First Floor Ventures into the Real World
A new series of live events kicks off this month in Barcelona.
Step away from your laptop. Go outside. Touch grass. We’ve all heard this advice before—it usually arrives in the form of an admonition—yet many of us don’t often heed it. Getting away from our screens is hard. There’s always another email to respond to, another deadline, another article to read, another video to watch, another song to listen to, another piece of content to consume … and even when there isn’t, it’s hard to resist the impulse to turn off our brains and simply (doom)scroll on social media for a while.
I’m just as guilty of these behaviors as anyone else, and while being in charge of a newsletter like this one does provide me with a pretty solid excuse for being terminally online, it’s nonetheless a relatively solitary gig. Of course I still see people when I go out to shows here in Barcelona, or when I get invited to moderate interviews or panels at various conferences and festivals. (The latter have provided some of my favorite professional experiences in recent years, and getting to program two days of the conference at 2024’s Dekmantel festival was a genuine career highlight, as was my book tour the year prior.) Talking to people is fun, and having spent most of my first two decades in music in communal situations (e.g. radio stations, magazines, club nights) where I was conversing with (and working alongside) some supremely talented and knowledgeable people on a daily basis, it is weird to now have a work situation in which IRL contact with not just my peers, but other music enthusiasts, is more of an occasional thing.
So perhaps that makes today’s announcement a bit self-serving, but after more than five years of doing First Floor, I’m hoping that readers will also have an appetite for a bit more real-world contact and conversation. Later this month, I will be kicking off a new series of First Floor live events, and joining me for the first one will be Elijah, who’s currently in the midst of his Close the App, Make the Ting book tour.
During the past few years, Elijah’s Yellow Squares project—which quite literally began with a series of Instagram posts—has taken the London artist and Butterz co-founder all around the globe, provoking conversation and questioning traditional music industry wisdom along the way. Back in 2021, First Floor was one of the first outlets to interview him about the project, and now that it’s coming to an end, it feels right to circle back and have him join me at this live event on Friday, February 28 at Casa Montjuïc in Barcelona.
Tickets are available here. (Capacity will be limited, so don’t wait too long to grab them.) For those curious how the night will go, Elijah will be presenting the latest version of his “Close the App, Make the Ting” lecture, and then will be sitting down with me for an in-depth conversation about the project and his thoughts on the current state of music culture (and the industry around it). Of course, copies of his new book will also be available for sale as well.
If you’re in Barcelona (or somewhere nearby), come and join us.
Otherwise, know that additional First Floor events—both in Barcelona and elsewhere—are already in the works, so be on the lookout for that. (And if you’re interested in bringing First Floor to your town / city / event, feel free to drop me a line.) Some will be interviews, some will be panel discussions and some might even involve live music or a DJ set. The whole thing is a work in progress, but whatever form these events ultimately take, they’ll get us all away from our computers for a few hours, and put us in a room full of other music enthusiasts who genuinely care about where the culture and industry are headed.
If you’re a nerd like me—and if you’re reading First Floor, you most likely are—it doesn’t get much better than that.
Shawn Reynaldo is a freelance writer, editor, presenter and project manager. Find him on LinkedIn and Instagram—and make sure to follow First Floor on Instagram as well—or you can just drop Shawn an email to get in touch about projects, collaborations or potential work opportunities.