Soraya Sobh

Soraya Sobh

Soraya needs little introduction, an industry veteran who was responsible for the meteoric rise of both Above & Beyond and their labels Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep, followed by a stint managing and marketing artists such as Swedish House Mafia, Groove Armada, Miike Snow and Jacques LuCont at ATM Artists. Proceeding over 6 years working for other agencies, April 2012 saw Soraya setup The Bakery (London), a marketing and management agency designed for the music industry at large.

In 2015 The Bakery partnered with Big Life Management to set up a JV publishing company. Clients include Delta Heavy (Ram Records/BMG), Crookers (Defected Records), Benny Benassi (Ultra/Sony), Syco Music, Warner Music, EMBRZ (Ultra/Sony), JNTHN STEIN (EtcEtc /Ministry of Sound) and Shelter Point (RCA/ Armada). Soraya was featured in the Music Week 30 under 30, she has also spoken on panels for Beats Evolution Conference and Bitspiration Festival and will be speaking at Brighton Music Conference and a DJ Mag panel later this year. She is also a lecturer at Westminster University on the music business masters course.

Gavin Foord (Foor collective)

Gavin Foord, FooR

Gavin represents FooR, a Southampton based collective of producers, musicians, DJs, and MCs at the forefront of the current UK Garage revival. Championed by the likes of Radio 1’s MistaJam and DJ Target, they’ve so far released a handful of singles (including ‘Down’ feat. Karen Harding), and remixed the likes of Wretch32, Tinchy Stryder, Ghetts, and beyond. The four-piece have also become UK Garage’s fastest rising stars on the live circuit, with shows including Isle Of Wight Festival, EDC, Boardmasters, Ministry of Sound, and Mutiny.

 

2017’s Pure Garage mix album – their installment of the genre’s most prestigious series which debuted at No.9 in the UK compilation charts. Earlier this year they released ’Friends Of FooR’ mixtape to huge acclaim. A hybrid of mixtape and artist album, ‘Friends Of FooR’ features all their own productions. There’s a dizzying array of UK vocal and production talent across the 18 track release, with names including Jaguar Skills, Lisa Maffia, Majestic, Bassboy, and more. ‘Friends Of FooR’ also contains their 3 forthcoming singles, ‘Premonition’, which features Eddie Craig, from garage legends, The Wideboys; ‘Hooligans’ (feat Evil B vs B Live); and ‘Rum Woman’ (feat. Bar Li). Included as one of two bonus tracks is FooR’s cover of Rozalla’s rave classic ‘Everybody’s Free’, which was recently selected by Holy Goof for his forthcoming FABRICLIVE 97 album.

Hailing from Southampton, UK, FooR (fronted by Gavin Foord, Aki, MC Jukie & Tyrone) have all been friends for 15 years – literally since they were kids. Once they hit their teens they started making music together and then throwing parties, first locally, and then across the South Coast.

Their biggest show to date was arguably at last summer’s Isle Of Wight festival, where they were asked to play in The Big Top between fellow Saturday night headliners, Example and Zara Larsson. But such is the current buzz around FooR, that they’re now travelling across the UK, and abroad, with gigs including London’s The Steelyard (with Matt Jam Lamont & Friends), Ministry of Sound, and The Nest, plus shows in Wales, the South Coast, Scotland, the Midlands, and two gigs in Amsterdam. Summer 2018 festival dates will be announced soon.

Alan McGee (Creation Records, Poptones)

Alan McGee has been a record label owner, musician, manager, and music blogger for The Guardian and Huffington Post. He is best known for co-founding and running the independent Creation Records label from 1983 to 1999, and the Poptones label from 1999 to 2007. He has managed or championed successful acts such as The Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Oasis and The Libertines. He was also the lead singer and guitarist for the indie pop group Biff Bang Pow! who were active from 1983-91. In short Alan McGee was the visionary behind the 80s indie scene and Brit Pop… he’s a legend.

 

 

Jon Stewart (Guitarist with Sleeper)

Guitarist and songwriter Jon Stewart formed what became the Britpop band Sleeper with Louise Wener whilst they were both students at University of Manchester. The band recorded for Sony/BMG 1993-98 and enjoyed three UK Top 10 albums (one silver, one gold, one platinum) and eight UK Top 20 singles. They toured the UK, Europe, Japan and USA/Canada many times over that period, their biggest show being in front of 85.000 people supporting Radiohead / REM at Milton Keynes Bowl. Sleeper also appeared in the million-selling soundtrack of Danny Boyle’s iconic Trainspotting movie. Louise’s memoir “Just For One Day” is a hilarious retelling of their story. In 2017, after 20 years apart, Sleeper reunited to play twentieth anniversary shows to a sold-out Kentish Town 02 Forum and Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Now a widely published popular music researcher, Jon is Course Leader for the BA (Hons) Music Business at BIMM Institute, Brighton.

Sarah Hall (Senior Publicist, Sony Music)

Sarah Hall has worked for Sony Music for 8 years as a Senior Publicist. Her clients include Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus, Meghan Trainor, The Chainsmokers and Chris Brown. She has an MA and BA (Hons) in Journalism Studies.

Julian Deane (Raygun Management)

Julian Deane is the Founder of Raygun, a Brighton based Management Company, Record Label and Publisher whose roster includes The XCERTS, Luke Sital-Singh, The Wytches, and Tigercub amongst others. Founded in 2007, Julian built Raygun by developing a talented group of young friends in a spirit of togetherness. In 2016 Julian co-founded a new record label Cannibal Hymns releasing debut recordings from bands including Dream Wife, Our Girl and Underwater Boys.
Previously the guitarist in Toploader, Julian has seen the best and worst of the music industry as well as the seismic changes of recent years and brings this to bear in his approach to artist development and career longevity.

Shadow Child (DJ, producer, label owner)

From making mixtapes for the family car in the 80’s with pop records, to a BBC Radio 1 residency, providing part of GTAV’s FlyLo soundtrack and establishing 2 solid aliases that have been hugely responsible for switching up trends in House music… Shadow Child (fka Dave Spoon) is one of the Worlds most respected producers.

With new material in 2018 already set to be unleashed on DJ Haus’ Unknown to the Unknown, Dusky’s 17 Steps and Josh Wink’s legendary Ovum, the road ahead looks as exciting as ever.

Born on the south coast of the UK, he started out making Rave tunes at the age of 13 at School in 1990. Fast forward across almost 30 years of varying roles in music, his limited DJ sets across the globe have put high demand on his presence at festivals and clubs alike, but the studio environment is still where Simon feels truly at home. Over the last 14 years, releases and remixes have come thick and fast via a huge range of labels from Dirtybird, Hot Creations, XL, R&S, trough to Toolroom, Ministry of Sound, Polydor, and most major labels to boot. Official reworks of seminal tracks like Future Sound of London’s ‘Papua New Guinea’, Gat Dècor’s ‘Passion’ and Jaydee’s ‘Plastic Dreams’ have also formed part of Shadow Child’s armoury.

All this, plus his own Food Music imprint, has cemented his mark on electronic music whilst always supporting new artists, not least through his weekly radio show on Rinse FM which is already over 5 years deep.

Unafraid to genre-hop whilst equally keeping crowds happy is a challenge that’s accepted and delivered every time. Nothing inspires him more than pushing things across boundaries and weaving his roots of Rave, Jungle and Techno into new projects and DJ sets. Whatever the label, whatever the alias, Simon is held in the utmost regard and whilst being a humble character, he’s always known what he’s here to do.

Nick Halkes (MD, Incentive Music Management Ltd, UK)

Nick Halkes has played an important and consistently dynamic role in the development of electronic music culture for close to thirty years. Perhaps most notably as the founder of both the XL Recordings and Positiva labels and for his unique role in the development of The Prodigy (he signed a young Liam Howlett to XL before the band had played their first live show and manages Liam to this day). Alongside his Prodigy duties Nick currently manages, amongst others, breaks legends Stanton Warriors, drum n bass dons Bad Company UK and newcomers One Bit, who have made waves recently with their debut Ministry of Sound single featuring Noah Cyrus.

Nick’s start was running a mobile disco during his school days and before he’d finished uni he had worked for WBLS in New York, been the UK rep for the Easy Street label, and manufactured and sold smiley t-shirts in Ibiza in the summer of 88.

On leaving uni Nick got a job in club/radio promotions and worked on releases from the likes of Massive Attack and The Beloved before snagging a job doing club promo for the Citybeat label. It was whilst in this role that he came up with the agenda and logo for XL Recordings and launched the label with a focus on burgeoning underground talent. The hits followed and with a host of gold and silver discs for his signings such as SL2.House of Pain and Liquid as well as a top ten pop hit as an artist to his credit his next move was to become a director of EMI, launching the Positiva label.

Positiva defined the mid to late 90s dance music explosion and became the UK’s number one dance label delivering smash after smash from the likes of Reel 2 Real, BBE, The Bucketheads and Alice Deejay. By the end of the decade, however, Nick was keen to return to the indie sector and launched Incentive in partnership with Ministry of Sound. Here he had hits with artists as diverse as Joey Negro, Matt Darey, Genius Cru and Cascada whilst simultaneously launching a publishing business. More recent years have seen Nick more focused on his management company, enjoying success with clients such as Caspa and DJ Fresh before settling on his current roster. Nick also currently runs and DJs at a monthly club night called Reach Up, lectures about the music industry and is launching a podcast series with Eddy Temple-Morris which he describes as ‘A desert island discs of electronic music trailblazers’

Twitter @nickhalkes

Facebook : nickhalkes

Insta: nickhalkes

Sabine G. Jones (copyright and neighbouring rights expert)

A native of Munich, Sabine is a translator for English and French. After eight years in the international royalties department at German copyright society GEMA, she moved to the UK and into PRS’ international department in 2000.
Intrigued by so-called ‘neighbouring rights’ (NR), she became MD of PAMRA, the UK artists’ society, four years before it merged with PPL.
After a 2-year-stint at Nielsen Music (Director of International Marketing for monitoring services and chart data), she moved to Zurich in 2008 and became CEO of Swiss NR society SWISSPERFORM.
Following a family-related move back to the UK in 2011, she was instrumental in setting up Kobalt Neighbouring Rights and continued as its MD for several years.
She eventually launched her own consultancy and translation business. Later this year she will graduate from Henley Business School where she will receive a distinction for her executive MBA (music and creative industries).

ECKOES

British musician ECKOES merges cutting-edge textures with soulful hooks to create her sublime and unmistakeable sonic world. A voice that will “make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up” [BBC Radio] she’s one of the most intriguing and emotive new outpourings to emerge from the London circuit. Naturally, tastemakers’ praise has come in thick & fast from BBC 6 Music, Clash Magazine, Q, Wonderland, BBC Introducing, Indie Shuffle, Afropunk, and the MOBO Awards amongst others. A prolific songwriter outside of her solo project, she has penned songs for many other artists, hitting #13 in the UK Club Charts last summer with a track she co wrote & featured on, produced by Le Visiteur. At the helm of her project she stands, a six foot statuesque weaver of hypnotic sounds taking the industry by storm.

Listen to ECKOES on Soundcloud