Ian Dutt
Co-Managing Director of The Orchard UK
Launched Red in the UK June 2014
Joined The Orchard in June 2017
As a leader in The Orchard’s UK efforts, what the #&@$ do you do Ian?
I lead the The Orchard’s UK team in being part of a full service global entertainment company. On a day to day level, I’m pretty involved in acquisition. I’m certainly label facing, there’s very few clients who I don’t speak to regularly. Most of the time, our conversations involve forward planning, making sure that I’m aware of a priority release or priority artist, or helping with a project that requires additional assistance in some way.
I’m also close with the Sales, International and Marketing teams here at The Orchard and tend to do most of the Sony-facing communication out of the UK as well. Mike Chadwick, the other Co-Managing Director of The Orchard UK, tends to focus more on the glamorous aspects of the company: finance, statements, contracts, tax, etc. I’m jealous!
We’ve been tipped off that you have some DJ skills. Can you tell us about this and any other musical ventures you take part in?
I’ve DJ’d pretty much my whole life. My parents were very bohemian (my mum owned a record shop in Tottenham) and I grew up on a mixture of Ravi Shankar, Ray Conniff and Marvin Gaye. We lived in a huge house with 3 other families. Every Friday all the kids were sent to the top of the house, while the parents threw a party. I suppose in some way that’s why I got into DJing? Wow, this is like therapy. I started as the in-house DJ at the Electric Ballroom in Camden when I was 15, probably before most people at The Orchard were born! (I was under age and they had to sneak me in through the Fire Exit to DJ).
The high profile gigs are all gone now, I’m strictly birthdays and weddings. That said, I DJ’d Elton John and David Furnish’s wedding back in the day. I reckon I peaked in 2007 and hung up my headphones when Little Louie Vegas told me that I was “the bomb.” I was always happiest with two SL1200‘s. As soon as everyone started moving on to Ableton and Tractor, it got a little too technical for me.
Favorite childhood musician: Sorry, this is impossible to answer. I do remember the first record I bought was ‘Ghosts’ by Japan.
If you could live in any time period: I’d say it would have to be now right? I reckon I lived through the best decades of the 20th Century.
Random fact: I sung on the song ‘Universal Love‘ from Soul II Soul’s last album, Volume V.
