For 35 years, Scottish DJ and producer Scott Ferguson has built a catalog under his Robot84 alias in underground dance music that has reached DJs and clubs across the international house and Balearic scenes. His records have been supported by DJs across the scene, yet there was one experience that continued to escape him throughout his career.
He had never been in a club when one of his own productions was played, a fairly remarkable detail for someone who has dedicated so much of his life to making and sharing music.
That detail becomes especially important in Robot84: Finding the Rhythm Again, the first installment of The Afters, a new documentary platform dedicated to exploring the personal histories of artists involved in underground music. The 53-minute production follows Ferguson from his early years in Scotland through record shops, club residencies, friendships, and his eventual career as Robot84, while also examining the event that fundamentally changed his relationship with music when he suffered an ischaemic stroke in Gran Canaria on December 26, 2022.
What follows looks at several decades of underground dance culture, though the story becomes considerably more personal as Ferguson discusses his recovery and how that experience changed his approach to releasing music.
While recovering in hospital, Ferguson decided to share a previously unreleased edit, “Robot84 vs The Raff – Get It Right Next Time,” which had been sitting in his collection for some time. The following month, Jon Sa Trinxa began playing the record at Café Mambo in Sydney, giving Ferguson some much-needed encouragement as he worked through rehabilitation and learned to walk again.
That experience, along with decades of relationships and recorded music, lays the foundation for a documentary that examines what a lifetime in electronic music can mean when the circumstances around it change so dramatically.
The Stroke That Changed Scott Ferguson’s Relationship With Music
The central event in Finding the Rhythm Again took place on Boxing Day 2022, when Ferguson suffered an ischaemic stroke while visiting Gran Canaria. The medical emergency interrupted his life and required an extended period of rehabilitation, including the process of learning to walk again. During his hospitalization, he made the decision to send out “Robot84 vs The Raff – Get It Right Next Time,” an edit he had previously completed but had not released into circulation. The recording reached Jon Sa Trinxa, who began playing it during his appearances at Café Mambo in Sydney in January 2023, creating an unexpected connection between Ferguson’s recovery and the music he had spent so many years producing.
After decades of DJ support without personally hearing one of his recordings played in a club, this edit reaching listeners during his rehabilitation gave the release added personal meaning.
That decision reflects an interesting pattern in how producers often approach their unreleased catalogs. Completed music can sit on hard drives for years because an artist wants to make more changes, struggles to find an appropriate release opportunity, or simply moves on to something else. Ferguson had already built a long career in underground dance music, but his stroke led him to reconsider what he wanted to do with the material he had created.
Hearing that his edit was receiving support encouraged him during a difficult period and showed that the recording could reach an audience without further revisions or an extended release campaign. The documentary explores this decision as part of a much broader story about identity, relationships, personal loss, and the role music can continue to play when an artist’s circumstances change.
Bill Brewster, Colleen Cosmo Murphy, And Other DJs Contribute
One of the central features of The Afters is its decision to include people who have known the featured artist across different periods of their life, giving the documentary an opportunity to examine Ferguson’s career through several perspectives. Contributions include Bill Brewster, Colleen Cosmo Murphy, Pete Gooding, and Jon Sa Trinxa, alongside Ferguson’s family, friends, and other figures from underground dance music. Brewster has documented dance music history extensively, including his work with Frank Broughton on Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey, while Colleen Cosmo Murphy has contributed to electronic music culture through DJing, radio, and her association with David Mancuso’s Loft tradition. Pete Gooding and Jon Sa Trinxa bring connections to Ibiza’s DJ community and the musical interests that have informed Ferguson’s work as Robot84.
Those contributions help place Ferguson’s experiences within the development of the wider underground music community, especially considering how many of his relationships began through record shops, early club residencies, and informal musical exchanges.
Our earlier discussion with Chaos In The CBD touched on their experience working with Bill Brewster and the importance of connecting with established figures in underground dance music. Ferguson’s story shows how those relationships can span decades, connecting artists in different cities at different stages of their careers.
The documentary also addresses personal loss, including the passing of his longtime friend and collaborator Andy Williams, to whose memory the production is dedicated. Including these experiences gives the documentary additional context because the history of an artist’s career also involves the people who contributed to it and the relationships that continue after individual projects or releases have ended.
An accompanying collection, Finding The Rhythm Again – The Records, was released through Robot84’s Bandcamp on October 1, 2026. It contains 13 recordings, including 11 tracks featured in the documentary and two additional releases, “Late Nites” and “Voodoo Dub.” The collection includes “Lookin 4 Luv,” “I Need Your Love,” “Automatic,” “Right On,” and “Robot84 vs The Raff – Get It Right Next Time,” allowing listeners to explore the productions separately from the film. We discussed related aspects of musical history in our interview with Alex Tepper, where he examined the influence of early acid house, Detroit techno, and Balearic DJ culture on his approach to production.
Ferguson’s catalog similarly connects different periods and musical influences, although the documentary places those recordings within the personal experiences that accompanied their creation.
Where To Watch And Listen To The Afters
Robot84: Finding the Rhythm Again is available as a 53-minute audio documentary through The Afters’ official podcast page, with an accompanying video trailer available on YouTube. The documentary premiered September 13, 2026, with promotional activity continuing through October, while the accompanying Robot84 music collection was released October 1.
The project also maintains an official Instagram account featuring information about the series and its participating artists. Future installments are intended to continue this approach to underground music history, using artist interviews, personal accounts, and original recordings to examine the experiences behind individual careers.
For producers, one of the documentary’s most interesting aspects is Ferguson’s decision to share music he had previously held back. Many artists spend considerable time refining recordings and waiting for the right circumstances to release them, and Ferguson’s experience offers a specific example of how that thinking can change. The edit he sent out during rehabilitation later received support from Jon Sa Trinxa, and that response encouraged Ferguson as he faced challenges far removed from the usual concerns of music production.
As the first installment of The Afters, Finding the Rhythm Again uses a documentary format that gives artists time to explain the experiences behind their careers while letting their recordings and personal relationships contribute to the story.
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
