“I think explaining that cultural history of ours is important”, says Ben Cross, sat next to business partner and childhood friend David Dabieh, in their sunny South London headquarters. When two school friends wanted to have a party for their sixteenth birthday’s, they faced an obstacle. Both Ben’s strict Polish-Jewish mother and David’s strict Ghanaian mother were vehemently opposed to the idea. The solution the two boys landed on was to throw a rave, of dubious legality, in their native south-east London. When expecting a couple of hundred guests, they were met with over fifteen-hundred, and the swift arrival of the police shortly after. This coming together of folks in a place that, at that time, didn’t see many events of this nature, sparked an idea and a passion that continues to drive David and Ben to this day.
Testament to the hard-work, talent, and perseverance of both men, is the progress they have made in the intervening time since. Cloud X is now an industry-defining record label, incubator for talent and annual festival, taking on its fourth successive year on August 2nd 2024 at The Cause. The ideals of bringing people together, advocating inclusivity and platforming talented people, is at the core of everything that Cloud X does. As Ben expressed, "The idea of community is totally embedded into, not just the festival, but everything that that we do".
As the pair sit for our questions, they exhibit a chemistry and ease with one another to be expected from two friends who have spent the last 15 years in business together. When answering one question, they settled for a game of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' to see who should answer first, with Dabieh claiming he always wins, and then doing so, although that was contested by Ben. It’s funny to imagine the charismatic pair frequently using this as a method for settling business decisions. However, given Dabieh explaining "Every decision is bespoke", when selecting line-ups for the Cloud X festival, this is surely unlikely. Whatever their techniques, it is important to give them the deserved credit, as they’ve navigated an industry that hasn’t always been welcoming, to form a collective that has upheld the same admirable principles at every turn.
South London is undoubtedly the beating heart of Cloud X, with the team working from their Brixton HQ, complete with both office and highly sort-after studio space. Being so invested in the area, the pair hold strong feelings on all that's wonderful about it, as well as the unique aspects of its brilliance that are facing extinction. "I was born in the traffic lights and the madness and the empathy and the beauty, and it's slowly being anaesthetised. I think it's being removed. You only have to go to Peckham at 10pm on a Saturday to see what's happening.", says Dabieh. "That's what South London is to me, it's diversity, it's inclusion, it's confrontation, it's honesty, and it's fucking beautiful madness." The unofficial motto of the organisation exhibits their commitment to this community, as well as their dedication to global progress, “London, but everywhere”.
The pair recently welcomed Oculate UK into their Brixton studio for our inaugural digital cover feature. Using our platform to highlight a duo that have spent years platforming those who deserve it most, feels particularly apt, and we are grateful for the chance to do so.
In the midst of their planning of this year’s festival, we sat down with Ben Cross and David Dabieh of Cloud X to discuss the business of live music events, the UK government, South London and their future plans, perhaps surmised when Dabieh explained; "One thing about Cloud X is that we didn't have this big plan, we just kept trying to be free".
Oculate UK: How are things at the moment, with your festival around the corner? What's the world of Cloud X looking like?
Dabieh: You know what, right now, it's very intense and it's very hectic. We’re dealing with a lot of moving parts. I think when people see a festival, they see like a name and a location; they see a line-up. But actually, it's a whole economy and whole community that come together to make these things happen. You're dealing with managers, agents, record labels, production companies, sound engineers, tour managers, social media teams, press. It's a lot, so it's really about managing those conversations and also the partnerships that we have. We've got a lot of amazing partnerships, like Audio MAC, a streaming platform that have just come on board, charity partners, Kids Network, Raw Material, War Child, we've got some pop-up events at SOHO House, at Vintage Threads, so right now it’s a lot, I’ll be real! What do you reckon?
Ben: 100%! We're busy, as you should be. There's a lot going on, but lots of good things!
Oculate UK: And just so everyone reading this is clear, in your own words, what is Cloud X? What does it do?
Ben: Well, we started Cloud X when we were kids. We both grew up around here, in South East London. And when we were teenagers, we basically wanted to have a 16th birthday party, to which my quite strict Polish-Jewish mother and David's quite strict Ghanaian mum were like, nah, absolutely not!
So, we went out and did it ourselves, and we threw this party in a spot in Barrington Road. Brixton was a slightly different place back then. It was not a place that was as welcoming, should we say, and people didn't sort of just walk around in the same way at night. And so, yeah, we threw this illegal rave. We thought that a few 100 people were going to turn up, but about 1500 people turned up. It was insane. The police came and actually, rather than shut it down, they policed it cos they realised a bunch of 15-and-16-year-olds were out in Brixton. I guess that was the first time that we did something. And from there, we started doing events and parties in London, around the UK, putting headline shows on for artists. We opened up our first recording studio on Cold Harbour Lane, which is also in Brixton, and from there we opened our record label.
Now I think explaining that cultural history of ours is important, because whenever I think about cloud X, like anyone, you feel nostalgic about your life, but I think that there's an important route there, because, we started very much as people in southeast London who just wanted to go out, who wanted to see interesting artists, who wanted to bring people together, who wanted to create a community and ultimately to platform and collaborate with other artists and storytellers, and so right at the core of it, that's what Cloud X is about. It's about creating progressive culture, about creating spaces and platforms for communities who I think have historically otherwise been underrepresented. Or misrepresented, or potentially deliberately marginalised. Yeah, and just have some fun, man. Get out. Enjoy yourself. Joy. Joy is sometimes a rare thing in life, and you've got to get into it.
Oculate UK: And that’s the ethos that you both began with and Cloud X continues to run with to this day?
Ben: 100%! More dancing! What would you say David?
Dabieh: I would just go back to what Ben was saying. I think he was spot on, but I'd add, ultimately, the core of how we see art is about how we see ourselves and how people see themselves and how they see the world and we think that art can change that. It can change your perceptions. It can change how you feel. It can change how you respond to things. I think particularly in a day and age where people are feeling very divided, very confused, art is even more important.
At the root of it is a quality of just people being themselves, not learning what to think, but learning how to think for themselves and how to be free inside. I think everything we do tries to help push that forward. We just want people to enjoy the quality of being themselves completely, and I think the core value of why we exist and why we try to encourage that in everything we do. And, you know we are from two very different backgrounds. Ben's a queer Jewish guy. I'm a black working-class guy. We're both from South East London. We're just both human. We're just both people. And we can have friendship, we can have love, we can grow business together. We can make relationships together, and that's it, you know, be yourself.
Oculate UK: What an amazing ethos to have as an organisation! It's such a pure intention, and you've obviously done so well with it.
What kind of challenges or barriers have you felt trying to promote this idea of inclusivity and community?
Dabieh: It's a great question. I think, in a very simple way, progress necessarily requires obstacles. At the end of the day, if you're trying to go somewhere that people haven't been before, or trying to achieve something that is not the done thing or the conventional thing, then you've got barriers to overcome.
There's practical ones, and then there's also emotional ones, and the practical ones can be from the lack of infrastructure that didn't exist when we entered the space, the lack of recognition for certain communities, and a lot of that often manifested in finding it more difficult to get certain type of licenses to places just because of the sort of artists we're putting on.
It led to finding it harder to unlock investment for a certain type of artist or a certain type of event just because, it's not a place that people have typically invested in before. What we're seeing is that these communities, and what we're appreciating, is just their resilience.
Even if you look at grime as a genre, from where it started in people's basements to having artists that are now international superstars like Stormzy and Skepta, that didn't happen overnight, that took 15-20 years of platforms like SBTV, GRM, icons like D Double E and Ghetts, and what they had to go through so that we could all enjoy music and go to the shows. It was tough, and we've been part of that journey for the people we've worked with. And it's hard. It's been difficult. But what would you say?
Ben: Yeah, I agree. I think that it's interesting doing this interview a few days after the British general election, where Labour have won a landslide, but have, in some ways, a very unpopular leader. Reform have only, like five MPs, but they each have more than a million votes each, and I think they were second place in something like 98 constituencies. We are in a space where public services and the arts have been deliberately underfunded for 14-15 years. And so there's a climate where, on the one hand, there's been a lot of progress in terms of diversity, in terms of representation, in terms of storytelling. And I'm not just talking about us, I'm talking about a wider culture. You see it in music, but you also see it in film. I think it's when I first watched something like 'Moonlight' or 'Call Me By Your Name', I was like, these stories are so incredibly beautiful, and they are also so natural, they just felt like a breath of fresh air. And I'm like, why hadn't these stories been told before on a cultural level, but also on a commercial level? Like, it literally makes no sense.
And, to answer your question, what are the challenges that we face? I think we face a lot of challenges that derive from those things, like in terms of arts funding, in terms of a climate that, though there's a lot of progress, there's a lot of regressive forces that do have a lot of weight, or there is an undercurrent of weight, from these regressive forces.
Oculate UK: What's the importance of community in your work, and in your life in general?
Ben: As soon as you start inspecting anything like the idea of a tax system where people who are wealthier put more money into tax and therefore other people can have an NHS that’s free at the point of use, education that’s free at the point of use, bus drivers that are subsidised, etc, you realise that there is such a thing as society, and within it, there are communities.
I think that community is just the thing that we live in and exist in and breathe in. And for me, I guess it's a philosophical idea, but I think it's actually much closer to the truth of how everyone experiences their life, even when they feel isolated, even when they feel lonely.
Personally, I am only talking about me as part of a community, as part of finding solidarity and meaning and relationships to other people. I think the way that built us into Cloud X is quite similar. Cloud X, though it was started by me and David, it encapsulates something much wider than us. It encapsulates, for example, the festival, all of our various partners, whether it's our charity partners, whether it's the artists, whether it's the food vendors, whether it's the operational partners, etc. Like, it takes a whole village to put on a festival. The idea of community is totally embedded into, not just the festival, but everything that that we do. A record label and putting out records as a collaboration between people. Community to me, it's everything we do. What we hope is to be a part of a community, a wider community, and also represent people within a community who otherwise may not have had the opportunities to be represented.
Oculate UK: You guys are both from South London, and that seems like it's a very important part of your journey. What impact has South London had on your lives and on Cloud X. What's the importance of South London?
Ben: Good question, do you want to answer this one? Considering you've got a record coming out called 'South London'!
Dabieh: Yeah, 100%! I think this is a very dramatic thing to say, but I think we're gunna look back in 50 to 100 years, and we will look at South London in the last 20 years, and we will say that it's the peak of human metropolis existence. Because the thing about south, is that it is an area where people live on top of each other. You can have a 4-million-pound house and turn right and you're on a council estate and they share the same Tescos! There's nowhere else in the world that exists with that living-on-top-of-each-other-ness, and what that creates is a confrontation of reality.
Now, what I mean to say, is it means that people turn around and they see the other people that live and exist in this world. They see them on a daily basis, and they are forced, even by osmosis, to understand a little bit more about how that person might have to live in the world. I've had the fortune of being able to travel a bit for work, but also, I studied language at uni. I lived in France, in Germany, I spent a lot of time in a lot of parts of Europe. I'm originally from Ghana. That's where my family's from. I'm British Ghanaian. But what you get in London, in South London, particularly, is this space where you've got a big Latino community, African community, West Indian community, Asian community, white British community, and they all live right on each of his doorsteps.
It means that from early, not just my experience, but the experience of a lot of people that I've spoken to, is that the idea of hanging around with people that had different backgrounds to you was so ordinary. I grew up on an estate called Heygate Estate, and you had friends that are Latin American, whose parents only speak Spanish, or you go to your Jamaican friend's house and try that food. You go to that person's house and their Mum’s actually a banker who's got a 2 million pound house in the Cotswolds. Normal. Ordinary. We saw that from early and I think that proximity to difference creates empathy, and you can get that through art. You get that through music. You can get that through films. And that's what art is for.
To take it all the way back to what I was saying earlier, art is for creating this window into other people's worlds, and you can create empathy, and you create imagination. And South London, to me, is the home of imagination. It is the home of empathy. And I have got a song called ‘South London’ coming out, and it is that. And the reason I say, we’ll look back on those times is because South London is becoming undone. With the housing crisis, there's a replacement happening, where people that have been in areas for ages, and who tend to be working class, are being pushed out for new builds that are becoming unaffordable, and cultures are being pulled out and torn at the seams. I was born in the traffic lights and the madness and the empathy and the beauty, and it's slowly being anaesthetised. I think it's being removed. You only have to go to Peckham at 10pm on a Saturday to see what's happening. I don't know, that's what's South London is, to me, it's diversity, it's inclusion, it is confrontation, it's honesty, and it's fucking beautiful madness. You?
Ben: Yeah, what he said, init!
Oculate UK: So, for the Cloud X Festival, how do you go about selecting the line-up?
Dabieh: That's a great question. It's a bit of science, a bit of luck and a little bit of magic.
Because, look, you can't always book who you want for the simple reason that there's other festivals that are booking people. The first step like to just see is actually available to you in the first instance. And then from that we try and go all right, cool; what are we trying to say?
At the core of it, what we're trying to do is create a line-up which is platforming people that we find to be culturally progressive, and one that is inclusive. Since we started we've always had gender balanced line-ups, which are also inclusive of heritage and gender and sexuality and all the other stuff. So like, what are we trying to say? We're trying to demonstrate that there are people out there that are progressive, perhaps overlooked at times, but who have their own communities, that they've got a proven track record of building their communities. All we want to do is try and be able to give them a stage and a space to amplify that.
And then we go, all right, cool. That person we really want, we really think this is a great moment for them, or that person we really want to get behind them, or that person we've worked with them before, and our crowd and our community want to see them. Every decision is bespoke.
Oculate UK: Is there one set from your previous festivals that really sticks in your mind as an incredible, important moment?
Ben: Two came to mind. One was Berwyn last year, because it was the first time that I've seen him perform live. I just think he's out of this world. And I think that sometimes, in a digital age, it's a dying art to be able to perform live, and it's a very different skill-set than being able to put together a record.
I do also remember when Dave performed a few years ago, I just remember because he was a tiny artist, and he was also phenomenal. I remember watching going, damn, he could do some things, and he has obviously gone on to be a world renowned, internationally recognised superstar.
Dabieh: I'm actually going to go with Saint Levant last year, because bare of our community had never heard of him, and we just loved him. We saw what he was doing, we were following him for years, and it was something that we believed in. I think, it's a delicate subject, but he's a Palestinian artist, and he was one of the first Palestinian headliners that there had been in the UK, and I think to have thought ahead and to have believed in what he was saying, because he's always had the same mission, you know? His album he dropped that year was called 'From Gaza, With Love'. He had this amazing band with instruments I'd never even seen on a stage or heard before. It was just such an important moment, bringing in this sort of world citizen. It represents a lot of what we're about, which is, you know, progress. I think that was an important moment that I really stand by.
Oculate UK: As you mentioned, it has been a tumultuous time for creative industries and live music events, how has that affected you with Cloud X, and how do you see the future of live music events changing?
Ben: Yeah, that's great question. I think there's one element, which is covid. I remember that year we had been planning to do our festival, and we'd put in weeks, months of work, and I remember the I’d booked Doja Cat before she was famous. By the time the weekend of the festival came, when it should have been, but obviously we were all in lockdown, Doja Cat was the only artist to do a remix on The Weeknd album. We were having that conversation early, and I think that alone, in combination with obviously the entire live music industry shutting down, I was like, oh, this feels like a huge blow, and the live music industry has been recovering ever since.
I think the more important conversation is about what's happening with the funding and the space of live music internationally. I read the other day from the Grassroots Music Trust, that essentially, more venues have closed in the last year than ever before on any of their records. It's about two a week, it's a full blown crisis. But when I talk about grassroots music venues, we're talking about venues of 50 people or 100 people. But the way that affects us is that it's all one ecosystem, the very artists that we were platforming right at the beginning of what we were doing in illegal spaces, in tiny venues, etc, many of them have gone on to be huge successes, not just for themselves and for the culture, but also for London and for Britain. They are the cultural exports that Britain and the British are all extraordinarily proud of. If you remove something from a part of the ecosystem which is crucial for storytellers in music to grow, then you destroy the whole thing, and just because some vessels are big or Cloud X is in a certain place, that doesn't mean that those ramifications aren't felt. So, I think that urgently needs addressing, and I'm hoping that maybe a new Labour government might do something about it.
Oculate UK: Aside from Cloud X Festival, what is one other festival that you admire and you think is doing great work, similar to what you are trying to do?
Dabieh: I'm just going to add on to Ben's point, because I think it's important. Most people, don't experience what's going on behind the scenes at the festivals. The truth is that most festivals are owned by like, two companies, and that is becoming more and more the case, because independent people aren't able to put on things, because they can't sustain the losses the way that these massive corporations can. But it actually does mean that what we are getting is quite anaesthetised, not very high-level production, not very high-level experiential type festivals, which are quite lazy in how they program stuff. Now we do have the big site, Glastonbury, which I think is really remarkable in its platforming of everything from the top level to the bottom level. And actually, is experience based, but that is, again, still co owned by these big companies. But that's fine.
Looking at the festivals that are doing well, I'd like to not say so much the festivals, but I'd say the large-scale parties that have arrived like RECESS. They do seven and a half thousand people at Margate. That's a festival. And then you have DLT, another amazing company that is doing things all year round, not just in London, in Malta and Portugal, and they just put on The Recipe at Gunnersbury Park. So, I'd say Recess and DLT. I think that they are also doing remarkably in moving communities, as opposed to just getting huge acts and putting them in a field and not thinking about anything else and selling it at an unreasonable price.
I think there's elements of our festival that are often overlooked, like we're one of the most affordable, our average ticket price is like 45 quid, as opposed to, now, usually 90 quid in London. That removes access to working class communities, particularly. They're disproportionately affected, and that's most people. A lot of festivals are very middle class and are very one dimensional. So, I don't mean to be negative, but I do want to say clearly, I would like to see more independently owned festivals being backed, as Ben said, by councils and Arts Council funding so that we can create sustainable, independent models and have local businesses rather than big government.
Ben: Yeah, the wider points I completely agree with. I like DLT, I like the Recipe. I think City Splash is a great festival. As well as, Lambeth County Fair, Wide Awake, Cross The Tracks. I think Love Supreme is a great festival. We’re sad to miss it this weekend, we were gunna go.
But I think there's a lot of interesting independent festivals happening more in the electronic space and the queer space, like I love what people like ADONIS and CHAPTER 10 do, I think they're just much more independent, I have a lot of respect for it. None of those festivals are what we do, but all of them share ethos’ or values that we do, and I respect them and what they're achieving.
Oculate UK: The wider conversation that you are discussing is really important and needs to be talked about more often.
So, you've got this great space here, in South London. If you were going to set up a new Cloud X space, a new HQ in any city in the world, where would you do it?
Dabieh: I already know, but you go first!
Ben: No, go on then!
Dabieh: Alright, rock, paper, scissors.
Ben: Alright go on then.
Both: One, Two, Three...
Dabieh: I always win!
Ben: No, you did it afterwards, you cheated! You literally cheated, we all saw! Whatever, you go first.
Dabieh: Alright, I’d go for Accra, I would go for Ghana. I'm from there, but I think also we're seeing what amazing stuff can come out of West Africa. I think to have a home there would be unbelievable. I think it's a great example of a place where the economy and infrastructure are growing in a way where you can see it can become something really special. And I just think it'd be nice to have somewhere in my home.
Ben: Accra would be amazing. I think also New York or Paris for me, because they're cities that I love and that I spend time in already.
Oculate UK: Finally, what do you see for your future? Where are you trying to take things? What's the ultimate goal?
Ben: We often say “London, but everywhere”. I think that does actually encapsulate what we want to do. I want to be able to support a kind of ever burgeoning British artistry and British scene, much of which doesn't get enough of a look-in because of all these other factors we were talking about with funding and representation, etc. I want to continue pushing things more internationally. It'd be amazing to be able to take Cloud X Festival and take a slice of our culture and our community and work with other community partners to represent other spaces, whether that would be in Accra, whether it be in Lagos, whether it be in the Caribbean, whether it be in New York or LA, etc. I want to basically just make sure that we're thinking, how do we move a community, build it and keep its core, but move it also into a place that is bigger, that allows it to grow and connect with other communities.
Dabieh: Yeah, yeah, I would completely agree. I think it's about taking the core of what we're doing, that vehicle for people to create a freedom within themselves, and taking that all around the world and learning from other cultures. I think we got that ethos, but we need to learn from others. I want to see what happens when you take that same ethos and do it in Accra, do it in Tokyo, do it in any of these other spaces, like, what happens? What arrives? Because one thing about Cloud X is that we didn't have this big plan, we just kept trying to be free.
We kept trying to push things in a way that we thought made sense. But we didn't have this like, oh yeah, in two years, we're going to set up a festival and within a year we’ll get a building, no, this was a journey of good intention. And it doesn't mean you're always going to get it right, but you learn along the way. I'd like to take this value and this ethos and put it in other places, and see what comes back, see what evolves and what organically comes out of it.
And then, I want to go all the way. I want to absolutely undermine the rigid conservative, thick, dull, fucking neutralising effect that's been happening, where people are being compressed into just like, passive apathy. I want people to be able to feel, be, breathe, live, and I think it's going to end up somehow, with some sort of cultural, political revolution. I think the radical nature of what we need to undo is so great that like somehow, I'd like to start a fire that burns it all down, and that would be it.
Ben: Revolution. There you go.
Oculate UK: Revolution. It's a good place to end.
Ben: With a new beginning!
Special thanks to Cloud X
Words - Matt Sharp
Photography - Dan Hutchinson assisted by Liam Tyler
Creative Lead - Liam Tyler
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