The study was shared with BBC Radio One Newsbeat, where the U.K. nightlife sector’s troubling financial situation was discussed. Nearly 500 clubs in the country have closed since 2015, accounting for a staggering 29% of the U.K.’s nightlife venues. With the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic still looming large, along with limited aid from the U.K. government, many owners and promoters are feeling the pressure more than ever.

“It’s a shame the government don’t understand that we are a £30 billion industry,” Printworks owner Simeon Aldred told the BBC. “I don’t think we are forgotten, they just don’t care. It’s been exhausting, with the government saying start, now stop, now start, now stop and every time that happens we lose tens of millions of pounds.”

Aldred refers to the recent delays in the U.K. roadmap to reopening nightlife venues, which have set the industry back by weeks at a time, leaving many on the brink of collapse. According to the Night Time Industries Association, less than 20% of the venues that applied for Cultural Recovery Fund grants were awarded financial support despite the U.K. government insisting that the support packages are still available to all nightclubs.

Can’t Get You Out of My Head offers a broad cultural analysis of the history leading up to current affairs around the globe. Curtis told AnOther Magazine that isolation and paranoia are recurring themes throughout the series, saying that the experimental styles of SOPHIE (full name Sophie Xeon) and Aphex Twin (real name Richard James) captured such feelings.

“What I think is brilliant about Aphex Twin is that he does two things. He combines in his lyrical work a wonderful expression of that yearning for something beyond,” Curtis said. “But then also expresses in other pieces the fractured and uneasy mood of the present moment. And to combine the two together is really what art should do I think. Showing you in a heightened way the mood of now – and the feeling of what might be beyond that.”

He continued: “I think that that is also what SOPHIE did beautifully as well, jumping back and forth between the two without having to bother with the old idea of transitions.”

James’ big breakthrough came nearly three decades ago with the 1992 release of Selected Ambient Works 85-92 via R&S Records sub label Apollo Records. He’s been cited as an influence by a pool of artists diverse enough to include Daft Punk, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Radiohead.

With tracks like “Bipp,” “Lemonade,” and later her 2018 debut album OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES, Xeon introduced the world to a “hyperpop” sound that earned her collaborations with pop artists like Charli XCX and Lady Gaga. She died on Saturday, January 30th after falling from an apartment balcony in Athens, where she lived.

Can’t Get You Out of My Head is available to watch via BBC iPlayer.

Observing the short lags inevitable to the video conference platform, Workshop members Bob Earland and Paddy Kingsland set out to see if a longer delay could be used to facilitate a unique sort of improvisation between artists. The resulting composition will essentially be a loop of music with each musician adding elements as it’s passed to them.

“The idea [of playing the internet] reflected our time,” said fellow member Peter Howell. “We’re all subject to the internet now in a way that we never thought we would be. And Bob and Paddy came up with an idea that is literally using what we’re all relying on for a creative purpose, using something that we’ve all taken for granted but in an artistic way.”

The original BBC Radiophonic Workshop ran from 1958-1998; it birthed music that found its way into sci-fi scores like those of Doctor Who and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The life of Delia Derbyshire, an early electronic music most famous for her work on the former series’ intro, has been chronicled in a documentary titled Delia Derbyshire: The Myths And The Legendary Tapes that will premiere the day after “Latency,” via BFI London Film Festival.

BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s performance of “Latency” will begin at 8:00 PM on November 22nd via their YouTube channel.

Presenter Emily Maitlis asked the radio presenter and footwork/jungle DJ about Sunak’s comments that workers will need to “retrain and find new jobs.” “The last six months, for me, have been brutal mental health-wise,” SHERELLE said. “The whole industry, live music, is in complete dire straights. It’s very stressful for us all.”

“The whole industry, live music, is in complete dire straights. It’s very stressful for us all.”

DJ and radio presenter @iamsherelle talks to @maitils about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected the music industry and how self-employed artists are faring#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/SwznEjxBH3

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) October 6, 2020

“We’ve trained for so long to be in our jobs and we’re completely suffering. I’m on the self-employment scheme and I sometimes find myself struggling,” SHERELLE went on. “I’ve got friends on Universal Credit and they’re unable to either choose the choice of paying rent or paying for food and basic amenities.”

SHERELLE also suggested that U.K. lawmakers should look to Germany as an example of a country offering functional nightlife aid – presumably the Neustart Kultur package announced in June. “The Tories are letting us down and, unfortunately, everything that they’ve said today is completely deplorable,” she said.

Also featured on the segment was Róisín Murphy, who emphasized the cultural value of U.K. nightlife. “I went into night culture and watching gigs and going to clubs as a teenager, and that was really where I made myself and found what I was good at…” said the Irish singer and songwriter. “…It was music and music culture that helped me create that world for myself.”

Towards the end of September, U.K. lawmakers imposed a 10:00 PM curfew on bars and nightclubs after the country reported 5,000 new COVID-19 cases in a single day.

As with previous BBC documentaries like last year’s Everybody in The Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992, the episodic series will shed light on the epicenter of the U.K. acid house explosion. What sets it apart is its combination of factual depictions and dramatized scenarios, according to DJ Mag. Accompanying the podcast is a soundtrack comprised of early house from Chicago and Britain alike, including songs by Shaun Ryder of Happy Mondays, and The Haçienda resident Graeme Park.

Warburton is a presenter for BBC Radio 5 Live. Prior to 2014 he delivered a news and technology program, and has since accompanied Eleanor Oldroyd in presenting the series Sunday Breakfast.

Ecstasy: The Battle of Rave will be available on Thursday, September 11th via BBC Sounds.

According to a statement from Barker, the series’ final episode aired on March 14th – shortly before COVID-19 lockdowns prompted all BBC local stations to cut staff. This week, they announced plans to continue with their present level of programming for the foreseeable future.

“For me personally and the On the Wire team, no BBC representative has taken the trouble to formally inform us that On the Wire is not required, discuss any possible future for the program or even thanked us for running the show without break since 1984,” Barker wrote, “or even said anything at all, save for the local manager telling me by a quick phone call that I would not be getting another contract and he was really sorry.”

Fans of the program have spoken out against the decision in a Change.org petition. “It might not have an audience of 20 million or trend on twitter weekly but it’s the kind of show we pay our license fee for,” reads a passage of the description. “The kind of show that commercial radio just can’t make because it would make no sense at all. It’s precisely that lack of sense that makes it magical. It is radio in its purest form.”

Barker cut his teeth as a music journalist with Radio Blackburn, working on a show called RPM from 1978-1984. Originally titled Spinoff, On the Wire not only introduced listeners to the likes of dub reggae and techno/house but also bands like U2, Joy Division and The Smiths. According to BBC, it boasts the distinction of “longest-running continuous underground music show on U.K. radio.”

Sign the petition to save On the Wire via Change.org.

Image credit: Steve Urquhart

As Selector recently touched on, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991 opened the door for event organizers to utilize a wealth of industrial spaces with little lawmaker intervention. In recent years, however, new developments have forced more club owners to relocate or discontinue their business altogether. Dust interviewed Tresor founder Dimitri Hegemann, Georg Kössler of Berlin’s parliament, and Berlin Club Commission Chair Pamela Schobess among others to paint a detailed picture of the dilemma.

According to the documentary, nightlife brought the city €1.5 billion in 2018. Schobess said that in 2019 the Commission had published research intended to educate the public on clubbing’s economic impact, and Kössler mentioned that one potential solution to the Clubsterben might be to explore ways clubs can occupy public spaces instead of private ones.

“Berlin’s Nightlife” can be streamed in its entirety via the BBC website.