April Clare Welsh
April Clare Welsh is a freelance music and culture journalist whose work follows the ecosystems around electronic and dance music, connecting day-to-day news with the longer story of how scenes, archives and communities evolve. She has been covering music and culture for over a decade, writing regularly for DJ Mag alongside other specialist outlets.
Electronic and dance music news
At DJ Mag, Welsh focuses on news from the electronic and dance music world, often tying product launches and announcements to how listeners and professionals actually experience sound. Her coverage of a new NTS Radio player that lets listeners stream broadcasts to any hi-fi system reflects an interest in how platforms and hardware shape access to music, not just the technology itself. She reports on artist news such as Sudan Archives’ album Natural Brown Prom Queen, framing releases within broader narratives about labels and emerging directions in contemporary music. She also covers industry initiatives, including a free therapeutic course for dance music professionals, highlighting mental health support and care structures within the nightlife economy. Across these pieces, she writes concise, factual news that keeps the focus on what the development means for artists, audiences and workers in the scene.
Archiving rave and club culture
A distinctive strand in Welsh’s DJ Mag work is her sustained attention to archives and the preservation of club culture. She reports on the Midwest Rave Culture Archive launching in Chicago, writing about its fundraiser and launch party as part of a wider effort to document regional rave history.
Her coverage of NYC Downlow’s Glastonbury mix archive, featuring sets from François K and others, again treats recorded materials as living evidence of queer club spaces and festival histories. She writes about a new book collecting classic UK rave and acid house membership cards, presenting the memorabilia as a way of tracing the social and visual fabric of past scenes.
Articles on Daft Punk’s new website emblazoned with “archives loading” and on Joy Orbison’s sought-after early tracks released as an archival project further underline her interest in how electronic music’s past is surfaced, packaged and made accessible.
Even when profiling DJ Paulette’s role as president of the gender-diverse musicians directory F List Music, Welsh links it to a 51-set mix archive from The Haçienda, situating present-day recognition within a club institution’s recorded memory. This repeated focus on archives and memorabilia marks her coverage as historically minded and attentive to preservation, not only current releases.
Scenes, rave tourism and community resilience
Beyond straight news, Welsh writes about how dance music scenes are shaped by tourism, inequality and community organising. In a longform piece for the First Floor newsletter, she examines the growing tide of large-scale electronic music events and what has been described as rave tourism, looking at how destination festivals and party travel affect local infrastructure and longstanding communities.
Her work on a groundbreaking report into gender disparity in UK dance music highlights structural imbalances in who gets to participate and succeed, drawing attention to the role of foundations and research in pushing for change. Earlier, she wrote about a DJ posting an “outrageous list of requirements for female DJs” at Fact, documenting everyday sexism and gatekeeping within club culture. Promotional material for one of her features shows her meeting artists and promoters who are fighting to keep a scene alive, underscoring an approach that involves speaking directly to people on the ground rather than treating nightlife as an abstract trend.
Taken together, these pieces show a reporter who treats dance music as a social world, attentive to power, access and the local consequences of global demand.
Longform culture writing and radio
Welsh balances short news items with longer, more reflective writing and curatorial work across several platforms. Her articles have been archived by REDEF, including pieces on figures such as a Lux resident and legend of Portuguese dance music, indicating an interest in individual artists whose stories intersect with the evolution of national and club scenes. She contributes essays and reported features on music and culture to newsletters and magazines, using the longer format to explore how electronic music interacts with politics, geography and everyday life.
Alongside writing, she co-runs a radio show about music, extending her engagement with discovery and storytelling into audio and giving her another way to surface underheard artists and sounds.
Her professional background includes work as a web editor on a DJ Mag-affiliated cryptocurrency project, adding editorial and digital experience to her reporting skillset. Across these roles, she maintains a consistent focus on music and culture, using different formats to document how club and electronic music communities make, share and remember their art.
4 more music journalists.
Abigail Kellett
Abigail Kellett is a news reporter at the Halifax Courier who stands out for visually led coverage that shows how culture, nightlife and local life play out on the ground. She documents gigs, festivals and major live shows at venues such as The Piece Hall through curated photo sets that capture atmosphere, crowd and setting as much as performers, and she uses extensive image galleries to tap reader nostalgia for nights out in Halifax town centre. Her beat spans arts, entertainment, going out, heritage, books and literary events, along with community life, people stories, local challenges, milestones, transport, regeneration, lifestyle and food. She reports through photographs, checklist-style features, reader-driven lists and roundups of most-read stories, turning announcements, programmes, author events, festivals, shop lists and everyday characters into stories about place, shared memory and how people spend their time.
Adam Lyon
Adam Lyon is a digital audience and content editor whose news beat sits at the intersection of Ayrshire’s cultural life, business environment and public affairs. He works for the Ayr Advertiser and as Digital Audience & Content Editor for Newsquest in the west of Scotland across multiple weekly titles. He covers Ayrshire news with a strong thread of music and local culture alongside business, courts and public affairs. He reports on music when it has a clear community or national hook, treating songs as news events rather than reviews. His business work explains how local firms and retail policy shape town centres. His court coverage uses round-ups of sheriff court cases to show patterns and outcomes. He also fronts video previews and is active in a football supporters trust community.
Adam Maidment
Adam Maidment is a senior What’s On and LGBTQ+ reporter whose work links big-name gigs, new venues and cultural flashpoints to everyday fan culture and inclusion. He covers music, nightlife and the wider cultural scene for the Manchester Evening News, focusing on how concerts, openings and immersive events land with real people and communities. His beat spans live music, arenas and stadiums, new restaurant and bar openings, food reviews, exhibitions, street art and nightlife infrastructure, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ audiences and neighbourhoods. He reports on venue ambitions and problems, cultural institutions and equality issues, and franchise-led experiences, using straightforward, on-the-ground reporting and clear description. Drawing on a background in community reporting, he looks for underrepresented perspectives and uses social media, analytics and local sourcing to find stories where culture, identity and place meet.
Alex Rigotti
Alex Rigotti is a freelance music and culture editor and journalist who joins fast-turnaround music news with detailed reporting on artists, fandom and politics. They report breaking stories and live music updates for NME and Paste Magazine, covering pop, rock, club music, underground scenes and cultural debates around art and identity. Their live-music beat includes setlists, tours, festival appearances, cancellations, ticketing, venues and onstage collaborations. They previously served as a contributing editor for NME’s Radar section, supporting coverage of emerging artists and new scenes. Rigotti also writes features on rap lyrics and criminalisation, Eurovision and politics, queer feminist bodybuilding, astrotherapy and contemporary art. Their reporting is direct and specific, using clear quotes, concrete details and artists’ own words to explain what happened and how music fits into wider cultural and industry trends.