Letter #165

Let's make trying cool again...

hi how r u 🐸,

Well well well. Look who we have here. It’s the man who said a year ago he’d write to you at least once a month and then disappeared for an entire year.

I’m sorry, it’s me, not you.

This year, I’m going to try again.

I’ve been thinking a lot about trying recently. Growing up, my school reports always said the same thing; “Jed could really excel if he just applied himself properly and tried”. I was not born a trier, it turns out, and for a long time I thought trying was deeply uncool. Everyone I thought was great just looked effortless. They didn’t try, they just were. I was not born with that were either, and so over the last twenty years or so, I’ve discovered that I have no natural talent in anything (lol), and that if I want to to anything, I’m going to have to actually try.

So I started trying, and slowly but surely, it’s made me greedy because when you try, sometimes good stuff happens. And yes, I might fail sometimes too, but at least I can fail feeling some satisfaction at having at least tried.

I’m not really a resolutions kind of guy, but each January, I do like to think about stuff I’d like to try in the year ahead.

I wrote a list in January 2025, and I reckon I failed half of it. First of all, I didn’t write to you once a month. But I also didn’t write a book or album either, we didn’t publicly launch the Common People emergency fund (although it is active and supporting people), and I DNF’d the Winter Downs 200 miler. I failed some big bois in 2025. Some were spectacular, some were more subtle. But I still failed quite a bit.

After DNFing the Winter Downs 200 in December, I wrote a massive post up on failure and why it’s important to accept failure, but when my most trusted editor read it (my wife, the greatest human on earth), she said it didn’t sound like me. And at first I couldn’t understand why, I was being open about accepting failure, listing off a bunch of stuff that had gone wrong in the past, but I realised (eventually) that it’s because failure is just a possible outcome. Like success, failure is something that might happen, and often you’re not really in control of the result, you just control the input. So I try not to obsess over the outcome, but instead learn to love the process.

So I’ve learnt to just try, and enjoy the satisfaction of know I tried. Stacking each brick, day by day, and learning to love the process. It’s not cool, and while some stuff fails, fuck me some stuff also GETS DONE. So I’ve decided that, to me, winning or success isn’t inspirational, trying is.

And in 2025 I set a bunch of new PBs, we did prop LWSTD-FM up as self-sufficient and fully community funded (and grew the community and roster of DJs!), I read a load of books, properly established CultureLab as a business with genuinely world class clients, and kept a bunch of other bits moving forwards too.

Slowly, if you try and you’re consistent, everything moves forwards. CultureLab is two this year. Common People is going to be five. This newsletter is going to be NINE years old! And LWSTD-FM will be three. Brick by brick.

Trying works.

So friends, if you’re in the market for resolutions, I beg you to consider the humble resolution of just ‘trying’ a bit more. Yeah, half of the stuff you might try might not work, but that means half did, and that’s half more than if you didn’t try at all. Plus, if you learn to love the trying, then none of that matters anyway, as you’ll have had a great year giving it a go.

Right, that was SUCH a long and rambling introduction. Shall we get down to the business of this newsletter? I’ve got a bumper bunch of TLDR recommendations below - books, videos, music, shows from other folk on LWSTD-FM, a few highlights of my own shows, and some other bits too.

I promise I’ll write more this year, or I’ll at least try to xxx

See you on the airwaves,
Jed x

PS. If you're new here, then here’s what you’ve missed so far.

PPS. Oh, and come join our lovely community, you’ll love it ❤️

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🥁 My latest (and I think greatest) lovewillsavetheday.fm shows

The section that you most likely came here for, so it’s up top.

• My latest show from last week. Slow boi techno and bass. Never over 99bpm.

• AYA special. A showcase of all my favourite AYA tunes.

• Hard house special. A bit of a personal history show. I cried!

• Space Materialism. Sarah Gregs let me run her show one morning so I could play some ambient space jams.

These are my latest and greatest shows, but you can find a whole load of them here - usually with full tracklists and genre tags too :-)

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📻 My lovewillsavetheday.fm recent highlights

These are my highlights from the station and the community this month…

• Come Collect: Brazil Special. My favourite ever CC show. So much incredible music

• Ruven. Every show is a proper tour de force, and put together beautifully.

• Sarah Gregs ECM special. Sarah’s ear for tunes, and ability to blend them seamlessly… A giant of LWSTD-FM.

• CAWRIE. My new favourite show, from long time LWSTD pal Dani!

• MAYA - Take An Amen Break. The most exciting jungle show I’ve ever heard.

• Electronic Workshop. The unofficial chair of LWSTD, dishing out lessons on every level.

Come join our community here, listen live here (Friday-Sunday every week), and listen back to past shows here. If you’re here, you belong.

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🌪 TL;DR Section

You, stuff to listen to, stuff to do, and a lot of stuff to read

• To read

  • Online

    • Four Things. Martyn’s must-read, must-subscribe newsletter (his recent 0PX review was incredible).

    • Waste Mail always has incredible music recommendations.

    • untitled 909. Chanel never misses - recommendations, interviews, news, and regular as clockwork. Everything I wish this letter was 🤣

    • Joe Muggs. One of the hardest working and most critically sound music writers out there today.

    • No Tags. Podcast, newsletter, and now two books. Crucial listening.

    • Futurism Restated. Big Philly Sherburne’s substack.

    • Scuba’s Music Not Diving. Not a read, but I haven’t got podcast section, so it’s going here. Often grumpy, but always interesting.

    • Becca OGT is back toooooo. About time.

    • Deeper Into Outer Space. Incredible interviews.

  • Books

    • Just read (these are the music and culture ones, for the full job lot click here)

      • Clothes Clothes Clothes Music Music Music Boys Boys Boys. Wow. Just… Wow. Super, super inspirational.

      • Letters to Gil. My book of the 2025.

      • Dance or Die. A history of hardcore.

      • We Were There. Music, the North, class, racial equality, proper history. Great book.

      • Roses for Hedone. A great treatise on the importance of spaces and community for healing and health.

      • Deeping It. You should’ve read this already (I’m late), but incredible book on the criminalisation of drill.

    • Next up

      • Emma Warren’s new book, Up The Youth Club. Emma’s a buy on sight author! GO BUY IT NOW. GO. GO ON. OFF YOU GO.

      • From Hackney, With Love. Looks mega, and is about gentrification in Hackney.

      • The I Ching. Inspired so many artists, so I’m giving it a run.

      • Ten Days in Harlem. Castro visits Harlem.

      • I Regret Almost Everything. Keith McNally’s salacious biography.

      • CultureWORKS002 - the mag we’ve started publishing at CultureLab, edited and published by the one and only, Tom Armstrong of The Move! If you want one, message me and I’ll send you the first two copies.

• To watch

  • I’ve been TERRIBLE with telly and films, and what I have watched has mostly been about running!

• To listen

  • Albums and artists

    • Myles J Paralysis - wonky techno, deep house, and electro. Buy on sight.

    • Daudi - this human… One of my favourites in the world. Also makes soul crunching folk music that brings me to tears.

    • Scartip - my favourite new techno producer.

    • AYA - the artist we’ll still be talking about in a decade. Our generation’s Aphex.

    • Entranas - one of the most exciting techno producers making art today.

    • Reaper’s heartbreak album - I… Words can’t do this justice. Go listen.

    • Sun People - pacey workouts, but with some deeply thoughtful moments too. Exciting.

    • Unknown Untitled series. Buy on sight. Mad UKG, dubstep, and bass-bin rattlers.

    • DJ Young Brown. Fun fun fun fun FUN.

• To do

  • Balearic London have been putting on some mega parties - and the next one is their second birthday celebration in February!

  • LWSTD-FM resident Emilia has launched a party called Pherotone - and it looks INCREDIBLE

  • And I MUST get to 160 Unity this year

  • Finally, come join the LWSTD-FM Discord!