re on stage at a gig or a festival, what would you say is the key to providing a satisfying soundtrack?

Kev: I think the main thing is feeling out who’s there. I guess it’s asking ‘What does this environment need? How can music enhance this environment?’ For instance, if there’s a lot of chatter and a lot of people talking already—say at a networking event—what works really well is something like instrumental house or disco, which is, in itself, quite high energy but that mid range of vocals isn’t there, so it’s not clashing with people talking. It’s not distracting people with lyrics, so they can engage with each other. If it’s an environment where people are fully focused on the music—like at a listening bar—you can play some really downbeat, weird, intricate stuff and because people are fully present for it, they’ll hear things in the music that they wouldn’t hear if they were otherwise distracted. It’s also about removing your ego a bit and not just asking ‘What do I want to hear?’.

Are you ever looking to impress with deep cuts or niche selections?

I’d say a lot less so nowadays but probably at some point, yeah. When I first started DJing and people used to say, for instance, ‘Here’s Kev, Mr. DJ! Put some music on’, I used to love that. Now I’m like ‘Can’t I just have a night off’! Quite often, I’ll just say ‘Why don’t you start us off and I’ll follow’. I don’t like [controlling the AUX] at parties and also, I don’t get to hear any other music that way. I don't get to discover anything new. I love it when other people put stuff on, because I’m often like ‘Wow what’s this?’. 

Do you feel like people try to impress you with their selections because they know you’re a DJ?

I don’t think consciously, no. I don’t know, I can only speak for myself. But I’ve definitely been blown away a few times when people have put music on that I don’t already know.

Have you always been interested in music?

I feel like I was a bit of a slow developer in some ways. I’d say I really got into music when I was maybe 15, 16, 17… I guess that’s when you start buying your own music and pulling away from your parents' tastes. I’m the oldest, I’ve only got one younger sister, so I didn’t have an older sibling [to be influenced by either]. 

Since then, I think I’ve always known I enjoy music, but it wasn’t until I went to university that I started to get really interested in it and my world opened up to include a lot of new genres. I started to get really curious about how you fit different genres together, seemingly disparate genres like reggae and hip hop, jazz and funk. Like, how do you mix all that together in a cohesive way? I knew there was a way to do it. You’ve just got to know your tunes really well and, actually, anything sounds good in the right place. It’s about where it fits. Does it match energetically, sonically, tonally? I think I’ve always had an interest in music, but it definitely developed at university.

Are there any artists or genres you remember really connecting with?

I studied in Falmouth in Cornwall—a great place to study, the beach right there—and there used to be this DJ collective called Hong Kong Ping Pong, three guys who played a lot of mashups and edits of hip hop, funk and reggae. What I didn’t realise at the time was that they were buying a lot of 7 inches which were pre-made mashups and edits of say a reggae instrumental [mixed] with a bit more of a hip hop style beat and a well-known hip hop acapella over the top. This DJ crew were then mixing that record into their sets. My mind was blown. I was like ‘How are they finding these songs?’. I recognised the reggae riddim, I recognised the hip hop vocal, and then they were mixing it… I was like ‘How are they doing this? Have they got, like, seven turntables?’

Then I started getting to know those guys and they told me how they did it, and that’s what got me interested in the sonic landscape of the mix. For instance, some of their tracks used to have rounds of applause in the mix and you’d notice when playing that track in a bar or even at a house party, when that round of applause came on, people got energised by it, because it felt like you were in a live environment. So I started toying with these different ways of sampling. That continuous throughline of music where you can build an energy and a vibe, but do it consciously, being aware of what you’re playing and where you’re going. They really turned me onto DJing.

When did you start investing in DJ equipment?

The first pair of decks I bought were a pair of Numark, belt-driven turntables off my friend Paul Roberts while we were at uni. Belt-driven means they’re not driven by a motor, they’re driven by an elastic belt, so when you scratch on them a lot, that belt stretches and they start to lose their responsiveness. They can lag and not play the music in the right spot. They were slightly stretched, so he was selling them for like, forty quid and that’s how I learned to mix with vinyl—self-taught just by mixing on a cheap little Numark mixer and these cheap decks. Then I started buying hip hop records—a lot of A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, 90s hip hop—trying to mix tracks together.

Did you have your sights set on a career in the music industry back then?

It was just a hobby to be honest. I will say that, without trying to blow my own trumpet, the first time I went on a pair of turntables—I think I was 16—my mate had bought them and he was trying to mix drum and bass records together, and he was struggling. Then I went to have a go and pretty much instantly, I knew what I needed to do. I wouldn’t say I could actually do it straight away, but instinctively I knew ‘We need to speed that record up and slow that one down’ [etc.] and within an hour or so, I was mixing quite well. It came really naturally to me, but I never thought about a career in it really. 

When I was at uni, the first public gig I had was at a place called Q Bar near Falmouth. It was open decks, so like open mic. You’d bring a load of records and play until you’d run out—or until other people kicked you off the decks. It was quite busy, I think it was a Thursday night. There was a girl on before me playing reggae, then I jumped on and played for like two or three hours, uninterrupted. I’d started buying a lot of funk, soul and disco records at that point—this was in my second year of uni, so I’d built up a bit of a collection—and about two hours into the set, the manager came up to me and said ‘Do you want to play every Saturday night?’. I said ‘I’d love to but these are all my records’. He said ‘What if I pay you in advance now for next Saturday, and you go and buy a load of records?’. So I said ‘OK’ and that’s exactly what I did—and then I played there every Saturday for a good two years. 

That must have been a real confidence boost so early on. That bit of support, especially from a stranger, can make such a difference when you’re starting out. 

It meant a lot. Because I didn’t really know [what I was doing]. In the bar, it seemed like I was doing alright, but I was still kind of nervous, so for him to say do you want to play every Saturday night, I was like ‘Oh. Well that’s good, that’s positive!’. It gave me confidence in my taste and in my abilities, and it went from there.

So how did you end up in Manchester?

I’m from Manchester originally. I studied down in Falmouth because I wanted to stretch my legs and go somewhere far away—somewhere with a different climate, a different pace [of life]. I’ve always loved the sea. I’m a very amateur surfer but I do love surfing, and I love skateboarding too—I was really into Lords of Dogtown and that 60s, 70s skateboard scene—so Falmouth seemed like the perfect place. And it was! The music scene down there was really good as well. It was quite a small place, great vibe, very creative, very artistic, very laidback and I think that really played into my musical tastes.

And from what I can tell, you’re a wax man! What is it that you like about working with records specifically?

Don’t get me wrong, I DJ quite often on CDJs with just a USB, but I’m very glad that I learnt on vinyl. Because I feel like it’s kind of analogous to learning to drive a manual or an automatic. There’s something about records where there’s a lot more to it than just turning up and playing tunes. 

First of all, you have to be really intentional with what you buy, because records are now quite expensive [though] you’ve also got to have a lot of records, eventually, to [allow you] enough versatility. For example, I did a six hour set at Bundobust the other night, all vinyl, and they have a great music policy. It’s everything I love to play—funk, soul, reggae, jazz, hip hop, disco, house and everything in between—but in order to get to the stage where I can do a six hour gig, I’ve got to take about eight hours worth of records to give me the versatility in the moment to read the crowd and see where to go next, so there’s intentionality in the buying and then also in the packing of your bag before a gig. ‘This is all I’ve got, so I hope it’s right.’ It breeds this intentionality and this research into the venue. Maybe you go to the venue the Friday before your gig and have a drink and suss out the vibe because you want to get it right. 

There’s also the preparation, the cleaning of the records, the feel of them. And then you’ve got all the stuff that vinyl nerds love to geek out on, like sleeve notes. That’s when you get into the world of record digging and start looking into labels or certain producers or percussionists or guitarists. Then you start building this mental network—through conversations with people in record shops, through looking at sleeve notes and organising your collection—which I just don’t think you get when you’re consuming music through Spotify or downloading the Top 20 house tracks off Beatport. It’s just this completely different thing. I’m all for up and coming talent being given new opportunities, but I do think that, unfortunately, at the moment, there are a lot of DJ’s who’ve become really big really quickly who maybe don’t have that true grounding.

I’m not saying that everyone has to learn on vinyl, but I’m very glad that I did. I feel like it bred this culture within me of intentionality and patience, and it opened me up to this invisible network of record collectors and DJs who have a certain way of thinking about music, which I think is like the antidote to this fragmented, attention [poor] society we find ourselves in. The act of pulling out a record, finding the track you want, putting it on the turntable, cleaning it, cleaning the needle, dropping it down, hearing the crackle of the vinyl… It’s almost a ritual. I think ritual is actually really important and has lost meaning in our modern day lives. Whether that’s through yoga or meditation, making your own coffee or putting a record on, there’s no shortcut to it. It needs patience.

“I’m not saying that everyone has to learn on vinyl, but I’m very glad that I did. I feel like it bred this culture within me of intentionality and patience”

Meanwhile, we’re all rushing through life… 

Experience takes place within time, so in order to be experienced, you can’t rush it. That also comes into the fee for hiring a DJ. Everyone generally gets paid a similar rate for a bar gig in Manchester, [meaning] a person who learnt on a controller a year ago, downloads a load of music and perhaps isn’t that experienced will be getting paid roughly the same as a DJ who might bring all vinyl that they’ve been collecting for the past 30 years.

You’re not just paying someone for that five or six hour set, you’re paying them for the twenty or thirty years of experience, as well as knowing how to set up the decks, how to troubleshoot, how to read the room and having enough versatility in their collection to feel comfortable that they can win over almost any crowd. Again, I’ve got nothing against people who learn on controllers. If they’ve got good taste in music and they’re doing it for the right reasons—because they love music—I’m all for it.

It’s really interesting to hear you break it down like that. It makes total sense, but I imagine it can be quite hard for even really experienced DJs to advocate for themselves in that way. 

There’s a running joke amongst vinyl DJs that no one cares that you’re playing all vinyl. No one knows for starters—they can’t see if they can’t see the booth—but also they don’t care. It’s funny, because a lot of time and effort goes into it, but in the moment, when you’re playing a rare 7 inch soul tune from the 70s that [cost] £4000, no one knows and no one cares. Does it sound good? Can you mix it well? Is it right for the vibe? If not, then no one gives a shit. That said, I do think learning on vinyl breeds a lot of transferable skills that make you a better DJ generally, as well as patience for the craft and a real love for it. 

When I got into hip hop, I started going back through all the funk and soul samples—because hip hop’s mainly comprised of funk, soul and disco samples—which filtered down into this tree of ‘Wow, there’s all this funk, soul and disco out there that’s supported the hip hop’. Then I was like ‘Well, what informed the funk and soul artists?’ [which got me into] blues, and then ‘Wow, there’s all this Afrobeat and Latin and Bossa…’. Eventually, you kind of get addicted to finding new music.

So at what point did the idea for Contrast Entertainment come about?

So, I’ve been DJing in Manchester for about 15 years and about eight or nine years ago, I met a guy called Jim Spratling, who’s the manager at Eastern Bloc Records. He’s been the manager for fifteen years and he’s worked there for twenty-odd years. We actually met at a double booking at TROF. I turned up and I was like ‘Who’s this guy?’. He was already setting up. So I was like ‘Hiya mate, I think I'm booked tonight’ and he was like ‘I think I’m booked tonight, actually’. Eventually, we dropped it and [accepted] that it was a mistake and I said ‘Do you know what, you take the gig. I’ve had a busy day, I’m actually alright just having a couple of pints. I’ll sit with you for a bit and then I’ll leave’. I ended up staying all night because the music was just amazing.

We kept in touch and we noticed that there seemed to be a lot of these double bookings. A lot of mistakes, a lot of issues where people were turning up to a gig and the equipment that they’d been told by the booker was there wasn’t there or the set times or the brief were wrong—you were told one thing but the customers or the management actually wanted something else. We also noticed there were a lot of mediocre or really quite poor quality DJs that were getting a lot of work and there were also a lot of really good DJs that we knew from the circuit who weren’t. 

All of this culminated in us eventually starting to talk about setting up an agency. We chatted about it for a while and nothing really came of it, and then I got the opportunity to DJ at Cord Bar, which used to be on Tib Street. I played a really varied set—funk, soul, everything I’ve mentioned—and the manager at the time said ‘That was really good, [DJs] usually just play house in here. Do you know any DJs who can DJ the same sort of vibe as you?’. I said ‘Yes’ and he said ‘We’ll give you a regular slot and if you can find some other people, we can pay you a booking fee’. So, I rang Jim and said ‘I think this might be the start of that agency that we’ve been talking about…’.

So we did a few bookings for Cord Bar. They ended up going bust and owing us a few hundred quid—so our first client didn’t even pay us!—but it was good that that happened, because straight away we could see ‘OK, we should be on our money a bit better or have some kind of terms [of business]’. So we slowly started to develop some terms of business, and then we got Affleck & Brown. It was a very gradual thing. 

I had a full-time job at the time as an Environmental Consultant. I’d done Geography at uni in Falmouth and a Masters in Environmental Impact Assessment & Management when I came back to Manchester, so I went into an environmental planning role, writing environmental reports for developers. I was doing it for the right reasons, but I really didn’t like the corporate atmosphere and although the company that I worked for was really cool, we were constantly under pressure from developers. During COVID, I was lucky to keep my job—I was on furlough—but then I started going back into the office and started to think ‘Ah, I really just don’t like this industry’. The company was great, I just didn’t like the industry, so I started thinking more seriously about Contrast. Then after COVID, we had this huge influx of enquiries and there were new venues popping up as well, surprisingly. Places like Freight Island, which were borne out of COVID and kind of COVID-proof in a way, one of the first places to do QR codes on the tables, with seating designed with social distancing in mind. 

I took the plunge to go full time in September, October 2021. So there’s a potted history of how Contrast came about.

Out of interest, do you believe in fate? Because the way that you and Jim met could be seen as either an incredible coincidence or, equally, something more cosmic…

I wouldn’t say I believe in fate necessarily, but I do believe that when you approach something with a clear intention and you vocalise it and you say ‘I’m going for this’, the universe tends to support you in that journey. I don’t know if it’s a psychological shift. I mean, I am fairly spiritual… I think that word’s got some negative connotations but I do believe there’s energies at play in this world that are more than merely practical. I think there are things going on that we don’t always understand. 

I’ve found it true in my life that if you approach something with a really pure and true intention, the universe conspires to support you. And I also believe you can’t half arse two things. I’m not saying you can’t have a side hustle, of course, but for me, when I made that decision to leave Urban Green—which was cutting off a big financial security net, because [although] I’d gone down to three days a week, it was still covering my rent—suddenly we got the contact for Freight Island, which is a great name to have on your books, because it then gives you more weight to then approach other clients.

So I don't necessarily believe in fate in the sense of having a predetermined end point, but I do believe that if you’ve got a vision—a vague sense of something over there—if you keep putting one foot in front of the other, the path presents itself over time.

“I’ve found it true in my life that if you approach something with a really pure and true intention, the universe conspires to support you.”

What do the two of you look for in the DJs you represent? Do things like professionalism and reliability come into play, potentially over raw talent?

Honestly, one of the main things that we look for is whether they’re a good person. And that’s guys, girls, any sexual orientation, any race, creed, that doesn’t matter to us at all. Obviously, you’ve got to have good taste in music, but I think a big factor is whether you’re a good person. And I often find that for me, the people that I tend to think are genuinely nice, good people have similar sorts of taste in music, and it just so happens that those tastes reflect what a lot of our clients want in their venues. I’ve got nothing against drum and bass or techno, but it’s not really what I listen to and it’s also not really what our clients tend to want in a bar or restaurant setting. We’ve got plenty of DJs where that is their bag and they love it, but they also play funk, soul, jazz and disco, which is appropriate for our clients.

So I’d say first and foremost, energetically, do I think they’re a good person doing it for the right reasons. Because there’s plenty of people who play the right music who, for one reason or another, I just don’t think are right for our agency. Maybe they’re too demanding or they’re always late or they show up and drink way too much or try to get free food… They don’t take it seriously, you know? So that’s a big thing. Then, do they play the right music? That’s the next big thing. If they’re technically efficient and really interested in beat matching or doing tricks or whatever—great, but that’s not necessary. 

On that note, I actually wanted to ask you if there’s a difference between a DJ and a selector, or if you can use those words interchangeably?

For me, yes. It’s interesting, because I don’t want to offend anyone… I think all DJs are selectors, but not all selectors are necessarily DJs. That’s not to diminish the role of a selector, but I think if you’re DJing, you should really be mixing, trying to blend tracks together. In my opinion, for me personally!

A selector’s role is about selecting the right records. Big reggae dub sound systems, you know, they’re not necessarily mixing but they’re putting the right tune on at the right time which is the right vibe for that moment. And I think especially if you’re playing records, you can be forgiven for not mixing all the time, especially if it’s a chilled out restaurant or bar setting, where it’s not necessarily about those long blends or building the energy like with a house or techno club night. 

If you’re playing a really diverse set of, say, bossa nova to Indonesian jazz, it’s very hard to mix. There’s a lot of different time signatures and different recording styles and maybe it’s music from different eras, different instruments, vocals, no vocals, really bassy… There’s so much diversity in there that it’s a challenge in itself to select the right songs which seem to fit together both sonically and energetically. It’s great fun to try and mix them together as well, but I’d say a great selector does their job really well by selecting the right music for the right time, particularly if it’s on vinyl. 

A DJ, I’d argue, should really be mixing basically every song—and the really incredible DJs can be selectors who nail that diversity of records and can cut it up on the ones and twos as well. Like DJ Koco from Japan. He’s unbelievable and he does it all mainly with seven inches. He’s dropping samples in the middle of hip hop tunes, then with the original riff—he’s so dextrous and technically unbelievable, and yet still plays crowd pleasers without being cheesy. That’s an example for me of someone who is a great DJ and a great selector.

How do you match your DJs with the venues you think they’ll thrive in? Do you—or they—have an active role in shaping the music policies at the places you work with?

Good question. When we take on a new venue, we do a deep dive consultation with them. We ask questions like what they want to hear as the founders, how that ties in with the concept and what they think their customers want to hear. Like, ‘We know what your brand looks like, but what’s the sonic representation of your brand?’. We try to dig quite deep, making playlists of several songs and asking what [the venue] do and don’t like out of it. We do that a few times and we extrapolate—‘If you like this, you’ll probably like this’—so that eventually they sign off a core DNA recipe playlist and from that, we think ‘Alright, who are the DJs on our books who’d do a really good job of this?’. It depends on the musical brief. But also, is there a bit of showmanship required? Are they going to be on a big stage and are there going to be performers around them? If so, there are other factors that come into it, but obviously the music is the first and foremost. 

I guess we’ve known a lot of our DJs personally for quite a long time, so it’s quite intuitive who’d be a good fit where, but we’re always onboarding new DJs and we’re happy to try them out, [though] if it’s a DJ’s first time, we’re probably not going to put them on a launch night. For that, we’ll go with someone tried and tested, people who we know are going to absolutely kill it. Then we get feedback from the staff and continuous feedback from the client, and refine and refine the roster until they’ve got a family of residents who are basically part of the staff or part of the family. Then, we try to book them fairly regularly so that customers know ‘Oh, it’s Ralph every other Thursday at this venue’ or ‘It’s Rick every other Friday here’ or ‘It’s Hannah every Saturday’. It’s regularity for the staff then too.

Would you ever approach a venue where they don’t already have a DJ? For instance, I know that you guys work with Bundobust. Did you initially set them up with DJs?

So [before we started working with them], the one in Piccadilly didn’t have DJs, but the one in Leeds did. There’s a guy, edv3ctor, who’s based in Leeds who used to do some of their bookings and when they started trialling them in Manchester, ed was facilitating that as well. Then we were introduced to Bundobust and [said that] we could probably cover Manchester. We knew ed, so we made sure he got a few gigs and there was no animosity between us. It seemed like a good fit for everyone. He kept doing Leeds, we did Manchester.

If I’m honest, I think DJs work really well at Bundobust, but there are some venues where they don’t really need [one]. We won’t push it if we don’t feel like they need it. When I say ‘need’, it can be a ‘nice to have’. If they’re elevating the vibe in some way—that can be aesthetically, visually—great. Because obviously, the music’s really important, but sometimes venues want to be seen to have a DJ as well, which is fine. But sometimes you think ‘This place doesn't need a DJ’—and that’s OK. We also do playlists, so if a playlist is more fitting, we can [provide] curated playlists for a venue instead.

Is there anything in particular that tips you off that a DJ just wouldn't work at a venue?

The kind of venues we like to work with get us on board because they see us as the experts in what we do and we like to think that as well, so if the venue has a really firm idea of what they want but we don’t necessarily think it’s the right direction, we’ll politely try and have that conversation with them and say ‘Hey, have you thought about it like this?’. Quite often, venue owners run their businesses and know their clients really well, but marrying that up to the perfect musical [accompaniment] isn’t always as simple as you might think. Music is very subjective and sometimes words don’t always convey what you want, [so there can be] a bit of unpicking. We’ve got a list of questions that we use now to try and dig a bit deeper, or peel back the layers a little bit on what they mean or what they’re trying to achieve. And quite often venues are open to that conversation of maybe changing their thinking a little bit. Ideally, it's a collaboration. We’re not going in there to tell them how to run their business. It works best when it’s a collaboration, when we get to suggest things and maybe they get to correct us as well.

That sounds like a nice way to do business. Approaching it with a mix of integrity and humility.

Honestly, I think me and Jim are of that disposition anyway. We like to think we’re nice guys! We care about music and we like having good, positive, long lasting relationships with people, so it needs to be built on a foundation of trust and clear, honest communication from the start. If you’re trying to sell someone something that they don’t need, it’s disingenuous and actually, the clients that we want are the ones that are open to these conversations, as they tend to be the best clients to work for. They pay on time, they have great marketing teams and they’re invested in what we do. 

We’d rather have fewer clients that are better quality than try to get a DJ in every bar. We’ve done it. We’ve worked with loads of bars in the Northern Quarter and nothing against any of them, but there comes a point where you're like ‘I think we’re going to have to step away. The offer that you want and what we’re offering aren’t aligned’. For example, we don’t really do a lot of cheese DJs. People think that’s a really easy gig to fill, but a lot of our DJs are real music aficionados—they don’t want to play the Top 40. What does it matter if it’s a £500 gig? They don’t want to do it and they also don’t want to be seen to be doing it, because it’ll damage their reputation. What we try to do with Contrast is tread that line between commercial viability—recognisable music—without straying into cheesy territory. Dropping in the occasional tune that people know, that pricks up their ears and keeps them interested, but not just smashing out a wedding set. There’s got to be some integrity to it.

I guess that kind of ethos acts as a filter almost, so that, as an agency, you’re attracting DJs who do it mainly for the love of the music, not necessarily for the money or to see where the job can take them. Is that something you’ve specifically tried to foster within your roster?

I think those people exist anyway, not just on the Manchester scene and not just in the UK. In any major city where people are playing music, there’s that core scene and the places it revolves around, like recording studios, record shops, venues like Night and Day, where there’s a heritage [and a history]. There’s these cultural hotspots, this mycelium, this underground network where people know each other and they tend to be the real heads, the ones who are into the music. And a lot of them get into it for really pure reasons. A lot of them would be doing it anyway, though of course it’s nice to be paid for it. It’s similar for me with DJing. If I wasn’t now DJing in venues, I’d probably be [doing it] at home anyway. 

Something we really pride ourselves on at Contrast is providing a fair wage for entertainers. We always reference the Musician’s Union minimum rates and we don’t go below that. In very, very rare circumstances, we’ll say to an act ‘Hey, the venues only got this much, do you want it?’ and if people turn it down, we just say to the venue ‘You’ve got to up your prices, we can’t find you anyone at this rate’. That speaks to the quality of the DJs we book. 

There are a few apps that have sprung up recently where they try to do away with agents by putting the artists in contact with the venue directly. They both log into a platform—naming no names—and the artist puts in their availability as well as the genres that they play and the venue [has the option to] book them. There’s one app in particular that I’m thinking of that says it never takes money directly from the artist, which is [technically] true—but they do do it indirectly by [suggesting to] venues that you can get [high quality] acts for really cheap rates. Venues are still quite strapped for cash, so they’re looking to get things in the most cost effective way that they can and the way this app gets around it is that they let artists set their own minimum rate on the platform. What we’re finding is that artists are strapped for cash as well, which forces them to lower their minimum rates, which is then diluting and undervaluing and undermining the whole industry, because now venues expect to be able to get a [good quality] DJ for a hundred quid. 

I feel like our role as booking agents is really important at the moment, because we’re authentic, we care, we’re DJs ourselves, we’re passionate about music and we understand that we’re kind of one of the last bastions of quality music in this role. We like to think we can always have that conversation with venues where we’re like ‘Look, you can [stay] on the good side of music’. Because once you start going down the ‘R&B brunch’ route or the ‘cheesy bangers’ route, it’s a race to the bottom and it’s real quick. Your demographic changes pretty quickly and it’s super hard to get back from that. I understand a lot of venues want to keep footfall, so they want music that people know, but that’s where we try to tread that line.

I guess those apps exist in other industries…

And it’s a great idea. I think the danger is that by removing agents, you’re doing away with a lot of… Agencies exist for a reason. To get a fair price for the artists, to get a fair price for the venue, and to digest and understand all the information [involved]. Because the artist understands all the musical stuff, the venue understands all the financial stuff, maybe neither understand the technical set up—whether because the venue hired an external company to fit it or the artist hasn’t been to that venue before—so they need someone to distil all that information into a centralised booking platform, which is what we do. The artist can see it, the venue can see it—it’s very open and communicative. We get to distil it and decide which information is important and which is not, without going into too much technical jargon and without over-explaining things.

“Agencies exist for a reason. To get a fair price for the artists, to get a fair price for the venue, and to digest and understand all the information [involved].”

Do you ever find yourself feeling ‘far away’—both physically and/or metaphorically—from the actual music while working on the booking side of things? How do you reconnect to your passion for the field if ever you find it waning?

The honest answer is yes. I guess like any job, I suppose. It’s no different to if you start out working for a company doing what you love and then you get promoted, eventually your job becomes more and more admin-based, and managing the thing rather than doing the thing. We do keep a regular connection to the music though in that we do regular visits to our clients. We’ll pop in for a drink at some of our bars, or maybe we’ll go and surprise a DJ on a Saturday night. Not to police them or anything, more so because a lot of them are our friends! It also gives us a sense of whether we still understand the brief in that venue and what the clientele there wants. And, sure, it’ll be a little bit different every night, but it’s good to drop in occasionally and check that we’ve still got it. We also check in with venue management quite regularly, often weekly or fortnightly, and we go and DJ ourselves at our venues every now and again. I’d say at least once every couple of months, we’ll book ourselves a gig at one of our venues, just to keep a hand in and so we can get a real sense and feel of it.

Do you find that those sets give you a lot of motivation, or remind you why you do what you do?

Yeah, particularly if it’s somewhere that aligns with my personal taste in music. Like, I DJd at Bundobust, as I say, the other night and I loved it. I got to play records I’ve not played in ages and, you know, it’s hard to play for six hours all vinyl because I had to try and mix everything continuously. I was just selecting—I say ‘just’ selecting—but I was trying to mix every tune, scratching, and it’s great, but afterwards, you’re knackered. It takes a lot of mental energy and focus. But yeah, I certainly feel more connected afterwards—and it’s nice to think ‘I’ve still got it! I still know what I’m doing’. I think it’s really valuable to keep sharpening your skills on the ground and not just become some elitist novice, because the real interactions are happening on the street level and musically, you need to be involved. Plus, I love it. I still love music.

How do you deal with the unanchored schedule that generally comes with working in events, especially when balancing two interconnected yet pretty contrasting roles?

I think it actually suits me quite well. I always kind of struggled working set hours in an office. I think I naturally have different bumps of productivity at different times. That can be somewhat unpredictable, so [it’s helpful] having control of my own schedule where, if I want to go for a run at 10am because I know I’ve got a really important meeting at 11 that I want to be on form for, I can, and equally if I need to work til one in the morning on a proposal to get it in someone’s inbox by 8am, I can do that too. 

I think a key thing for me though is trying to find some structure within that. And generally speaking, what keeps me sane and grounded is my yoga practice and my meditation practice, as well as getting up early and trying to go to bed early. I think when you’re DJing a lot—getting free drinks wherever you go—it’s very easy to say yes, but just because you can doesn’t always mean you should. I think in recent years, I’ve gotten a lot better at thinking ‘Maybe I don’t want to drink’. It’s an industry in which it’s very easy to just get carried away with that stuff. You see it all the time. I don’t really drink at the moment. I care a lot about my mental health and my physical health and longevity within the business and within myself.

I think my morning practice in particular is really important to me. Waking up an hour earlier than I need to so I’ve got time and I’m not rushing into the day, then identifying the three or four most important tasks for the day that are going to move the needle on the business. Excuse the pun! Things that are going to push the business forward in a productive and meaningful way, rather than just opening the inbox or diving into some huge, endless to-do list. Because there’s always stuff that needs to be done. I think it’s about distilling and organising and prioritising tasks and if I can get four hours deep work done [before] lunchtime, that’s good. If I don’t manage to get any other work done for the rest of the day, that’s OK. If I get those three or four hours of solid, undistracted work done, then I’m happy. 

I think me and Jim work really well in that we both play to our strengths. There are certain things that he’s better at and there are certain things that I’m better at. We have our own areas of expertise and we very rarely miss anything. A big part of it is having a business partner. It’d be very difficult on your own.

You briefly mentioned yoga there and I was so intrigued to learn that you’re a certified yoga teacher! On the surface, that sort of practice seems so at odds with the life of a DJ. Tell me more about how you got into it.

I got into yoga about five or six years ago and it was because of my mental health. At the time, I was DJing a lot, I was working full time, it was just before we’d started Contrast—so maybe a bit before that, maybe eight years ago. At the time, I loved going out. I was out all the time. I was DJing at least twice a week, then another night I’d be at a club night at Soup Kitchen or I’d be having pints with my mates and probably staying out a bit too late… I thought I could handle it at the time because I was quite young, but it was manifesting in other ways. My anxiety started to get quite bad, so that really affected my sleep and [with that comes] depression, social anxiety... Not to get too deep, but I think I was also dealing with a lot of childhood trauma that I hadn’t addressed. I found that yoga really helped to regulate my nervous system. It took me down this path of [realising] that I don’t necessarily need to reach for something external to change my state, I can do it through movement and breathing. 

It was very rudimentary at first, just stretching really. But then I noticed the link between the tension leaving the physical body and the stress reduction in the mental space. Then came in this spiritual aspect. I felt a lot more connected to something greater than myself when I was regularly practising yoga and regularly meditating, particularly when I went through periods of sobriety, which I did on and off at the time. So it started off as a stress reduction thing—and also I was doing a lot of running, so it was good to stretch—but then I realised that actually, there’s a lot more to yoga. It’s actually a deep, deep practice.

Then I went to do a yoga teacher training course in Lisbon and the [teacher] there, Marina, had amazing energy. I really clicked with her straight away and I’ve realised since—because I know her quite well now—that she used to be a bit of a party girl. She used to be out all the time, she used to love dancing and having a drink and all that, and in her classes, music was a really big part of it. She programmed the music very well, the playlist would be really well curated to go with the phases of the class. I noticed that and thought ‘Wow, she’s really thought about this’. Now she’s asked me to collaborate on some DJing for some of her yoga retreats. 

It’s really sparked my interest in this next phase of what I want to achieve personally, [which will] maybe find its way into Contrast at some point too. I’m really interested in sound more generally—sound as a healing modality, the power of aligning sound, breath and movement, as I’m also really into my breathwork. These esoteric practices which I think science is finally catching up to. I think music can be such an important part of that experience. Whether it’s in a bar or a restaurant or a yoga class, wow, what a golden opportunity you have to really take people deeper on that journey. I’m looking to do a sound healing course at some point, just adding clips onto this toolbelt of things that have helped me and that I think the world is in great need of, like connection and ritual. Taking the time to do something properly and fulfillingly and intentionally, fully present, whatever that thing is. 

I used to think that my DJing and my yoga practice were completely separate. They were almost like my Jekyll and Hyde, you know: my pure side and my debaucherous side. But actually, [having] removed drugs and alcohol from the equation, I've realised that they’re actually right next to each other, because they’re both about curating a shared energetic journey.

I’ve always said that DJing is a fine line between reading the crowd—as in seeing what the vibe is and giving people more of the same—and leading the crowd. Just gently nudging people [elsewhere], trying a track that’s a bit leftfield and seeing how they respond. Eventually you’ll meet people where they didn’t even know they wanted to go and by the end, they’re pining for more. I think it’s the same in yoga. The older I get, the more I believe that everything’s about energy and presence. You get these intuitions—these feelings, this energy, it’s a tangible thing—and I think fine tuning that, learning how to absorb it and then transmit it back out in a meaningful way for the cohesion of an experience is really powerful.

Hearing you speak about the two together, I can totally see the parallels. I could talk to you about that stuff for ages, but to take us back to Contrast, you recently celebrated your 7th birthday as an agency. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I ask about your proudest moment so far?

Proudest moments are funny… Taking on the bookings for The Refuge or the bookings at Freight Island were quite big moments for us, but I think it’s important not to dwell on those things. Of course, give yourself a pat on the back, but then it’s like ‘Now let’s get to work. We’ve won the contract, let’s fulfil it and do our best’. I always think back to this thing that Matthew McConaughey says, which is ‘Be less impressed and more involved’. 

One of the proudest moments for me actually never came to anything. There’s a DJ duo called Kon & Amir who do this compilation series, Off Track, and they’re both great producers and DJs in their own right, proper record diggers from New York. I’ve loved them for years—I’ve bought their records and I’ve listened to their mixtapes a lot—and Amir got in touch with us asking if we’d like to represent him. This was a couple of years ago and it was a really surreal moment. It turns out there was a little bit of a mismatch of expectations and we weren’t quite ready to facilitate [what he was looking for] at the time, but it was a very proud moment that he’d even considered us, because he doesn’t know either me or Jim directly.

This is what I mean about the mycelium network of people [in the scene]. Somehow he got our email address. Through a few degrees of separation, we got the contact for a really well-respected DJ in New York who wanted us to represent him and, you know, considering we’re just a couple of guys from Manchester, it felt like a really nice, humbling moment for me. And I’ve just thought [now I’ve mentioned it], we should really follow up with him! I should really drop him an email.

You’ve also been hinting at some changes—or a ‘Phase II’—to come across your socials. Can you tell me anymore about what that will entail?

I will keep a little bit back, but suffice to say we’ve got to where we are at the moment entirely by word of mouth. Our Instagram game hasn’t been great, we’ve not invested in any particular marketing strategy, so phase two consists of levelling up all our back of house systems, getting a lot more organised, investing more in our marketing—which we’ve obviously done with the rebrand—and investing heavily in our terms and conditions. We got stung a few years ago—a venue went bust on us, owing us £10,000—and we managed to pay all of our DJs, but me and Jim lost money on that. You have these experiences where you think ‘At least it wasn’t £30,000, at least it didn’t sink the business…’. 

Everything that’s happened has happened for a reason, and it’s all been a learning experience. Things like that make you think [for instance], ‘Right, terms and conditions are important’ and I guess as you get working with bigger venues, you’re involved with more people and there’s more contracts and insurance and liabilities… It’s just professionalising and levelling up generally. That’s where the sobriety thing and the daily practices come into it, because you’ve got to be sharp. There’s only two of us. We take on a lot and we deal with a lot, we deal with hundreds of DJs, we’re in regular contact with them and then several venues which have three or four major players in them that we need to consult with. It’s a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of headspace. 

So phase two, in a nutshell, is all about stabilising our back of house systems, getting our new website and our forward facing persona, our branding, our voice, to a really solid place [from which] we can then move on to taking on bigger, more prestigious venues—boutique hotel chains, wellness centres, multi-site multi-use operators like Freight Island, international coliving or coworking brands, things like that—in the knowledge that we know what we’re doing, there’s some great talent on our books, [and] we’re really efficient and effective. A lot of our DJs and our artists say we’re the best agency they’ve ever worked for. We hear that a lot. I think it’s now about telling our story, because me and Jim know this, but not everyone does. It’s about taking all the stuff that we’ve learnt and really just being ambitious with it. Going ‘OK, where can this take us?’

Is there anything you’d do differently if you were starting again today? Or to phrase it another way, what would you say has been your biggest learning?

Again, you’ve got to get your finances in order, you’ve got to get your terms and conditions in order, you’ve got to have solid back of house systems… But more generally, communication is everything. 

Don’t take things so personally. Music can be really subjective, but when you’re so passionate about it and you approach a venue with a music brief and they say ‘No, we don’t want that’—maybe not quite so bluntly!—you can take it to heart. ‘But I love that song!’ But it’s not about that, it’s not about you—it’s about making sure you’re doing the right thing for the client and I’m convinced that there is that venn diagram [that captures] the sweet spot of what we like and what our DJs like to play, as well as what the venue wants. If those expectations are a million miles apart, it’s a non-starter. Just save everyone time and effort, there’ll be a better agency or a better DJ who’ll do a better job for you. It’s trying to constantly have an open mind to learning and growing with every experience—and trying to do the best we can for our clients.