Selling The Night explores what happens when after-dark creativity influences wider culture and converges with everything from media, advertising, design and to gaming, fashion, hospitality, alcohol, beauty, tourism and far beyond. It’s equally about the implications of brands taking space within dance music as sponsors and supporters.

Author Andy Crysell speaks to DJs, promoters, marketers, academics, activists, archivists, policymakers, photographers, writers and designers. He samples KFC through to Fiorucci, Absolut and Red Bull, and moves from New York disco to the modern global underground. Selling the Night hears from more than 100 DJs, promoters, marketers, academics, activists, archivists, policymakers, photographers, writers and designers, including New York disco legend Nicky Siano, DJ/producer/educator King Britt, Hacienda designer Ben Kelly, DJ and tastemaker Jamz Supernova and many more.

Selling The Night witnesses how ideas migrate from subculture to influence the creative industries. It searches for lessons in improving the value exchange between dance music and brands, seeking something more symbiotic and less parasitic. All the while, it celebrates what makes after-dark ideas so special – the unique and democratising role they play.

They say nothing good happens after midnight, but in the case of creativity, that’s just not so. The night fosters a different kind of creativity: something urgent, spontaneous, carved out of necessity. Selling the Night tracks past, present and future of this complex dynamic.

“The friction created when youth subcultures meet corporate cultures is long overdue a deconstruction, Selling The Night is necessary reading on how and why there is a transfer of time and money between consumer brands and cultural ecosystems; and what both sectors have to gain and lose through these relationships.” (Finlay Johnson,Association For Electronic Music)

Paperback, published in 2025, 407 pages.

About the Author

Andy Crysell spent the 1990s as a music and subculture journalist, interviewing artists such as Wu-Tang Clan, Derrick May, Carl Craig, Frankie Knuckles, Aphex Twin, De La Soul, Eminem, Björk, Jeff Mills, Daft Punk, Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Mary J Blige, Massive Attack, and more for NME, The Face, Muzik, i-D, Dazed & Confused, Mixmag, and DJ.

In recent years, as an agent he has been crafting global cultural strategies for clients like Nike, adidas, Apple, Netflix, Spotify, Ballantine’s, Heineken, IKEA.. He divides his time between London and Brooklyn, and still spends as much of it close to big speakers and under stroboscopic lights as life permits.