When Daniel Dylan Wray told me he was working on a history of music in Sheffield a few years back, I was genuinely excited. As many readers will know, I was born and raised in the Steel City and am very proud of my roots. I’ve also done my bit to document certain aspects of Sheffield’s musical story at different points over the last two decades, and I’ve long thought that the city’s often revolutionary and downright odd contributions to Britain’s ever-evolving musical culture have tended to be overlooked.

That book, Groovy, Laidback & Nasty, has now arrived. It doesn’t disappoint. Covering the 1960s to the present day was a tough task – much tougher than simply digging into the city’s club culture and dance music producers of the 80s and early 90s, as I did in Join The Future – but Daniel has done a terrific job, not only in documenting the ebb and flow of Sheffield’s musical culture across the decades, and the various figures who played a role in it, but also making sense of it.

At the heart of the book are the specific characteristics of Sheffield as a city – its hilly geography, its proud status as a historically predominantly working-class city, its futurist and Brutalist post-war architecture, the deep roots of socialism and so on – and the collection of traits that make Sheffielders who they are. Chief amongst these is suspicion (and often deep dislike) of ‘show-offs’ and ‘big heads’, an independent spirit, and a contrarian nature. I recognise many of these traits, as I have them – or at least some. I’ve never thought about it before, but I am very much a product of my environment – my desire to document hidden histories and shout about the overlooked is in part inspired by my Sheffielder’s sense of injustice and in-built need to stick it to “that London”. Sorry Londoners!

Across the book’s 400-odd pages, Daniel traces these characteristics and more within the music scene, variously discussing the role played by DIY studio and club spaces, dadaist electronic mavericks (hello Cabaret Voltaire), youth clubs and council-run projects, legendary and iconic clubs, influential bands, early record shops, the city’s Caribbean community and soundsystem culture, Chakk’s FON studio, the Psalter Lane art college (now a middle-class housing estate – classic cultural vandalism from Sheffield Hallam University there), amphetamine-fuelled soul and R&B clubs of the 1960s, the forward-thinking community arts space The Leadmill, and all manner of overlooked local heroes.

Oh, and the infamous Nine O’Clock Service, Sheffield’s “rave church” – AKA “God’s acid house” – whose impact on the city’s music scene in the 1980s and 90s was profound (and not in a good way – it was a cult whose leader, Chris Brain, was recently convicted of abusing female members of his congregation).

All of this is documented in chronological fashion, with key artists – by that, I mean those who provided influence to others within the Sheffield scene as much as those who went on to wider national and international success – appearing and reappearing at different points in time. This approach allows readers to trace the overlapping movements (and in some cases rise, fall and rise again) of such steel city stalwarts as the Cabs, Human League, Heaven 17, ABC, Clock DVA, Winston Hazel, DJ Parrot, Pulp and Richard Hawley. The latter’s story is classic Sheffield, of course. The son of an amateur musician steelworker, with an uncle who remains Sheffield’s most talented guitarist of all time (and, yes, unknown outside of the city), Hawley’s road to success – both as part of the Longpigs and later as a solo artist – was as long and tortured as that experienced by his good friend (and now national treasure) Jarvis Cocker.

Of course, being both a Sheffielder and a massive nerd, there are parts of the book which I would love to have been more expansive, especially around dance music culture in the city. There’s more about it in Groovy, Laidback & Nasty than in any other book published to date, as you’d expect, and it’s important to note that the book is not meant to focus on dance and club culture – it is just presented as part of the wider Steel City music story (which, of course, it is). I would personally have appreciated more on the various mentioned club nights, DJs, free parties and weirdo warehouse bashes of the 1990s, 2000s and beyond, but I’m a dance music historian and Sheffielder with “skin in the game” rather than a general reader.

If you want to, you can find additional detail on some of Sheffield’s key parties and dance music contributions elsewhere – sometimes written by Daniel himself for RBMA, The Guardian and others. He wrote a fine, detailed piece on bassline club Niche, for example, as well as a piece on bassline ‘bouncing back’ for the Guardian. Oh, and piece about bleep, inspired by my book, for the same outlet (Join The Future also includes a lot of detail on the role of the Cabs and FON, the birth of Warp Records and so on). Should you require more, I’ll point you in the direction of the wider history of bassline I wrote for DJ magazine (and parts one and two of the subsequent audio documentary) and the decades-spanning oral history of Warp Records for RA. You get the idea.

Groovy, Laidback & Nasty is a genuinely terrific book – a love letter to Sheffield’s rich and frequently eccentric independent music scene that’s detailed and history-packed, but also a genuine page-turner packed with funny and hair-raising stories (including a long-running feud between Babybird and his former manager). Stylistically, it is very journalistic, but that’s no bad thing – rightly, Daniel has focused on accuracy, information and analysis rather than flowery language and grandiose storytelling. As someone who has been writing about music in Sheffield for the last couple of decades, he’s the perfect person to tell this tale – particularly since he initially moved to the city from rural East Yorkshire, giving him a unique insider-outsider perspective.

I’d recommend grabbing a copy from your local independent bookstore, or of course direct from his publisher, White Rabbit.

I’m delighted that Daniel has taken time out to talk to me on the latest episode of Join The Future on Noods. It has been in the works since he first told me about the book three years ago. Since he’s spoken to some other radio shows and podcasts of late, and Join The Future is by its very nature is a show rooted in electronic and dance music culture, we largely stuck to those aspects of the story (rather than, say, Richard Hawley, Pulp and the Arctic Monkeys) and the book’s wider themes.

Thanks to Daniel for finding time in his schedule to chat about the book. You can hear the conversation on Noods Radio at 15:00 GMT on Wednesday 27^th June, then online on demand afterwards. Following broadcast, I’ll insert an embedded media player below. I hope you enjoy the conversation.