Founded in 2001 as a passion project between friends, Resident Advisor (RA) has grown into a global platform covering electronic music, club culture and events in major cities worldwide.

The site aggregates listings for clubs and electronic music events, highlights new releases and publishes influential album charts.

One of the founders, Australian-born Paul Clement, is also part of the Estonian diaspora, with citizenship passed down through his grandparents from Saaremaa.

Speaking to ERR's Tõnu Karjatse, Clement admitted his relationship with his Estonian roots wasn't always clear-cut growing up.

Do you feel Estonian yourself?

Yes is a simple answer. When I grew up, my Estonian grandparents lived right around the corner from my family, and I spent a lot of time there. My parents both worked, and they were effectively our before and after school supports.

But they were very much living a Saaremaa life in Sydney. They built a sauna in the garden and were smoking fish in the garage; they had chickens and grew produce. And speaking Estonian, and teaching us small things. At Christmas we sang Estonian carols. But I didn't really know what that meant as a child.

I left Australia when RA [was just starting], in 2001. And now having spent the majority of my life outside of Australia, and having visited Estonia a few times... Yeah, the reflections as an individual on "Who am I?" and "Why am I the way I am?" And some of the cultural norms I'm learning about Estonian people I see and feel in myself.

It's almost like the longer I'm away from Australia, the more the Estonian elements within me feel present.

Australia will always be a home, and I've lived in London for 15 or so years, so that's very much my home now. But the sense of connection to Estonia feels very temporal and real.

More significantly, just in the past year I've met a few Estonian people by chance, and I've been here four times in the past year.

Are you familiar with Estonian electronic music?

I wouldn't say yes confidently.

There's a group called Collage from a long time ago, and while talking last year, a Swedish producer suggested that I find a copy of the original record, because they have a sense of my taste and were like, "I'm sure you'll enjoy this."

So I ended up finding a copy of that album and it was really fascinating.

But I've been to a few of the clubs, I've met some promoters and club owners and people in the industry. But yeah, I wouldn't say I know it exceptionally well — not enough to comment on it in any meaningful way.

What place does Tallinn and Estonia have on RA's map from a broader perspective? How vibrant is the local club scene in your view?

I think the reality is, our work to support local scenes and communities in cities all over the world is a universal challenge, and probably the biggest challenge we have. To scale and support, and to realize the broader cause that we have.

Tallinn has a good number of venues and obviously a passionate audience. but there's a sense of the economies of scale for club culture that we see in bigger cities that is simply just difficult in smaller populations.

So you feel that in conversations with club owners or promoters, when they're talking about how they manage to stay open and be a sustainable business. And needing to support different forms of music, and different forms of events and theater or whatever it might be — to play to the sense of the local audience and scene effectively.

Last year came the news that Club Hall is closing. They're not actually closed, but no longer hosting regular events. COVID and other challenges have perhaps hit Estonia harder than bigger cities, young people aren't going out as much anymore and now venues are closing. Any advice?

It's a complicated challenge. The element of the industry we work closest with is the promoters and club owners, because they utilize our platform as a sort of operating system, to reach audiences, in some cases sell tickets, promote their shows. So that reality and those challenges are very present for us.

A lot of independent venues and business owners struggled out of COVID, as we did. It was brutal for the industry to lose effectively all of its event-based revenue. And we realized 90-whatever percent of our business was simply from the event economy — so we couldn't function without the clubs.

I think the optimistic version of it, which is maybe less helpful, is that club culture's always survived — and survived in the outskirts, unsupported by governments or culture.

It's only more recently that you have these departments supporting the nighttime economy and things in various cities. There's been some interesting discussions about that here at Tallinn Music Week.

But at a broader level, we're still seeing more events and more people going out than ever before, and that hasn't slowed. And so I don't personally believe that people aren't going out, or that clubs are wholesale dying.

But at the same time, it can be true — and it is true — that it's difficult for club owners, especially in cities like Tallinn where Hall's a big venue with its costs and demands, where if they can't find enough people willing to be at shows regularly enough, it becomes difficult to be sustainable.

I believe those things and those institutions become really important — for people to gather, and for young people to be together, or the various elements of it. So it's finding that balance between responsible, sustainable business and our cultural support for these things, and the acknowledgement that they are valuable to society.

I'm not saying they should all be charities and supported by taxpayers, but yeah. It's complicated.

If the economic situation is complicated, then it goes back to the people and how optimistic they themselves are — how they manage to do things out of passion, and keep alive something they love.

Yeah, that to me is part of "Where there's a will, there's a way."

There's a lot of really passionate people that have given everything to put on shows, to be promoters, and a good day might be breaking even.

And the risks that they take on to put on shows for people, and for a community and a scene they care about, is something that we'll always respect and be in support of.

Of course, AI is a game changer — how we use social media, and what is happening to music, and club music, in terms of mixes and DJing. Do you have some vision of what will happen in, say, five years?

No, because I don't know what's gonna happen with AI next week. So it's very difficult to jump too far ahead. There's no question that it changes the way we work in various forms, but what impact AI has on art and creativity and music and culture is obviously a well-debated topic.

I think people still want to gather; they want to be with other people, they want to see people perform. And I don't think that aspect changes.

But I'm maybe more on the spectrum of [believing] people will utilize technology to do good things, and advance their creativity in various forms.

At the same time, the machines can make music too. But what does that mean, and how does that relate? I'm not sure.

You don't see robot DJs or machine-based club nights happening?

I mean, that also may happen. I imagine not in the near term. We as people still wanna decide who we see and how we interface with the world.

So, if anything, maybe the optimistic view would be that it takes us off our computers and gives us more time outside. Maybe we will be more engaged with the physical presence of being in a room with other people. And that in itself could be immensely valuable.

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