Not a Diving Podcast: Conversations with Electronic Producers and DJs including Machinedrum, DJ Paulette, Doc Scott, and more

Hear Daedelus discuss extra terrestrial communication, intellectual property and sampling, the views and expectations of the new generation of musicians, and more.

Across more than 130 episodes, the British electronic producer and label owner Scuba has drilled into the muses of electronic producers, discussing creativity, technique, gear, crowd response, live performance, and virtually every other topic involving beat production and the response to it.

Scuba, known for his wobbly, bass-heavy dubstep, jungle, and techno tracks, founded Hotflush Recordings, known for releasing forward-thinking bass music by Mount Kimbie, Joy Orbison, and Anna Kost. He launched The Not a Diving Podcast in early 2022, and has since invited artist-producers-DJs including Surgeon, Machinedrum, DJ Paulette, Ellen Allien, Matthew Dear, Skream, Doc Scott, Mr. Scruff, and dozens more — as well as writers-insiders such as Simon Reynolds, Bill Brewster, and Sam Valenti — to discuss their work and history.

In the newest episode, which came out this week, Scuba talks to the brilliant Boston-based, LA-raised producer-educator-thinker Alfred Darlington, a.k.a. Daedelus. Daedelus, who’s currently a professor of electronic music performance at Berklee’s Electronic Production and Design Department, is also an artist in residence at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), a non-government organization that works with researchers, thinkers, and global agencies to better understand the potential for extraterrestrial life. Daedelus’ thoughts and experiences on the topic are fascinating, especially when discussing a project aimed at beaming rudimentary tracks to planets in the universe that could potentially support life.

“We made really short songs at, if you’re familiar with audio stuff, the lowest bitrate possible — bit-depth and bitrate … and we sent these messages to the nearest exoplanet,” Daedelus explains. The aim? To signal to extraterrestrials that we know how to produce killer tracks — or at least that we exist.

Daedelus recently released another project related to SETI. Called Xenopocene, it’s a concept album inspired by conversations the artist had with scientists and researchers who study extraterrestrial life. After the producer absorbed those points, Daedelus then “put together a record that was trying to ideate what first contact and forward would be like.” In the podcast, Daedelus describes “this bright moment of first contact, how it challenges our humanity, and then how we have this immediate rush of, probably, the humanity banding together, and then kind of falling apart, and then maybe indeed, coming to see that we are actually in an age that would be then forever changed by alien involvement.”

Each episode of Scuba’s podcast extends beyond the hour mark, so the opportunities for deep, thoughtful conversations, as well as wild stories of DJ life, are many.

Check out all the episodes of the Not a Diving Podcast at whatever platform you use; here’s the Apple Podcast landing page.