DJ Mag's Carl Loben: "Everyone had to leave their DMs at the door" — 2 Tone and beyond

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This week I'm joined by Carl Loben, Editor-in-Chief of DJ Mag and a man who's spent more than three decades chronicling dance music — from blagging his way into gigs as a freelance writer for Melody Maker in the early 90s, to running DJ Mag for the last decade. I wanted to sit down with Carl because he's seen the whole arc from a vantage point most people haven't: Two Tone gigs at Hammersmith Odeon (where everyone had to leave their DMs at the door), an acid house epiphany at Glastonbury, the drum & bass evangelism that defined his 90s, and a publishing career that's covered the rise of the superstar DJ, the bottle-service era and the digital revolution from the front row.

We get into Carl's own DJing journey — the false start, the freestyle rooms in Hackney, the international gigs that came with the editor's chair — and the labels he's built along the way: Westway with Barry Ashworth from the Dub Pistols, and Jack Said What with Irvine Welsh and Steve Mac (the underground house Steve Mac, not the pop one — there's a great story in there). He's also really frank about the shifting cultural landscape: the whitewashing he and Ben Murphy set out to address with their book Renegade Snares, the wellbeing reckoning that's reshaping what DJ life looks like, and the sea-of-phones problem that's quietly killing the dancefloor.

In this episode we cover:

• Growing up between Beatles, Buddy Holly and Two Tone, and his first gig at 13 (Madness, Hammersmith Odeon)
• His acid house epiphany at Glastonbury and the unsung heroes the history books missed
• The Hackney freestyle rooms, becoming a drum & bass DJ, and almost painting himself into a corner
• Blagging his first reviews for Melody Maker and what life was like as a 90s freelance music journo
• Why Melody Maker went down the toilet and how he ended up at DJ Mag full time
• International gigs in Brazil, Ecuador, Poland and China — and learning why touring DJs burn out
• The cult of the superstar DJ and the hangover from rock and roll
• Westway Records, Jack Said What, and the realities of running a label after the vinyl crash
• Renegade Snares, the whitewashing of drum & bass, and the genre's reckoning with diversity
• Why digital was a blessing and a curse, and what happens when 20,000 tracks a day hit Spotify
• The wellness shift, the sea of phones, and his advice for new DJs trying to break through