Our Future Leaders series is back. The series went quiet for a spell while we rebuilt the magazine around a sharper editorial brief, but the reason we started it in the first place has not gone anywhere. There are still people out there doing the work, quietly, stubbornly, without waiting for permission from the usual gatekeepers. People building rooms, communities and moments that do not look like anything else on the calendar. This is where we go and find them.
The premise is straightforward. We are not interested in the artists who are simply next in the queue, or the promoters running the same night in the same city with a slightly different flyer. We want the ones pushing the edges of what a night, a weekend, a career in electronic music can actually be. The world builders. The ones treating this thing as a craft rather than a content pipeline. Some are behind the decks, some are behind the scenes, some are running the door and the spreadsheets and the sound system all at once. What links them is a refusal to phone it in.
Our first name for the revived series is a proper one to open with. Daniel Sharkey is a Glasgow-based DJ, promoter and creative director with more than twenty five years in the trade, and the founder of Passenger Events. His CV reads like a map of the underground. Long-running residencies at the Sub Club, MAS with Billy Woods, and a three year stint running monthly all nighters at the Unit on Bridge Street after Pressure parties, back when Glasgow was writing the rules the rest of us were still catching up on. Add fifteen years on the Electro Juice Boat in Bordeaux, plus dates at Wilde Renate, I:Boat and Macarena, and the picture sharpens. This is someone who has done the miles.
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New Trentemøller album is comingPassenger itself is where all of that experience is now pointing. What started as small community get togethers has quietly become one of the more interesting things happening in Scotland. In 2024 the project stepped up a gear with Adventures in Aviemore, a sold out outdoor debut set amongst mountains and forests by the River Spey. On July 18th, Daniel will be hosting his own stage take over, a 1000 capacity area for Back Doune The Rabbit Hole Festival 18th July, whilst later this year, Passenger will be hosting a secret warehouse rave (if you know, you know)
We dig into the Sub Club schooling, the after hours ghosts of Bridge Street, why the Scottish landscape has become the third artist on every line up, and where he thinks the underground actually goes from here. Pull up a chair.
Passenger started as small community get-togethers and has clearly grown into something with proper intent behind it. Walk us back to that first gathering, what was happening in your head at the time, and what you felt was missing from the Scottish scene that you needed to go and build yourself.
First gathering was on the Renfrew Ferry in Glasgow, a riverboat venue with a lot of history behind it, Daft Punk playing there a few times alongside Laurent Garnier. What was happening in my head at the time was I was struggling to find the place and space I wanted to dance in and listen to music that I enjoy. Out with the sub club, I still have not found ‘my place’ so indeed I decided to build one.
There is nothing missing from the Scottish scene really, it’s vibrant, however it is difficult to go source somewhere where you hear the latest underground sounds past and present and the sound that I crave and love. Chicago and Detroit and European sounds in a nutshell.
So in a DIY ethos, I built my own community. And here we are. Passenger started because I couldn’t find the room I wanted to dance in. Scotland has talent, passion, history, but not enough spaces built with intention. That first gathering was instinctive: create a place where dancers, dreamers and music heads could meet without pretense. A room with purpose, not just volume.
I took over the iconic Riverboat venue in Glasgow and invited Terry Francis, Robert Drewek & Al Kent to come and rock the boat. After this party, I realised that throughout all of my youth, I ran other people’s parties for them, built them up, got them running like clockwork and to capacity ( in most cases over ) and at that point i made the conscious decision to build my own musical kingdom, as I’d kept the kings in their own castles for long enough lol.
You’ve cited the Sub Club as your biggest musical influence, and as one of the world’s most respected basement institutions it carries serious weight. What did your time in that room teach you about reading a crowd, the unspoken contract between DJ and dancefloor, and how much of that still feeds directly into Passenger today?
Sub Club is where I aspired to play on a Saturday night, at Subculture ( doesn’t everyone in Scotland ) This is a night I have attended for over 30 years now. It’s the 2 best residents in Scotland if not the UK. They gave me my chance. It taught me the gospel of patience and the art of reading a room and the art of the warm up.
The intimacy, restraint, and a journey that unfolds rather than explodes. I’ve made some great lifelong friends from being there as a punter and as one of the extended family. I’m very grateful for those times. My musical education comes from there and I have graduated with a Master’s degree in it.
When I play something, it’s instinct to ask questions to myself is at the standard a Domenic Cappello would play or a James Harrigan ( Harri ) – a musical compass so to speak, and the place was my right of passage.
Three years running monthly all-nighters at the Unit on Bridge Street after Pressure is a serious commitment to the after-hours faith. What did that room teach you about the four to ten am stretch, and is there anything from those nights you’ve consciously tried to preserve, or deliberately left behind?
Lol, a few police visits, lol, some of the craziest party people in the land, and a chance dj duo one night with Ricardo Villalobos. He turned up one night, and we played all night long together. I knew who he was, funny thing was, he turned up with the same pair of shoes on as me. We did chuckle.
Four to ten a.m. is indeed its own universe. The Unit parties taught me endurance, as there is a certain type of party person who irons their jeans for going out that night at midnight!! Those nights taught me how deep you and a crowd can go when you give each other space.
What would I leave behind? The excess.
The Pressure parties were the heartbeat of Glasgow techno in that era and the Unit fed off that energy in a very specific way. Looking back, what did that ecosystem actually represent, and could a circuit like that, where parties bled into parties, even exist in today’s licensing and economic climate?
Pressure was absolutely massive, last Friday of the month, payday, Daft Punk or a Green Velvet playing, 2000 people going absolutely bananas in the dark! Timeless! The Unit was known to a select few, and was there ultimately for people who didn’t want to go home, alongside the diy crew and free party movements.
Nights bled into mornings. Especially for those who iron their jeans at midnight lol. In today’s licensing and economic climate, that exact ecosystem couldn’t exist, as these parties are as underground as it gets, and our City council is living in the dark ages. For example, public transport stops almost at midnight on the weekend, hardly progressive attitude.
The whole point of afterparties is a middle finger to all of that attitude. The desire for continuity absolutely still does exist. Clandestine underground parties will always happen in this city. This is a rebellious city. And these parties are still happening, but I am sworn to secrecy.
Holding it down at MAS alongside Billy Woods, Glasgow’s Disco King, is its own kind of education. What did playing with him teach you about the older end of dance music history that maybe doesn’t get spoken about enough in the current underground conversation?
Billy is a living archive. He showed me that disco isn’t nostalgia, it’s architecture. He taught me the importance of honouring the foundations the underground stands on. We’re talking Ron Hardy, Larry Levan, Salsoul, Colin Gate, David Mancuso & Loft Music, Walter Gibbons et al. I used to spend £100 a week for about 10 years at the record store Bill worked in.
He had a massive part in shaping my musical taste. He’s educated me in so many ways, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually told him that. But I’m telling him now. Learned a lot about the culture and the industry from Bill.
Fifteen years on the Electro Juice Boat in Bordeaux is not a passing fling, that’s a marriage. What is it about the French underground, and that boat in particular, that kept you coming back, and how does the French way of doing things differ from the Scottish approach you grew up in?
The French underground has a looseness and romance that Scotland doesn’t naturally lean toward. That boat felt like a world unto itself. France is my second musical home. DJ Xavier, JR Poisson Rouge, DJ Kubik & David Delor all adopted me, I credit them with every show I’ve ever played in France. Over 27 years of being booked by the same promoters!
I have been going there for that long and I’ll be playing in Bordeaux again in August of this year and apparently Biarritz too. The spirit there is eternal. They love electronic music and they love to dance!
You’ve played Wilde Renate, I:Boat and Macarena, properly respected rooms with very different DNA. When you’re now booking line-ups and shaping Passenger, how does your experience inside those European spaces shape what you’re trying to build at home?
When I book now, I’m not booking names, I’m building room identity. Passenger is a synthesis of every room that shaped me. It’s promoter suicide by booking people before profit, but that’s how i roll!
Think Red Pig Flower, Vince Watson, Terry Francis, Robert Drewek, Milton Jackson, Funk D’Void, Swayzak, Charles Webster, Domenic Cappello, Lance De Sardi, Edit Select, Ian O’Donovan, Saytek Live! Not about the money and never, it’s nearly impossible to break even never mind put milk in your coffee here!
Passenger feels deliberately positioned against the rinse and repeat club model that dominates most cities. What does the average weekend offering get wrong in 2026, and what’s the gap you’re filling for people who want more than just a night out?
Intention. Too many nights feel algorithmic. CDJs have made it far too effortlessly accessible in my opinion. Not enough people playing records in clubs! Also to help them connect music with nature and adventure, which is exactly what the Passenger’s Adventures in series of micro festivals is trying to do! And successfully!
You describe your crowd as dancers, dreamers and music heads, which suggests you’ve thought carefully about who this is actually for. How do you cultivate that kind of audience, and where do you draw the line between curating a community and gatekeeping?
Community isn’t gatekeeping, it’s curation. And I platform as many grassroots artists that align with our sound and ethos as much as possible. To put it in perspective, I’ve played at my own party once in 3 years. We leave our ego at the door here at Chateau Passenger. Trying to build a legacy here god willing lol.
Adventures in Aviemore in 2024 was your first proper outdoor and a serious change of pace. What was the deciding factor in taking the leap out of the venue and into the landscape, and what did the wilderness teach you about programming that four walls simply could not?
The walls started feeling too small. The wilderness teaches scale, humility, and how to programme for landscape rather than walls. You collaborate with nature; you don’t control it.
The Scottish landscape, the highlands, the lochs, the forests, carries its own mythology that lends itself to a particular kind of gathering. How conscious are you of plugging into that older tradition of Scots gathering outdoors, and how do you sidestep the more obvious festival cliches in the process?
Scotland’s landscape carries its own mythology. One day I stumbled across a venue, The Old Bridge Inn by the banks of the river spey, the next minute I’m doing a £20 grand micro festival lol. Thankfully I got my money back for that and nobody divorced me lol.
Scotland has always gathered outdoors, around fires, under stars, in forests older than our surnames. Passenger taps into that lineage without tartan cosplay. We let the land speak and build around its voice. People love adventure and to connect music with nature. It’s a passenger value.
Sound systems behave differently outside, and the room you’re playing to is sky rather than ceiling. Talk us through how you approach sound design and programming when the venue is mountains and a river, compared to a low-ceilinged basement.
Outdoors, the sky is your ceiling. Bass travels differently; high-end dissolves into the wind. A basement is a weapon; a valley is an instrument. Passenger plays the valley. A good Funktion 1 system always goes a long way. Programming wise, majority speaking, will be top heavy on the best of breed Scottish house and techno royalty, the tier 1 of our music culture and heritage.
You talk about connecting people through sound, storytelling and shared moments, and storytelling is an interesting word for a promoter to lean on. What does that actually mean in practice when you’re shaping a Passenger event, and how does narrative show up in the way you build a night or a weekend?
Storytelling is the spine of every Passenger event. A beginning, a middle, an end and release. It shows up in the line-up order, the lighting cues, the artwork, the transitions. We don’t run events, we run musically led story telling parties. Painting pictures with sound. Eutopia.
ArranIisland has its own particular pull. What drew you there, and when you scout a new location are you looking for somewhere that fits the brand, or are you letting the place reshape the event?
Well Arran remains to be seen, it is fraught with risk and could easily be the next Fyre fest. But I’ve already done an island party there, and once you do an island party, you can pretty much do anything in my eyes. Arran has a pull, wild but welcoming.
When I scout a location, I’m not asking if it fits Passenger. I’m asking if it can reshape Passenger into something truer and better than before. Arran is a world heritage and UNESCO site. It’s tropical, it’s mysterious, it’s like another country, but inside Scotland. Magical magical place. Let’s see if the next adventure indeed takes us there.
The underground in 2026 is under pressure on a lot of fronts: venues closing, costs rising, attention spans shrinking, and a generation that grew up on phones rather than flyers. From where you’re sitting in Glasgow, what worries you the most, and where are you genuinely finding reasons to be optimistic?
Worries: venue closures, rising costs, shrinking attention spans. Hope: people still crave real connection. Every time strangers move as one, I’m reminded why the underground survives, it adapts and always overcomes, this provides me eternal optimism. The underground religion we will maintain!
Every lifer has the names they quietly tip a glass to. Beyond the Sub Club institution itself, who are the DJs, promoters and characters in your story that shaped how you do this thing, and what specifically did you take from each of them?
Life, death, trauma, ups, downs, loves, lows, travel. The lifers: DJs and club owners and promoters who taught me restraint, Domenic, Harri, Stu, Orde, DJ Q, Billy Woods & Kiltie, Laurence Hughes, Mike Grieve, Paul Crawford, Colin Barr, Dave Clarke, Keith RIP.
AMK has taught me an awful lot, he is someone I can lean on, someone I can trust, someone who can play my own record bag of vinyl and let me hear my own records in a totally different way, in a way I wish it was actually myself! He is a massive part of Passenger, from design, tech set up, performance to derig and after event analysis and future programming. He has big kahunas and sees the bigger picture and the dream! And the best confidante a man can have.
Think Tom Hagen from the Godfather. Tom is the Corleone family’s consigliere. Tom Hagen is characterized by his curiosity, intelligence and loyalty. He is calm in the face of crisis and knows how to intelligently navigate any problems within the family. That’s AMK in a nutshell. Everyone needs an AMK in their life!!! Also a shout out to the promoters who built worlds from nothing and dancers who stayed until the lights came on. They shaped my sense of craft more than any headliner ever could.
There is a constant temptation in this game to chase the obvious headliner and price out the soul of the event in the process. How do you actually approach line-up curation for Passenger, particularly when balancing local talent that holds the room with the international name that shifts the tickets?
I book people that I like – it’s as simple as that – if I am digging it then you’re gonna be digging it. It’s never been about shifting tickets and it never will be, a man that has nothing to lose and everything to gain is indeed one to be feared lol! Hahaha. Line-ups are ecosystems. Locals hold the room; internationals add flavour, not validation. Passenger books artists who understand the journey, not just the peak, the warm up is equally if not more important to me.
You wear three hats: DJ, promoter and creative director, and that last one is telling because most promoters do not think of themselves in those terms. How does the creative direction piece actually show up in Passenger, from artwork and atmosphere to the small details the punter never consciously notices?
Creative direction is the invisible hand, artwork, typography, lighting, sentiment, pacing, booking artists, research, venue scoping, onboarding new partnerships, all the details the punter never notices but always feels.
Passenger is world-building disguised as a club night. We host the monthly Microclubbing parties in El Santo in Glasgow and I try to platform as many new locals that I respect, I love to hear new artists coming through and I take particular pleasure in celebrating other people’s success (freudenfreude) – I have been in the game a long long time, so for others to experience what I have experienced, getting a booking, travelling, playing a crowd, getting a reaction, all of this makes me smile inside and I take intense pleasure and gratification from this.
If you could change one thing about the wider electronic music industry tomorrow with the wave of a wand, what would it be, and why hasn’t that change happened organically already?
I’d remove the algorithm. Let taste lead again. Let curiosity return. Let discovery be discovery. More DJs playing records in clubs, less ageism. Oh, and the turntables being either side of the mixer again lol ( you need really long arms these days with all those CDJs sitting there doing nothing lol )
Passenger has scaled from city get-togethers to outdoor weekenders inside a few short years, which is no small shift. What does the next five years look like in your head, and how do you grow this thing without losing the very thing that makes it Passenger?
More outdoor gatherings. More storytelling. More community. Growth without dilution; expansion without erosion. The mission stays the same, connecting people through sound, nature, adventure, stories and shared moments that outlive the night.
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