Features
There's a new techno sound echoing from the post-industrial streets of one of the UK's biggest conurbations. Influenced by Berlin and Detroit, Manchester's young producers...
Our personal geography is one of the formative things about us. Our immediate surroundings and the people that surround us are our most important influencers...
Shadow Child’s bass-heavy house music is all over the airwaves, dancefloors and beyond.
It’s a cold, wet Wednesday night in London but pumping across airwaves at 108.6FM are the ripping basslines, house beats, jazzy keys and liquid vocals...
Cosmic, psychedelic and extraordinary, Eric Volta's music is as far out as the man behind it. We asked the maker of 'Love Your Illusion' to...
In literature a 'volta' is the moment in a sonnet when everything changes — where the writer turns full circle, switching viewpoint. For Eric Volta...
Swiss DJ/producer Deetron has been a fixture of the world's coolest clubs and labels for years. But with a reputation for deadly, wide-ranging DJ sets...
Sam Geiser has had quite a year. After a decade-and-a-half slowly building from the ground up, now everyone wants a piece. Luckily, he's the kind...
The Belfast DJ/producer is fast becoming one of the hottest names in garage-laced house music.
“I’m not averse to a bit of shuffling but I wouldn’t say I’m a professional shuffler,” confesses Irish nu-house producer Garry McCartney. “But, when you’re...
A sound that's all his own
The post-punk guitars, stripped-bare machine grooves and proper songs of album 'Dancers'. DJ Mag linked with Tim to talk stepping back from the dancefloor, originality...
Leftfield beatsmith on his his funky new library compilation.
You know how it is. That epic, hip-hop crime drama series you’ve been directing is almost finished. But you just can’t find the right track...
The latest reworking of the dance music archive?
Two decades after they first inspired the establishment to try and legislate against dance music, the breakbeats that fuelled jungle and hardcore have found new life at the hands of producers who were in nappies when 'Terminator' was first released. But what’s behind this latest reworking of the dance music archive?
It’s taken three years, countless gigs, umpteen rewrites, a clutch of Beatport chart toppers, and one high profile plagiarism case, but finally — finally —...
“It’s not the same album it was three years ago!” Mat Zo laughs, Skyping from his current base in the LA suburbs. “I’ve done a...
The creepy synth sounds of horror movie soundtracks by Goblin, Fabio Frizzi and John Carpenter have proven hugely influential on modern electronic music. DJ Mag...
But whilst these cheap horror films with their copious sex and violence might not have brought about the nation’s moral decay, they have wormed their...
The Dutchman cuts through the crap and criticisms and discusses the EDM boom, the concept of selling out and gives us an insight into his...
Multi-platinum selling producer, DJ to tens of thousands every week and EDM figurehead: Afrojack is undeniably one of global dance music’s biggest names. In a refreshingly frank interview, the Dutchman cuts through the crap and criticisms and discusses the EDM boom, the concept of selling out and gives us an insight into his upcoming album...
With a host of monikers and diverse productions to his name, DJ Pierre has driven the development of dance and is still at the forefront...
Phuture, Pfantasia, Phantasy Club, Photon Inc, Audio Clash, Darkman, Doomsday, P-Ditty, The Don… all past aliases for Nathaniel Pierre Jones, better known as DJ Pierre, the man credited with kickstarting a movement in 1987 with ‘Acid Tracks'. Although a seismic claim to fame, this happened over a quarter century ago, most recently reactivated on Terry Farley's monumental 'Acid Rain' box-set. But, since then, Pierre has continued to chart one of the most idiosyncratic paths in house music, undyingly committed to developing new sonic mutants to send crowds bananas on his punishing schedule of globe-trotting DJ gigs.
MCs were often maligned in the early days of drum & bass, but nowadays it's pretty much universally accepted that a renegade mic-spitter is a...
“There is no other music in the world where an MC stands on the stage for an hour and continuously sprays lyrics with such clarity and power over so many frequencies,” Eksman, one of the d&b scene's foremost MCs, tells DJ Mag. “The life and evolution of the drum & bass MC has grown from strength to strength over the years, and I have no doubt that down the line many more great things are in store for the future generation of MCs in our music.” Undoubtedly so. The role of the drum and bass MC has steadily progressed simultaneously with the scene it resides in, although in the early days MCs experienced negativity from some DJs. But the MC has fought for its corner, and now overwhelmingly basks in the same golden glory as the DJ.
DJ Mag spoke to two of the scene’s icons about their takes on the scene in 2013, their manifold future plans, and the enduring spirit...
When DJ Mag enters a disused pub in south-east London’s Rotherhithe, we find LTJ Bukem has arrived early and is waiting patiently for us on a sofa in the pub’s old bar area. A true originator of drum & bass, Bukem, aka Danny Williamson, then throws himself into his part of the photo-shoot in a small, sparsely-lit room, which, much to everyone’s amusement, was once the gents’ toilets in the now-converted boozer.
The Shogun Audio don is on fire
I've just asked Thomas Green, aka Rockwell, one of d&b's hottest producers and DJs of 2013, who is No.1 on his wish list of collaborators. He's thinking about it. I ponder which jungle/d&b legend he's going to opt for. “Ian Mackaye,” he says. Nods affirmatively. “Definitely. I'm obsessed with Fugazi and Minor Threat. It's my first love in music — hardcore punk, I love Black Flag and Henry Rollins as well — in fact I went to see his spoken word show a few weeks ago. Ian MacKaye I think probably wouldn't be very into the kind of music I'd make so the results would be... interesting. But, yeah, I would love to work with him.” Of course, such genre-bending surprise should be of NO surprise to anyone who's properly listened to Rockwell.
DJ Law, the man behind drumtrip.co.uk — “where it's '94 everyday”...
We decided to talk to the man himself to learn a little bit more about it...
Exploring the gloopy, industrial side of dance music
On the eve of his latest 'Metal Dance' compilation, Trevor Jackson explains dark sounds are nothing new in dance...
For two decades dBridge has been crafting next-level drum & bass, as part of Bad Company, solo, with his label Exit and fellow zeitgeist surfers...
He's made house, electro, techno, done it all, but it's still breakbeat culture he returns to time and time again...
Break — one of the most prolific producers in d&b
We grill him on his early musical loves, his approach to tune construction and what's going on for him at this moment in time...
Sheffield's Cabaret Voltaire were way, way ahead of their time.
Neil Kulkarni talks to founder Richard H Kirk about apathy, necessity and house music...