News October 27, 2015

Q&A: Sydney-based booking agency Nuffsaid launches

Former Editor

New booking agency Nuffsaid announced its launch yesterday with 26 acts signed to the roster and international tours locked in for Fool’s Gold, Franky Rizardo, Ghastly and Worthy and Ardalan.

Based in Sydney, and with a focus on electronic music, Nuffsaid is headed up by James Deighton. His teamcomes collectively with experience across artist management, touring, festivals, venue booking and marketing.

The agencysharesthe same building as record labelsMinistry of Sound Australia,etcetc, Sweat it Out, October records, and Central Station, as well as publishing company 120 Music, touring agency andvenue consultants Soapbox, artist management company Crown Rights Management, video agency Joker Theory andsocial media monitoring and customer experience company Local Measure.

"It’s a really exciting collection of creative and music companies that Nuffsaid is proud to be amongst,"Deighton told TMN."The building also contains a studio which is on offer to all of our artists and is a great space for our international touring artists to use and collaborate with our domestic artists."

Among the acts already signed to Nuffsaid are nu-disco producer Late Nite Tuff Guy, Sydney live percussive act Kilter, DJ/producer duo Odd Mob, OWSLA-signed, LA-Based duo Boombox Cartel, house act Terace, DMC World Champion I-Dee, beats artist/ Fetty Wap remixer Naderi and local Toolroom Records signing Juliet Fox.

In the short Q&A below,Deighton discusses how the agency came to be, his team, and how it was possible to launch with such a healthy roster.

How did Nuffsaid come about and what kind of support are you receiving from Ministry of Sound?

Nuffsaid operates from inside the same music complex as Ministry of Sound and shares a building with the label (alongside four other exciting labels and five other music and media companies).

We’re closely affiliated with Ministry and Nuffsaid was born out of wanting to give a selection of artists we were currently working with or wanted to work with an Agency which is more suited to their sound and a family of similar artists for them to share the agency with.

The name Nuffsaid comes from the ethos and ideologies behind the agency, while our sister companies like Ministry are more brand focussed from their compilations, recordings and longstanding event success, whereas Nuffsaid is existing more in the background and placing our artists in front of the brand and agency – ‘We’re an agency called Nuffsaid who represent a family of amazing artists, that’s enough said about the agency let’s talk about our Artists’.

It launched with a roster of 27, where did they find them all?

We found our domestic roster of 27 artists from a number of places; online, direct relationships with the artists, recommendation from industry peers and artists and also obviously discovering first hand in the live space. The team here are all music lovers so are constantly hunting through streaming andmusic services, looking at charts and o/s markets for talent that excites them and projects they believe in. We have sixagents here at Nuffsaid and with each agent bringing together a collection of artists they wanted to work with we built pretty quickly to a domestic roster of 26 artists for the launch. The response from each artist & management team we approached to join the agency was extremely positive and a real testament to the reputation our team has in the industry.

Alongside the 27 domestic artists we also announced four of our first international tours, for which the process was similar but slightly different. While online hunting is such a major part in today’s industry for a lot of our international tours that we have planned have come from our very strong network of connections both domestically and overseas, we are constantly being brought across new and exciting artists from all walks of the industry, whether that be artist managers, international touring agencies, record labels, venues we work with requesting specific artists, publishing companies or touring artists themselves reaching out. This is evident with the first tours we’ve announced with labels tours like the Dirty Bird Australia Tour with Worthy & Ardalan & the Fools Gold Australia tour with Sleepy Tom. As well as bringing artists out for the debut Australian tours like Ghastly from USA or artists returning to our shores like Franky Rizardo from the Netherlands.

Who else is in the Nuffsaid team?

The Nuffsaid team comes from all walks of the live industry in Australia.

We have six agents here at Nuffsaid coming from a diverse range of backgrounds, for example Paul Azzopardi who for 9 years ran the bookings & events for Chinese Laundry & also Good Vibrations Festival and has now had experience as an agent at Soapbox. Paul is handling the majority of the international tours here at Nuffsaid so has invaluable relationships with both international artists and agents alike or Trent Grimes who has built one of Australia’s largest electronic agencies with Soapbox and brings with him an incredible level of experience and connections, Trent is an avid disco fan so was over the moon about picking up legendary artists like Late Night Tuff Guy and Dr Packer.

Rubi our marketing and PR guru comes from running the marketing of one of Australia’s prominent nightclubs Academy and also the marketing for the ACTs largest electronic festival Foreshore.

The team here all love what they do and are incredibly passionate about our artists and the diversity of the roster across both our domestic artists and international tours.

[NUFFSAID] ROSTER

Acaddamy

Avon Stringer

Boombox Cartel

Danny T

DJ I-Dee

Dr Packer

Fake Forward

Friendless

Godwolf

Groove Terminator

GG Magree