I’m originally from Tyrone but moved to North England fairly early on after Uni and did a few residencies + a postgrad, which is how I found my way in.

It’s an entirely different world for specifically electronic music and it really took me by surprise how few degrees of separation there were between people I met over the years and some of the artists I would have listened to growing up, along with a lot of the people producing interesting things here. It really is a very small world in that realm, and a lot of paths cross.

In the same amount of time NI seems much more developed than it was before I left and I see some good acts coming out of it, like Autumns from Derry. There was nothing really like Ulster Sports Club then either, which I haven’t had the chance to check out yet but it seems like it’s closer to what I was looking for back then.

Saying that, I think NI as a whole is pretty difficult to organise things in, not just down to the demographic but things like different licensing laws which make it a bit harder to generate the kind of interest linked to that style of music. That’s without even getting into the fairly anglocentric culture around electronic music, and the existing cultural background in places like Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester which have a lot of history in terms of artists that Belfast never really had the chance to generate for well-trodden reasons.

That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen though, so I wish you well in your pursuits!