The following post is likely to sound terribly self congratulatory. And to be fair, that’s because it partially is. Just over two weeks ago – 17 days ago, to be precise – this blog started writing about the MDL Beast Soundstorm festival controversy. You see, I have a real issue with DJs accepting astronomical amounts of money to play festivals funded by highly dubious governments.

I have published no less than 14 articles about the issue, covering various views and angles. In the meantime, the dance music press – whose journalists decry my claims that they’re lazy sycophants – have said absolutely nothing on the subject. It proves how irrelevant they are when a blog ran by one man mostly from his phone can provide better coverage than entire media organisations.

But at long last, I have company. Because today, Resident Advisor finally published something about it. It’s a horrendously long, badly written and woefully edited article – do none of the editors at Resident Advisor ever do any work? – but they’ve managed to do two things here. The first being to obviously make an attempt to actually cover the issue.

The second one helpfully explains why they – and pretty much all of the shower that is the music press – have taken so long to cover this. It’s because they’ve been taking money from the Saudis too. The disclaimer at the end of their article says…

“Disclosure: In December 2019, RA accepted money to run an advertising campaign for MDLBeast Festival. The full amount was donated to the International Committee of the Red Cross on February 25th, 2020.”

Dear oh dear. Profiting off plague raves and now admitting to coining it in from the human rights abusing Saudis? Resident Advisor can take on as many new staff as they like, but it’s not going to make the smell of decay go away…