Anyone who’s seriously thinking of booking Derrick May for their show nowadays needs to have the skin of a rhino. There’s simply no other way of phrasing it. This man faces multiple allegations of sexual assault and rape from multiple sources and has never even bothered to issue a categorical denial of the claims.

It’s certainly proved a problem for his management. Before all this kicked off, he was managed by Patricia Altisent – a woman so hyper-sensitive to criticism that she once sent legal goons after Michael James for publishing her public email address. Then for a while, it became unclear who was managing him – until Ears To The House managed to establish Hagi Craig was now doing it.

Craig will almost certainly have been aware of the tough task which lay ahead when she took on the job. But it remains quite how many setbacks she’ll be willing to tolerate along the way – and events over the past few days won’t have helped matters.

Two weeks ago, Ears To The House reported on the revelation – first published by the aforementioned Michael James – that Derrick May had been booked to appear at The Halloween Gathering, an event due to take place at an undisclosed location in Portugal’s Lisbon. The events organisers subsequently announced the lineup was being changed – but refused to disclose why.

Last Friday, James found out that May would not be appearing at the event and had been replaced by Oxia – a French DJ called Olivier Raymond who has been around in the world of techno since the 1990s…

There was no grand announcement to confirm this, or any statement explaining why May had been removed from the lineup. But why?

Oxia isn’t represented by Detroit Premiere Artists, the agency which Craig has run for many years – but a Detroit source close to many of the agency’s artists informs us an informal “deal” is in place, apparently in the interests of keeping a good relationship with said agency.

What we haven’t been able to establish is whether any money has already exchanged hands at this point…