Drum & Lace Field Notes 28

shows & showing up

Ciao amici,

Happy belated Beltane, whose bounty-filled arrival I definitely felt this year. It’s as though a dark little cloud that had been following me around for some time has finally start to lift - not sure how else to describe it. The gloriously sunny and gorgeous weather in London, arrival of the fox kits and everything flowering definitely helps in a more physical way, and I’m loving every moment of it (hay-fever and all).

Two weeks ago we celebrated the release of my ep Terra + Earth Day with a super fun night at The Waiting Room N16! Grateful for everyone who made it out despite the tube strikes, and huge thanks to Kate Fleur Young for a wonderful opening set. Performing a more club-friendly set was INCREDIBLY fun and I hope to get to do a lot more of that this summer & fall. Some awesome shots from the evening captured by the wonderful Jubbi below.

A few announcements! The first is that the next Solstice Solidarity Synthesis has been announced - see you on Monday June 22nd at The Old Church N16. The line-up is fantastic and tickets are on sale now (Early Bird tix only £13!) - part of proceeds from the show will go to Women for Refugee Women. As always, if you want to support the series but can’t attend, please consider the ‘Supporter’ £10 add-on!

Second, I will be diving pretty deeply into film/tv scoring mode this summer on some very exciting projects. So if you’re interested in keeping up with that side of things, I suggest you follow my composer account on IG - @sofiadeglialessandri

Third, reminder that my newest ep Terra it out now on Mesh, and you can listen on all music platforms & bandcamp (where you can also get yourself a CD and new Ambient/Techno t-shirt)

Moving on - I was going to write this months Field Notes about what it takes to put on a show & essentially go into detail about the minutia of what being the booker/promoter/artist for the Solstice series + the Terra ep show is like. BUT (unless everyone is super curious for future?) instead, I wanted to zoom out a bit and focus on the bigger picture of the point that I was going to make by doing so.

In the last few months I’ve joined a few electronic & dance music chats on WhatsApp, and it’s honestly been amazing. Connecting with other people who not only love the same sub-genres as you do, but then also enjoy bringing people together, promoting shows and being at the forefront of community has been infinitely rewarding and given me a huge burst of ‘we got this!’ motivation. At the same time, it’s also painfully emphasized the tricky aspects of DIY/underground/grassroots community that I’ve already gone on about on here before. The ‘we’re in this together’ vibe co-existing with the other one in a most dichotomous way.

One article I came across in the brilliant new Front Left newsletter (consider subscribing!) mentioned how grassroots venues operate on a 1% profit margin. One percent. That means that a cancelled or postponed evening becomes an absolutely huge risk of financial loss. Add that to the artist’s side of things - breaking even for DIY shows is essentially the best wish, and more often than not you’re operating in the red for at least a while. So the cycle goes round and round- grassroots venues struggling and the artists/promoters struggling. What gives? ARNII’s brilliant substack post from last month titled ‘who curates the underground’ brought up so many incredibly points, including this total gem:

“Consistency is the actual competitive advantage, not one brilliant night, not one viral flyer, not knowing the right person at the right time. Just showing up, week after month after year, absorbing the losses, iterating, building a reputation that compounds over time.”

He continues to describe the three different types of people who build the underground : the broke believer, the bankrolled outsider and the cushioned idealist. The accuracy of these is unparalleled - I squarely see myself in the third as my film/tv scoring career is literally the only way and reason I’m able to afford having such an ambitious artist project (hello visuals, physical media, list goes on) and put on events such as the Solstice series. The consistency aspect is such an important thing to note as well - by just continuing to put events series, regardless of whether every single one is a success, is actually more important than focusing on the singular event. Just like I try to view everything else in life- it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Anyhow, definitely give the article a read as it’s got some truly remarkable observations & I particularly love that ARNII mentions delusion as a motivator (something I’ve definitely mentioned here and probably to anyone I know irl).

Concurrently, last month instagram started suggesting me videos by folk singer-songwriter Billy Locket, who had decided to share concert ticket and CD/Vinyl sales for his upcoming release on the platform on a weekly basis, with the assistance of his mum - so wholesome. I obviously loved this concept and vulnerability from the start and immediately followed. It must be incredibly hard to do this type of video so publicly, but I am infinitely glad he’s being this real regardless of whether I’m a fan of the genre or not (spoiler : not really).

What his videos do highlight is a systemic issue that a lot of performing artist are facing right now, which I would in part lump into some sort of 2026 ‘bystander effect’, whereby everyone assumes that if they don’t go to a show it’s fine because there will definitely be people there. This type of individualistic thinking, which has been amplified by the pandemic as people not going out as much is terrible for anyone operating outside of corporate and major capitalist systems - read anyone DIY or grassroots. Before you come at me with ‘this is a privileged take’ - OBVIOUSLY the huge elephant in the room is the insane cost of living prices that are absolutely unendurable. Totally understand and acknowledge this. I do feel for younger Gen Z folks who should be in their ‘going out prime’. This video does a pretty good/sad/hilarious job summarizing this specifically in the context of live shows. But I do think there is some spending reprioritization that has to be done to support the right systems - or at least the ecosystems that we want to maintain.

Back to Billy and his mum- so in these videos they sit in their kitchen and read the weekly sales updates on camera, with a healthy dose of devastation and dread that is hard to fake. Only selling 5 tickets in a week for a show in Leeds in a 400 cap room, that’s taking place next week? Devastating, but also INCREDIBLY real.

But I appreciate the effort and the positivity that comes of it, especially as I’ve seen an insane amount of posts in the last two weeks alone about festivals, series and shows being cancelled due to poor ticket sales and attendance. What’s been refreshing is seeing the transparency with which these are announced- there’s no sugar coating it. May these be a warning and maybe inspire others to take note.

Okay I lied, I’m going to tell you one thing related to all this from my EP release show - what if I told you that 50% of the tickets sold for the Terra Ep release show happened in the last 72 hours leading up to the show? The takeaway is that thankfully you all showed up (hearts!) but if you start to do some math - you can see how that would be stressful. Like maybe I could have invested more into the show? But who was to know! This is one of the reasons why advance tickets are so vital - they allow artist/promoters/DIY folks to budget their events and get a realistic sense of turnout. Benebe’s IG post (from literally 12 hours ago) is the perfect summary of this : “if you don’t buy advance tickets for grassroots events then you’re gonna be left with Spotify playlists.”

There’s so much more to say about this topic, but for this Field Notes, I think I’ve made my point. But please, let’s talk about this - because there’s so many layers and it’s so nuanced that the only way through is to discuss. I also know that I’m in an incredibly privileged position in regards to all this and want to hear more about what’s happening in your communities and what some actionable, positive steps forward can be to keep music ecosystems alive.

In this week’s crazy music news, did you know that Suno (yeah that one) had bought Songkick? If you don’t know what Songkick is, it’s essentially a live show tracking app/website that integrates into DSPs (like music platforms) and can be embedded in websites or Bandcamp as an artist to let people know about upcoming shows. Just last night, as I was trying to write this, I finally got the email that I had seen circulating. An email asking me to ‘reactivate my Songkick account’ and, by doing accepting Suno’s Terms of Use, ie allowing them to receive all the info in my Songkick account. This includes my performance history with details on venues, dates, etc and would give them access to who’s following me as an artist (their location, name, IP, etc) and more. As I sit with the email open, waving Songkick goodbye, it hit me- why would Suno want to buy Songkick? Sure that’s a TON of data they’ll be absorbing…. but I knew there had to be more to it. Didn’t take much searching to see it- Songkick has a direct integration with Spotify. So the data they’d collect isn’t just who’s tracking the artist & things mentioned above but would include ALL your fan’s Spotify history and your own as an artist. Absolutely mad and yet another conglomeratization of the industry.

Since we can’t seem to go a single Field Notes without mentioning Spotify (eye roll) I found this substack post by (What's the Story) Music Glory?🦎 called ‘The “Who Gives a F***” Signal’ extremely interesting. Most amusing nugget from it : ‘In that reality, the only thing that will differentiate real music from synthetic noise is whether actual human beings give a damn about it.’

I’m going to finish with two posts that are great good for thought. The first is this stupendous rant where someone is going off about how we no longer own anything as it’s all a subscription, and 2FAs and Authenticators and the likes. The second, is yet another brilliant reel by Janelee.music about ‘The Privatization of Music’ - ie how we’ve slowly been removing the human element from the music equation with the arrival of new tools. Choice quote here is ‘the algorithm removes the culture’.

So what can we all collectively do since we’re exhausted, burnt out and broke? Well, I guess the answer is - the best we can. Support the art you love in whatever way you can: buy it, tell a friend about it, share a post, gather friends for a listening party in person or online, anything at all to get back to a shared and communal experience.

And with that, I hope to see you all out there soon in some shape or form. As always, please let me know your thoughts about all this, share articles, let’s stay in touch!

sending love and solidarity always,

xox,

D & L

a sampling of things