Getting to know Music from the Mothership

Music From The Mothership is on a mission to make the scene more inclusive. They are here to change the landscape. With 11 residents and Tank Howls as their founder, they are currently well on their way to make this change happen. 

On Friday March 14 , they are taking over Room 2 in XOYO for Jungle Cakes, and this is yet another milestone in their journey. What started as a radio show three years ago grew out to be much, much more. From workshops and event takeovers, dedicated Mothership events and festival showcases to their monthly radio show at DataTransmisson: Music From The Mothership is everywhere.

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We had a chat with Tank Howls, their founder, to talk about the journey so far, what her thoughts are on the current scene, and what’s to come from Music From The Mothership in the future.  

This is such an inspiring collective you have! When did you decide to start Music From The Mothership? 

When I was younger, I used to DJ a lot on vinyl. After a while, I got out of that, but when I came back into the scene, I got into digital mixing, and got my first couple of gigs, I felt very isolated. I didn’t know any other female artists, and I didn’t really know anyone in the drum & bass scene at that time. I could see straight away that when I was going to be booked, I was gonna be the token woman on the  lineup. I was thinking, why are there still no women in drum & bass? I started researching and found out that there are actually loads. I wanted to connect with them, and wanted to get to know them and give them opportunities, as well as get myself into this scene a bit more. That’s why I started a radio show, and through that the mothership grew. I met so many amazing people through this radio show, and we started collaborating and working together, giving opportunities to each other. When this had been going on for a while, I asked around: “Does anyone like the idea of starting a mothership collective? Would anyone be up for that?” It started from there.

There are a lot of genres represented by the collective. Why is that? 

It started just as drum & bass, but I felt it wasn’t that inclusive, I really like all bass genres and other people in the collective could play those genres as well. This way, we’re all playing music that we enjoy, but it’s also opening up the opportunities for the collective. Rumble in the Jungle has booked us a couple of times to do a multi-genre takeover, for example. I think it makes you more versatile, which is good in the industry, and it gives the DJs who play those genres the chance to play all the things they like playing. 

And can you tell me more about who is in Music From The Mothership? 

First up we have Asset, a drum & bass DJ. She’s my wingman, she really supports me and does a lot of emailing, a lot of posting and editing of clips… She’s the second in command for all the admin stuff, she’s my rock. Next up we’ve got Klumzykhemist, she’s signed to Hot Cakes, andis a DJ and producer. She’s smashing it in her own right currently playing up and down the country, then we have DJ Nay. She’s a DJ and producer, and also the label manager for Dubshotta.

Our youngest member is Sounds of Fia is a student in Bristol, and is a multi-genre DJ and producer and singer. She’s multi-talented, and she’s going to pop off for sure. We’ve also got Tashphrodisiac who is also a multi-genre DJ, mainly drum & bass rollers but also garage, 140, and bassline. Then there’s Anny, she runs Basscamp, and is a neuro DJ learning to be a producer. Then there’s myself, Tank Howls. Then there’s Devotron who is a multi-genre DJ who mainly plays footwork, jungle, bassline, she’s based in London. And finally  we’ve got Synthra, she’s a neuro and more heavy DJ and a really sick producer, but yeah she’s taking a little break at the moment. We also have two MC’s and vocalists, Kmzi is our MC and we’ve got TJA who is more of a vocalist, both are super talents who really finish our collective, and help create a real show when we are all together.

In what other way do you want to see the collective grow? 

It would be great if we all pushed the production a bit more. I would love it if there was a little Mothership label, that would be a great way to grow, but more work scares me a bit. Another thing that I would really like to do, would be to have enough shows coming in that I wouldn’t always offer the slots to residents. The Mothership has always been about wanting to help a wider group of people. If we were getting to the point where we were getting offered shows every weekend, then we could start inviting artists who are maybe not part of the actual collective but are part of the wider Mothership family.

You’re doing really great things for the music scene, and you’re taking over room two at XOYO this Friday for Jungle Cakes as well. Are you looking forward to that?

It’s such a great opportunity. It’s amazing to have the whole room, so we can get pretty much all of the residents on. There’s a couple that can’t make it, but most of them get to play. We get to have our MC come along as well, which is nice, and we’re also bringing some dancers. It’s going to be a real show which is really exciting.

Is this the first time that you get to take over a room?

We have done some takeovers but normally it’s more like an hour to two hours. We did some stuff with Gorilla Tactics at Boomtown and we also did Boomtown Bobbies. We have been working with Jungle Cakes and Rumble, doing two hours or something like that, but never a whole room yet, so this is great. Doing a room takeover for such a big brand like Jungle Cakes and such an amazing venue like XOYO, it feels like a milestone. It’s really exciting to hit those. It’s great for us, because it means they’re taking notice of what we’re doing and what we’re making noise about, what we’re all about. But it’s also nice for the wider scene, because it makes the lineups more diverse.

That’s amazing, yeah! You started this collective three years ago, did you ever think you would come this far this fast? 

I’m quite a hard worker, and I always strive for more and more and more. It can be hard for me to fully recognize when I’ve gotten somewhere, because I’m always looking at the next thing. But I do realize that we’ve done a lot and everybody around me is always like, you’ve gotten so far, but I suppose my goals are always so big, I’m always thinking we can do more.

How did you come up with the name?

Before I started the radio show, I was trying to think, how can I connect with other women? My very initial idea was, how can I connect with other women who are a bit like me? What would my target audience be? What do I want my target audience to be? I’m a mum, I was 40 then. Is my target audience like a young 18-year-old guy? I wasn’t sure. I was thinking, I’ll just call it something that I feel would resonate with women, maybe more of my age as well, so I was thinking of mum and mummy and mothership, and I went with Music From The Mothership, as it just had a good sound to it We resonate with all sorts of people, but we do have a massive female following, which is quite unusual for Instagram. We get a lot of support from women, but we get a mix of comments and likes and support from everybody. We’ve been really lucky. I have hardly had any negative interactions. Everyone always seems to see the genuine passion and energy in the things that we’re trying to do.

What other collectives do you look up to, or would you want to collaborate with in the future?

I really look up to Full Spectrum from Bristol, I admire everything they do. I’d really love to collaborate with all of the female focus brands. There’s Sisterhood in Birmingham. HARMONIA in Bristol is another one, but there are loads of others. One of my ideas that I would love to work more on, is doing regular collaborations with all of these groups. There are loads of people doing stuff on a small scale. We’re starting to get some bigger bookings now, but a lot of the other collectives are still pushing themselves, running their own nights, or getting booked like on a lower level, so it would be really nice if we could work together more. If we were one massive huge collective of people, you could do so much more and you could reach such a bigger audience. I definitely would like to try and join forces with more collectives. 

That’s the power of collaboration! What has changed since you founded Music From The Mothership three years ago?

There are more collectives around than I was aware of. I think people are starting to take notice of collectives more. I think that they’re starting to vibe with it and see that it’s nice to have a group of people behind the decks. You have other groups like Girls Don’t Sync, Girls Take Action or Girls Next Door who are bringing that collective feel at that top end, and it would be nice to see more collectives, and it’s growing very slowly. Our collective has definitely grown from just a few at the beginning to 11 artists now.

Have you noticed a change in the scene?

There’s still a long way to go. If you were to look on lineups, I know there’s a hierarchy to DJs, who’s the most famous or who’s going to pull the biggest crowd or whatever it is and that’s that’s totally validated, but there are enough artists out there who are female identifying or who are ethnically diverse or who are from the LGBTQ community. You should be seeing at least 50% of the lineup coming from those three communities. Promoters can do some research and find out who to book or reach out to collectives like ourselves and ask for ideas on artists to book, because I think it’s important. Bigger brands do have a choice to not just put someone on first and once and tick a box. They have the choice to shuffle things up a little bit and drop different people in different places to give them amazing opportunities for them to grow, for people to be seen in the scene. 

People are very set in their ways. I get it, it’s a business, so you don’t want to do something to risk people not coming to your show. But if most of your lineup is all of these huge artists then people are going to come for them, maybe take a couple of those bigger artists out and scatter a few smaller artists that fit on the lineup. You’d see a more equal lineup. I just don’t see equal lineups, it’s still lots of guys and one or two women. That doesn’t represent an equal fix. We had an artist on our show who said it really well. She said, “In the underground scene, women are smashing it. In the smaller clubs with smaller promoters, you will see a bigger mix, you will see a lot of women, and you will see a lot of female promoters and a lot of female collectives pushing.” It’s just that bigger step up the ladder which is difficult to reach. 

Let’s wrap up this conversation with something more positive. What are some of the best moments you’ve had with Music From The Mothership so far? 

Every time we’re in big groups with the collective is great, traveling to and from places. Boomtown was amazing, there were a lot of us there, and we had the Wrong Side of the Tracks take over, the Boomtown Bobbies, both of those were sick. We were all supporting each other, that was amazing. We had an amazing show at Shindig where we had a lot of the residents… Any time we’re all together is always really fun. It’s inspiring and we all give each other energy, we all back each other up. I think that’s really special about it.

What do you still want to achieve with your collective? 

We’ve been working with Hospital Records this year because we’re their new business development mentee, which has been a real proud moment. I was really amazed to get that because I’d been trying to get that for three years. Doing a little bit more stuff with them would be great. I’d love to get a Mothership residency somewhere but I don’t know if that’s even possible, and maybe get signed by an agency. We’ve been considering that, but I’m still not sure whether that’s the right path to go. Other than that, we’ve still got our events coming up at Cosies, in Bristol, next one is the 18th April. We will keep them going and get them lively. If we keep continuing to work with some bigger promoters as well, that would be great. 

Any final thoughts?

I want to give a big shout out to anyone who supported us over the years. There have been a lot of people in the background who have supported us, our families who look after our children for us when we go to gigs, and then a big shout out to Lez at Headroom in Bristol where we’ve recorded the show for the last few years. He’s always a rock and a big support. Also a big thanks to DataTransmission, who host the show at the moment, big shout out to all the collectives and all the artists that we’ve worked with. It’s been really great getting to meet everyone and growing the family and the community wider. and last but not least, a the biggest shout to all the Mothership girlies. They truly rock!