INDUSTRY EXPERTS
SAM AIREY / HANGLANDS WHO ARE YOU? Hi! I’m Sam - I work at Hanglands in Leeds; a creative communications agency specialising in music PR, events, social media and marketing. I’m also a songwriter and musician, DJ, and terrible pun enthusiast. I moved to Leeds many moons ago from Ynys Môn (the isle of Anglesey) in North Wales. It’s a beautiful part of the world and since living in the land-locked county of West Yorkshire I definitely miss being by the sea, but Leeds is ace - I really fell in love with the sense of community in the local music scene and that was a big part of deciding to stay put here. Oh, I also like otters, writing
sad songs and eating pasta. WHAT ARE YOUR JOB TITLES? At Hanglands, my loose title is Creative Lead. There’s 3 of us here now; Harry, myself and Jasmine. As a client-facing agency, our work tends to vary a lot from day to day, which tends to keep things pretty interesting! I’ve worked a bunch of other industry roles over the years too across labels, promoting and repping, artist management, and some other bits. WHAT DOES THAT ENTAIL? At Hanglands our clients include UK music festivals such as Deer Shed Festival and Long Division, an evergrowing music roster that includes brilliant artists like 41
Low Hummer, Elanor Moss, Far Caspian, Jake Whiskin and more. We’ve been lucky enough to work with some brilliant labels too, both locally in Dance To The Radio and Come Play With Me Co, but also further afield including Secretly Canadian, Dead Oceans, and more. On the music side, PR is a big part of what we do here. We’re mostly office based but we get out and about a fair bit too - we’re all looking forward to being at Deer Shed Festival this summer, where we’ll be on hand to look after press and socials for the duration. HOW DID YOU GET INTO IT? When I started out as an artist I began to release my music via Hide and Seek Records, a
