I've spent twenty-five years as Carl Cox's North American publicist. That means twenty-five years of knowing which editor to call, which one had just moved, which one would take an exclusive—and which one would quietly resent being asked.
My practice has never been only North America. I've run global campaigns for Defected Records and Spinnin' Records, and I handle brand and motorsport partnerships alongside the music. But North American press for Carl Cox is the seat I've held longest—and it's where I know every desk, every deadline, and every person sitting behind them.
None of it was ever written down. It lived in a phone, a memory, and a set of relationships built one release at a time—across the entire era in which the electronic music press formed, consolidated, and then shrank to a fraction of what it was.
I started AAA because that shrinking is now the whole story. Fewer places to be covered. More artists pitching into them. And the tools sold to help you are either priced for corporations or scraped off the open internet by people who have never set foot in a club. Neither one knows the difference between hardgroove and ambient—or that the writer who covers one will never, ever cover the other.
What I have isn't a database—it's judgment. Built slowly, at close range, from inside a room most people never get into. Sixty-two percent of DJs surveyed say this industry is a closed club. They're right, and pretending otherwise would be insulting. But a closed club still has a door. I've been standing next to it for a very long time.
AAA starts with North America because that's the territory I can vouch for line by line. Europe and the UAE come next—and I'm not the one writing them. Lesley Wright is. Lesley founded iamCrü, the UAE music and nightlife title, and is its Editor-in-Chief. Before that she edited DJ Mag and Hype UAE — Motivate Publishing's Dubai title, and for years the authority on the Gulf's underground scene — with seven editorships behind her. She has spent her career on the side of the desk I've spent mine pitching to. For a product about how press actually works, that isn't a nice-to-have—it's the whole qualification. I'd rather launch one edition I'd stake my reputation on than three I'd have to caveat.
So here it is—written down, kept current, and handed to the people who were never going to get it any other way. Come in.