Fittingly, the first episode of the new series of the Join The Future radio show was recorded live during the ongoing tour we’re doing to promote the new ‘expanded and updated’ edition of the book. So far, the tour has been a genuinely life-affirming experience, with packed houses in Bristol, London, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and a very special three-way ‘in conversation’ event at Cafe Artum in Birmingham.

It’s a recording of that event – or at least a lightly edited version – that you can hear on S3E1 of Join The Future on Noods. Hosted by yours truly, Matt Anniss, it features two titans of the Midlands dance music scene of the ’80s and ’90s: Nexus 21 and Altern8 member Mark Archer and Kool Kat and Network Records co-founder Neil Rushton. Both naturally feature heavily in Join The Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music, so it was a delight to sit down with them in front of an audience and get their take on the book, the story told in it, and their remarkable personal histories.

Across the course of an hour, we discussed the ‘pre-history’ of bleep (the rare soul scene and the electro scene in particular), Neil’s role in bringing Detroit techno to the UK, Mark’s production history, the role of myth-making, the true story of how house music first took hold in the UK, their favourite ‘bleeps’ records (as Mark calls the style), and the Network Records story.

You can listen to ‘Join The Future: Mark Archer and Neil Rushton in Conversation’ via the embedded Mixcloud player below. A streaming on demand link will be available on this post shortly after broadcast. Thanks to Jason Wynters at Cafe Artum in Birmingham for being a great host and making this recording possible.