Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh is the star attraction at this year’s Brighton Music Conference – whose central theme is mental health.

More than 200 speakers from within the music industry will be gathering at Brighton Dome tomorrow and Friday for the fifth

year of the event, which is based around electronic music.

A panel discussion on mental health in the electronic music industry will be a central theme of the largest Brighton Music Conference yet.

This is particularly relevant after the death of Swedish DJ Avicii last week, one in a long line of early deaths of superstar musicians.

Festival organiser James Horrocks said: “We don’t usually hear about these things, until someone dies and lots of other people come out of the woodwork.”

Elsewhere, Mr Welsh will be speaking to DJ Mag editor Carl Logan about the influence of electronic music upon his writing, in anticipation of his new book, Dead Man’s Trousers, which features Begbie, Sickboy, Spud, and the whole of the much-loved Trainspotting cast, with Renton pursuing a career as a DJ manager.

Other talks, workshops and seminars include a discussion with SoundCloud’s directors of label and artist relations on the topic, “Is underground still underground?” and Basement Jaxx’s Felix Burton speaking on “Universal Sound and the Power of Frequency, Vibration and Resonance”.

Roughly half the speakers invited to this year’s conference are women.

This ties in with the launch of new collective, Women in Dance Music (WDM), a collective of female artists, DJs, promoters and music journalists.