Soon, the book that inspired this website will be five years old. It seems remarkable that Join The Future: Bleep Techno and the Birth of British Bass Music has taken on a life of its own in the years that have passed since it was published in late 2019. I still receive emails from people who have recently discovered it or read it, as well as requests to appear at events. As we move through autumn and into winter, I’ll be on the road again, popping up in a few places to talk about the story told in the book and some of the issues I highlighted in the ‘afterword’ chapter of last year’s updated and expanded edition.

The first of those takes place this Sunday, October 13th, signing books at the Machina Bristronica festival of synthesisers and electronics in Bristol (13.30-14.30). Then after that, on Thursday 24th October, I’ll be returning to Leeds – just shy of five years after we held a launch party for the first edition of Join The Future at Outlaws Yacht Club. There was only a short talk that time round, with DJ Martin, Edzy and Tony Green of Release Records fame DJing for much of the night (which to be fair was great).

This time round, Harry Rook of TANG Record Club and LDC Radio will be interviewing me at Melodie 71, a fresh venue in Kirkstall run by some of the Outlaws Yacht Club and Released Records crew. The talk is subtitled ‘Why Most Dance Music History is Wrong (and What We Can Do About It)’. So while I will be talking about some of the previously hidden histories revealed in the book, we’ll also be tackling some wider issues – why dance music histories are often partial and/or incorrect, rehash over-simplified and mythologised accounts, and frequently focus on the same few places, people and eras. I’ll also be talking about what we can do about it, efforts to correct the record or widen the discourse, and how we’ve never had it better – after all, there are now more books and documentaries about electronic music culture than ever.

Melodie 71 is an intimate space, so tickets are relatively limited. If you’re in the city (or live nearby) and want to attend, head over to Eventbrite to grab a ticket while you can. For what it’s worth, I’m really looking forward to being in Leeds again – it was at the heart of the bleep story and it’s a great city. Incidentally, Leeds (and Chapeltown in particular) features prominently in the book excerpt recently published by UK bass platform UKF. As part of their Black History Month coverage, they published a lightly edited excerpt from chapter three, which focuses on soundsystem culture, soundclashes and the ‘blues’. You can read that excerpt by clicking here.