Jim Baron is best known as one of the founders of Notts electronic music titans Crazy P. Their sound is a fusion of house, disco, and soul and between 1998 and 2024 they’ve released nine studio albums. Previously known as Crazy Penis, they are one of Nottingham’s most successful music exports. They’ve played at festivals all around the world including most years at Glastonbury in some form or other and they get around a million listens on Spotify each month.

Crazy P were formed from the Nottingham club scene of the mid 90s and their most recent album from 2024 Any Signs of Love received a lot of critical acclaim. However, lead vocalist Danielle Moore sadly passed away a few months after the release and it’s put the live band on hiatus for a while.

However, earlier this year Jim unveiled a new (old) project called White Elephant, which features his fellow Crazy P co-founder Chris Todd, alongside another old Nottingham uni mate Ben Smith (of Smith & Mudd fame). He tell us more about that and plenty more in this podcast.

This interview was conducted by LeftLion Editor in Chief Jared Wilson in January 2026.

Head over to the LeftLion Spotify channel to listen and subscribe to all of our podcasts.

Night Creatures is a LeftLion podcast, shining a light on the promoters of Nottingham. Your  host and interviewer is Beane, co-founder of Nottingham’s beloved Soul Buggin’ night and  he brings with him two decades of experience of putting on great parties in the city.  

This month’s guest is Parisa East from Acoustickle. She's a music artist and entrepreneur  with many years of experience promoting live music events, supporting local talent, and  providing quality cultural experiences in Nottingham.

In 2009 she launched Acoustickle: a live music platform to spotlight emerging artists, and encourage musicians to share their  original compositions with respectful audiences. With decorated venues, and intimate,  inspiring performance spaces, the immersive atmosphere captivates all that are present. 

This interview was recorded in at Movers in March 2026. Find out more about Acoustickle Events and Soul Buggin’ on the links below:

Born and raised in Clifton in a Notts County-supporting household, James Belshaw took a circular route to finally becoming Notts County’s goalkeeper. After dropping out of the Magpies youth system in 2005, at the age of 35 he finally signed for the club last January. This followed a journey via the USA, the English National Leagues, two play-off final wins for Harrogate (including one against Notts), and player of the season award at the Bristol Rovers… 

In this interview he talks about:

This interview was conducted by LeftLion Editor in Chief (and Notts County Supporter) Jared Wilson in March 2026.

Head over to the LeftLion Spotify channel to listen and subscribe to all of our podcasts.

Dave Rowntree is one quarter of the British alternative rock group Blur. He’s the drummer. However, he’s also been a politician, a lawyer, an animator, a composer and quite a bit more.

Dave is appearing at Metronome in Nottingham this month doing a Q&A around a book he has released of early photos of Blur called ‘No-one you know’ all of which were shot in the very early days on his Olympus OM10 Camera.

Blur formed in 1988 and released their first album Leisure in 1991. In 1993 they played the Heineken Beer Festival on Wollaton Park. For those who weren’t around then, it was a bit like Splendour, completely free with no barriers or tickets. After this they made a couple of appearances at Rock City, most notably in 1997 in the same week that Beetlebum went to number one in the charts.

Aside from Blur, Dave has also been a radio DJ and in 2014 he was the regular Sunday night host on XFM. He’s been a podcaster and a series of ‘The Dave Rowntree Show’ went out in 2021 and can still be found on Spotify. He’s also stood as a Labour MP and was elected as a county councillor in Norwich in 2017.

Dave Rowntree is appearing at Metronome Nottingham on Friday 10 April in conversation with Dean Jackson from BBC Nottingham’s The Beat. 

This interview was conducted by LeftLion Editor in Chief Jared Wilson in March 2026.

Night Creatures is a LeftLion podcast, shining a light on the promoters of Nottingham. Your host and interviewer is Beane, co-founder of Nottingham’s beloved Soul Buggin’ night and he brings with him two decades of experience of putting on great parties in the city.

This month’s guest is Oli Gibbons from Tumble Audio, Risque Rhodes and Build Beats. He started out promoting death metal events at the Old Angel as a teenager, but moved onto attending raves like Misst, Futureproof, Rubberdub, Basslaced and Detonate.

Oli discusses playing in a Notts death metal band (Never Fail) and dancing for Gene Simmons, to putting on raves with Rubberdub and a Funktion One Sound System. He even wrote a dissertation at University on rave culture!

This interview was recorded in at Movers in February 2026. Find out more about Bohemian Events and Soul Buggin’ on the links below:

Night Creatures is a LeftLion podcast, shining a light on the promoters of Nottingham. Your host and interviewer is Beane, co-founder of Nottingham’s beloved Soul Buggin’ night and he brings with him two decades of experience of putting on great parties in the city.

The guests for this episode are Adam and Rob Perkins, two brothers from Nottingham, who founded Bohemian Events and Boho Festival. Influenced by attending parties at Venus nightclub and The Garvey in the early 90s, the duo began organising pop-up parties at Riverbank bar together in the 00s and soon spread out doing other events across the city.

Boho Festival is planning for it’s third year on 24-26 July 2026 with a line-up including The Farm, Utah Saints, Dub Pistols, Levi Roots and a comeback gig from local legends Bent. Previous guests have included Martin Kemp, Jeremy Healy, Graeme Park and Fat Digester.

This interview was recorded in at Movers in January 2026. Find out more about Bohemian Events and Soul Buggin’ on the links below:

Night Creatures is a LeftLion podcast, shining a light on the promoters of Nottingham. Your host and interviewer is Beane, co-founder of Nottingham’s beloved Soul Buggin’ night and he brings with him over twenty years of experience of putting on great parties in the city.

The guest for this episode is Nate Coltrane from Mimm (aka Music Is My Motive). Mimm started out as a clothing shop 14 years ago and moved on to become a much-loved club night as well as a cultural hub and recording studio.

On top of organising lots of parties, Nate was also the founder of Nottingham Street Food Club which ran for several years in Victoria Centre and Sneinton Avenues and now uses the Trent Bridge Cricket Ground as it’s regular home.  More recently Nate has also been working on a new project entitled Our Yard, which looks back at the history of soundsystem culture in the UK and beyond.

This interview was recorded in at Movers in November 2025. Find out more about Mimm and Soul Buggin’ on the links below:

Night Creatures is a new LeftLion podcast, shining a light on the promoters of Nottingham. Your host and interviewer is Beane, co-founder of Nottingham’s beloved Soul Buggin’ night and he brings with him over twenty years of experience of putting on great parties in the city

The guest for this episode is Killer Jim from Out To Lunch who has hosted jazz dance sessions in Nottingham for over a quarter of a century.

The Out To Lunch nights first started as an offshoot of his shop Culture Vulture on Mansfield Road and later moved on to venues like Casa, Dogma, Snug, Palais, Pandoras Box, Moog, Spanky Van Dykes, The Rose and Crown and more. 

This interview was recorded in at Movers in September 2026. Find out more about Out To Lunch and Soul Buggin’ on the links below:

Head over to the LeftLion Spotify channel to listen and subscribe to all of our podcasts.

Night Creatures is a new LeftLion podcast, shining a light on the promoters of Nottingham. Your host and interviewer is Beane, co-founder of Nottingham’s beloved Soul Buggin’ night and he brings with him over twenty years of experience of putting on great parties in the city

The guests for this episode are Laurence Ritchie and Steve Littleman from Smokescreen Soundsystem. They’re one of the longest-running soundsystems in Nottingham and have been putting on parties in the city for over thirty years.

Originally formed in Sheffield, Smokescreen launched amid the backdrop of the acid house and free party movement of the eighties and nineties. They eventually made Nottingham their base and moved over their parties out of warehouses and into nightclubs.

This interview was recorded in at Movers in August 2026. Find out more about Smokescreen and Soul Buggin’ on the links below:

Head over to the LeftLion Spotify channel to listen and subscribe to all of our podcasts.

Hetain Patel is an English visual artist specialising in performance, sculpture, video and photography. Born and brought up in Bolton, his work is influenced by identity, his family's Indian heritage and mainstream Western pop culture. 

He first came to Nottingham in 2000 as a Fine Art student and spent more than a decade living and working here before spreading his wings; exhibiting in Norway, India, Belgium and more.

Notable works from him include 2014’s American Boy where he showcased a range of influences from mainstream American movies, swirling together snippets of Bruce Lee, Batman, Gladiator, American Psycho and much more into a piece reflecting on his own identity. Then for 2015’s The Jump he dressed as Spiderman and recreated a scene from his childhood home wearing a very special handmade suit.

Hetain is back in Nottingham with his latest work Mathroo Basha, performing at Lakeside Arts on Saturday 1 November as part of Nottdance festival 2025.

This interview took place over Zoom in September 2025.