The psychedelic trance musician bringing dedicated communities closer together

Benji Vaughan, founder of Disciple, tells Andy Martin why an online following is much stronger than a mere audience

‘We are creating a lifeline,’ says Vaughan (Benji Vaughan)

For the sake of argument, let’s suppose you are an up-and-coming (or even established) pop band. Do you want an “audience” for your music? No, says Benji Vaughan: “What you need is an online digital community.” And even if you are not a musical sensation, or any other kind of sensation, but simply want to find others who share your enthusiasm, something similar applies, which is where Disciple – Vaughan’s brainchild – comes in.

Vaughan, now in his forties, started out as a musician. Brought up in Surrey he could hear sylvan raves in the distance even as a kid. “What’s that, Mum?” was one of his first questions. He was given a drum kit when he was aged 12 and got his first record deal at 19. He scraped an economics degree from Bristol while mainly doing gigs and went on to do a PhD in “studio nerdery”, building Heath Robinson-style contraptions to produce electronic sounds for “psychedelic trance” music (which he describes as “banging late-night techno noise”). “Even then I knew I wasn’t going to make money out of selling CDs.”

In the late Eighties he started using an Atari computer, playing games and doing basic coding, and realised that he could use that to control his equipment. Since then, he has been more software-engineer and tech entrepreneur than music-maker. But his experience collaborating with a record label, Twisted Records, has had a huge influence on Disciple. “It was always communal. It was all about a shared culture.”