John Best

John Best is a music industry multi-hyphenate – journalist, film producer, indie label boss, festival organiser – perhaps best known for helming the career of Icelandic band Sigur Rós for the first 20 years of this century, and before that founding era-defining 90s independent PR company Savage & Best and launching the careers of Pulp, Suede, The Verve, The Cranberries, Elastica, as well as representing Pixies, the Blue Nile, Cocteau Twins, Mary Margaret O’Hara and many more.  

While managing Sigur Rós – and particularly the band’s ambient side project Liminal – he became interested in the subtler emotional impact of immersive audio, and the huge untapped potential of the form as a way of delivering experiences of genuine emotional heft.  

When not thinking about the subtleties of sound and how to harness and optimise audience perception and reaction, John still likes to pull together the odd arts festivals, currently harnessing the pagan-adjacent music, art, film and ideas forum NeoAncients in his hometown of Stroud.