Party Island? Portsmouth’s best up-and-coming young DJ, Fin, speaks on reviving the local scene

Written by Jess McCallum

Student hub or just a party city? Either way, Portsmouth’s music scene helps define our island as a cultural hub. Renowned for its pubs and beer gardens, you don’t have to look far to find a great artist. I have to say, this is the case with Fin.

Fin is a DJ artist studying in Portsmouth. He volunteers with an electronic music collective, Concrete Music, to deliver free gigs to locals and students alike. Fuelled by pure passion, he has debuted across various venues in Portsmouth.

“I’ve always loved Drum and Bass. Like, I’ve listened to drum and bass, since maybe 13,14 years old?”

“I think it’s pretty common with ADHD, and DnB is pretty popular I guess”

His sister and her boyfriend encouraged this interest, taking him to sets and introducing him to the decks. However, he first pursued his interest solo after attending ‘Boomtown’.

“I just loved the wide variety of music,”

“I’d never been to something on that scale; there’s no rave that’s on the scale of Boomtown”

“Not every Drum and Bass song is written to be listened to start to end. So sometimes you only want to listen to select parts of each song, which I guess DJing allows you to do.”

Since his debut as a DJ three years ago, Fin has been mixing and bashing out tracks with Concrete Music. Having been to one of his sets, I found his music very hard to categorise, which made for a captivating listening experience. From Jungle to DnB, no genre was out of the question, and each mix came with a welcome surprise. His love for music shone through as he danced and bopped his head behind the decks. Naturally, everyone else followed suit. It was hard not to.

“It’s something I like and enjoy doing. And it’s nice to see the Portsmouth scene moving forward a little bit, because it’s been temperamental in the last couple of years. Like, the drum and bass scene in Portsmouth used to be pretty big five, 10 years ago.”

While Fin is a DJ by night, he also studies business at the University. Speaking to him about some of the challenges in the local music scene, he highlighted what can be done to improve an integral part of our economy.

“I like to see up-and-coming people.”

“I think a lot of the issue is the marketing, like, a lot of first-year people don’t even know these events are going on.”

“What’s good about the scene at the moment is that there are quite a few pop-up locations. There’s a place in the North End, a car park where they used to do open-air events in summer.”

“I don’t think it would be the end of the world to see more venues popping up. I just think the price of it all is expensive. So, most people just can’t really afford to go out all the time.”

“But having pop-up events where you can bring your own drink, that’s a key thing to get people out more.”

Visit @fin._mp3 and @concretemusic on Instagram for local set information.