So tell us what NAAN is about?
David: Nottingham Area Artist Network is about collecting music and art from people who make stuff in and around Nottingham, mostly music so far.
Seb: There are so many groups of people doing different things in Nottingham, and NAAN is there to help get those people together.

How did NAAN start?
David: It started off with listening to a couple of tracks from local musicians that I thought would fit together and could create a really high quality compilation of local work. We realised that there was a high quality of music around and a diversity of styles, but a lot of those people didn't get a chance to hear each other's work. So it's primarily a way for people who make music to hear different people's work in Nottingham. Then that could spread and someone from London looking to sign people can hear a cross section of Nottingham music, and then anyone in the city can hear local stuff that goes on. It has bred collaborations which is part of it's remit, and has been going since last September.

How are NAAN and August Roots related?
David: In the way that a lot of events and NAAN have been related, those events would have happened anyway, but NAAN being there provides a bit of extra help, publicising those events and bringing together different groups of people with similar interests.


What gave you the idea to put August Roots together?
Seb: I wanted to put on a couple of bands, and it escalated. We ended up with 12 acts playing, we wanted to get people together in that community hall and listen to each other and have a good time, it was a good party. There were lots of different bands involved and it was an opportunity to do some side projects, so there were lots of different bands represented there. We decided to have a bit of fun, we had an REM tribute band. It was an opportunity to let your hair down and have a laugh. I really enjoyed and we raised about £190 for Red Cross.


We hear there is a question mark over the venue?
Seb: I'm not entirely sure what's gonna happen there. Seems the council
are planning on other uses with a narrow remit but there are lots of people who want to keep it for Sneinton and have it as a space to play and listen to music, to see bands but also to do other things like have art groups there. It's such a wonderful place with a great atmosphere it would be a shame to lose it. The Mill has a great community feel it's there for everybody to use, not for anybody to claim responsibility for. The local couple who run it keep it old school if you'll pardon the pun.
David: You can help us campaign there is a post on the NAAN forum with the details.

What do you make of the Nottingham music scene?
Seb: I think it's great. There are so many great bands here.


What bands should we look out for?
David: Look at the playlists and recordings on the NAAN site, it does represent a high quality of stuff around. There are bands you can mention that everybody knows, they gig regularly. But there's people working in all different types of ways including less commercial artists who produce very high quality work but don't gig publicly a lot, and that's hopefully what the NAAN tries to cover.
Seb: It's also an opportunity to bring people out of themselves as well and just do things they wouldn't normally do. If you are in a band and would like to try something else you can send it to NAAN and they’ll stream it.
David: It provides an outlet for side projects. So there may be a really good act you'll see on the site but you wouldn't see them gigging because they may have different names for their different acts. If you go and see some local music around you'll see some really good stuff.



So you offer a streaming demo service to all Nottingham bands?
David: Anyone who makes music is free to send stuff in. The quality constraint on what gets put into the shows is a group decision, so that's never down to any one person's taste, certainly not, or any one person's assessment of quality. There are other services that NAAN offers – we have streamed gigs live, we've asked people to record them and send us them later and we put them up on our live sessions area. People signing up to the site get a home area so bands, musicians and artists can use the NAAN site to host their material rather than going through the hassle of setting up their own websites. There's a really good comic book writer who has a site like that, it makes an excellent homepage. You can use it for whatever you want to use it for.

What areas are you looking to expand at the moment?
David: We've started doing video, there are some short films on there.
We need more of those. That's the area we're looking to expand at the moment.


We hear you have radio shows out as well.
David: I think we're onto show 5, we get compilation shows out about one every 2 months. They were supposed to be more frequent than that but in the time that we haven't been doing the radio shows we've done the video and we've done the live streaming of other stuff.

What sort of feedback do you get from local artists about what you're doing?
David: Generally pretty good, everyone's keen on it. Some people say 'it could be really big, it could be really good', and the idea is that we can use it as a model for other cities to have a network for their local musicians, as an online radio show like this. It's not about putting on a genre of music that we like or think is cool, it's about giving something to the scene that it can use itself.

Commendable.
David: Yeah
Seb: I'd say so, yeah


Click here for an updated gallery of the NAAN August Roots event

www.naan.org.uk

Photography by Al Greer

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