Ben Hemsley: advancing the trance

Speaking to us over Zoom from his home studio, freshly returned from gigging in The Netherlands, DJ, producer and trance evangelist Ben Hemsley is feeling pretty good about his DJ Mag Best Producer win. "To win the award is another achievement I'll have to somehow give back to the people who support me and follow me," he says. "They already do enough by showing up to my sets, showing love and energy and listening to my music. To be fan-voted for the award is so mint. “It’s an absolute dream,” he continues. “I’ve been buying the magazine since I was 14, and being on the cover, it’s a really high accolade. It’s amazing mate, I’m buzzin’!”

The win perfectly rounded off a year in which Hemsley had a triumphant summer Ibiza Rocks residency, and every date on his Connection tour sold out, including massive venues like Warehouse Project and Newcastle Arena. “I watched WWE and Disney On Ice at Newcastle Arena with my grandma when I was younger!” he tells us with glee. And he also found time in 2023 to swell his bebé Recordings label’s small-but-perfectly-formed catalogue with big releases from Klubbheads, Cody Wong and his own summer release ‘IBIZA’. He’s a producer whose tunes have appeared on labels like Trick, Sola and Repopulate Mars, and which have picked up support from DJs ranging from Michael Bibi and Jamie Jones to Annie Mac and Fatboy Slim, and his international DJ profile is rapidly rising too. Clearly, dance music is having something of a Ben Hemsley moment. But while his recent success may appear to have happened overnight, it was actually, as is so often the case, preceded by several years of low-level DJing and production graft.

Hemsley started early, making music at his home in North Shields, just outside Newcastle, when he was 13, and by 14 he was putting on under-18s events. “I just asked for money on my 13th birthday,” he tells us, “and my grandma took us into town to this music shop in Newcastle,” where he got his first copy of music production software Reason (which, for the studio nerds, he then dropped in favour of Fruity Loops, before trying Logic and eventually settling on Ableton). Influenced by his mam’s music tastes — “When I started making tunes, it was all through me mam,” he remembers — he got into classic trance via Dave Pearce compilation CDs, progressive house via Sasha and John Digweed, and also tried out making some dubstep and EDM bangers as well.

With his grandma supplying the software and his mam supplying the early musical influences (and during the interview she also helped out by texting one of Hemsley’s mates for input), family is clearly an important part of Hemsley’s life. A big chunk of his extended family spent the day with him at this year’s Ibiza Rocks closing party, and his family have all been solidly behind him right from the start. “Me mam always backed us,” says Hemsley, “and me dad, me stepdad, me brother too, who was friends with Patrick Topping, and who’d always be telling him, ‘My little brother makes tunes’. Although at that point, I was making EDM and Patrick was probably like, ‘What the fuck!’ But then as I got a bit older, Patrick ended up liking my records and playing them as well.”

At this point in the Ben Hemsley story though, support from Patrick Topping was still a few years away. Before the pandemic, Hemsley was a jobbing local DJ. “I was getting bookings for like two or three hundred quid, once or twice a month,” he recalls, “and that was the only income I had, and then Covid happened.” The pandemic put a temporary stop to his career, but the pivotal moment for Hemsley’s future as a DJ was also, kind of, down to the pandemic too.

In summer of 2021, the UK government was lifting restrictions around social gatherings, enabling large-scale events like Creamfields to take place, but, as Hemsley remembers, “a lot of the European artists couldn’t get in to play because of remaining travel restrictions, so Creamfields had to rebuild their line-up really quickly. I’d had one quite big song that year [‘Through 2 You’ on Ministry Of Sound], and also there was no one else playing at the same time as me. I was playing this 8,000-capacity venue and I wasn’t an artist who would be able to fill that out, but luckily, I just had all the fans who wanted to give us a chance.”

That one gig where you get a chance, in front of a massive audience, to really show just who you are as a DJ: and you seize that opportunity, follow your heart, play the music you love, because you know that what you’ve got on your USBs could just be perfect for that crowd, in that place, at that moment. It’s literally the DJ dream, and it came true for Ben Hemsley. “So I went on before Nic Fanciulli,” he continues, “and obviously house and techno have been around for ages, and the same line-ups have been playing the scene for ages, and I got on stage and thought, ‘What do I want to play?’ And I just fully went into trance mode! Yomanda, all the Manifesto releases and stuff like that, and the crowd just went absolutely mad!”

There are video clips online you can watch of the gig, taken from behind Hemsley, looking over a tent packed with thousands and thousands of clubbers who are all absolutely locked into what he’s doing, singing along as he drops trance classic after classic. DJ Mag can’t help but ask one of the eternal DJ questions: how do you decide what to play to a crowd of 8,000 people? “Well, sometimes I do that thing where you look at someone who’s not dancing, or a group that looks bored and think, ‘How the fuck do I get you?’ But I’m quite a spiritual person and I feel that you've got to be connected to yourself and everyone around you, you've got to feel the energy. I need to fully feel and then I look up, and I’m just like, ‘What do yous want?’ I feel like it just comes to us. I’ve got 1,000s of records on my USB, but you just feel it when you’re a DJ, you just know. I feel like that’s the art.”

DJ Mag asks him to expand on his spirituality point. Grabbing a chunk of slightly glittery-looking rock and waving it in front of his screen, he flashes a grin: “Yeah look, I’m surrounded by crystals!” Whatever impact his crystal collection may have had on his career is difficult to quantify, but the decision to simply play the trance he loved at that Creamfields gig in 2021 absolutely changed everything for Hemsley. “I went from playing once a month, if that, to 10 times a month for 10 times the fee, just from that one set,” he remembers. “I think people were like, ‘What the fuck, this is exciting, we’ve not heard this music for a while’, and I remember ringing my manager up after the set and saying, ‘That’s going to change my whole career, that’. And it really did.”

Creamfields was a big deal for Hemsley in 2022 too. Following his previous year’s success, so many people turned up in ’22 — “I think 35,000 to 40,000 people ended up coming to what was meant to be a 20,000 capacity gig,” he remembers — that the event was in danger of being called off. Instead though, he sailed through another glorious set, before dropping a new orchestral version of his ‘Erase Me’ track. “I’d written it the week before and it wasn’t actually called the ‘Creamfields Sunset Edit’ at the time,” he says, “but as I played it, the sun started setting; it’s 100bpm, just strings and the vocal, no percussion, and I could see my family down on the bottom right. My grandad had just passed two weeks before and it was just so nice to see them all having a good time, and I just broke down into tears.” Again, you can watch this online, and whatever your view on phones-at-events, phones at least mean that tender clubland moments like this get preserved.

Ben Hemsley looks and sounds very much like the kind of person you’d meet front and to the left at Creamfields, when Ben Hemsley was on the decks. His mates, via Mrs Hemsley’s helpful text intervention, describe him as “loyal, generous, talented, a joy to be around, life of the party and humble”, and in conversation he’s pleasant, unassuming, and takes his time answering our questions, particularly when talking about things close to his heart — like trance — choosing his words carefully and pausing a couple of times, just long enough for DJ Mag to wonder if Zoom had frozen.

He’s clearly super-keen and extremely driven when it comes to both DJing and production and has a calm self-possession, a quiet confidence in himself and his abilities that presumably is at least partly responsible for his success: “I’m a big believer in the law of attraction,” he says. “I don’t think I’m cocky, but I never doubted that I would make a career out of music. I remember the last years of school I was telling teachers, ‘This doesn’t matter ’cause I’m gonna be a DJ anyway’. They were like, ‘You can’t do that’ and I was like, ‘Well I can’. And I have.”

Since he first started collecting records as a 13-year-old kid, it was the sound of trance that drew Hemsley into DJing and dance music, and it’s remained his passion ever since. Although you might also hear rave or techno in his DJ sets, trance lies at the very heart of his current production spree, his label bebé Recordings and his DJing. Musically, his first releases were chunky, catchy, tech-house groovers like ‘Caress Me’ and ‘Blind’ released on Lee Foss’ Repopulate Mars label, or ‘Strength In Life’ on Solardo’s Sola, but the call of trance was just too strong for him to resist.

“When I first got signed,” he recalls, “I got signed for tech-house records. And I enjoy tech-house, but I wasn’t enjoying the way I was making it. So I was making these records and getting support from Bibi and Jamie Jones and all these heavy hitters in that scene, but I didn’t feel my heart was fully into it and I’d stopped being able to be creative with it. So since I’ve moved back to my actual roots — which is the trance stuff that I’ve been making since I was 14 — I’ve felt like I can fully express myself as an artist and play a unique DJ set. I feel like I can control the crowd more, bring them up and down and create more of a journey with a trance set than with tech-house.”

Trance is a genre that celebrates feeling and emotion, using layers of musicality, chords, melody and harmony, along with every production and arrangement trick and technique available, to elicit joy, tension, release and euphoria. All those flowing melody lines, sweeping arpeggios, high-grade emo synths and pulsing off-beat basslines, when put together well, can transport an entire dancefloor. “When I listen to trance,” Hemsley tell us, “I can actually get taken away by the music and put into a trance, a state of trance, lost in it. It’s dreamy, it's floaty, it can make you want to be part of a massive crowd and feel human — or it can make you want to curl up in a ball on the dancefloor and cry because you miss your ex! That’s what the emotions in trance can do to you, and I love that.”

It was love for trance that first drew him into club culture, drove his early music efforts and then catapulted his DJ career, so the next logical step for Hemsley was to launch his own record label to pursue his musical vision. bebé Recordings’ debut release in 2022 was Hemsley’s own very well-received four-track EP1, and he began his BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix with a pair of tracks off it too. Still undecided if he’s a DJ who produces or a producer who DJs, currently Hemsley is laser- focused on production and on his record label. With a year of big events ahead including his 12,000-ticket headline show at On The Waterfront in Liverpool in June ‘24, and a full summer season at Ibiza Rocks, he’s upped his production work rate, spending as much time in his studio as possible. “I just want to focus on the label,” he tells us, “focus on the production and start solidifying a sound so people know what to expect when they come to my shows.”

Aside from his own material and music from newer artists, he has new stuff from trance titan Yomanda lined up for bebé and has also just received stems from Lange for a possible impending remix of the 20-year-old trance classic ‘Follow Me’. It’s all part of a larger, trance-based plan, one that seems to be working. “There’s a lot of kids clicking on to what I’m doing now,” he enthuses, “and starting to follow it a little bit, which I’m really proud of and happy with. And they’re delving deeper into the music that I’m inspired by — and they’re starting to get it.”

Hemsley looks genuinely at home in his studio and is currently going through one of those highly prolific patches that producers occasionally experience, where everything seems to just fall into place and where the tunes just seem to come together with ease. “I’ve never been as productive and as happy with the sound I’m doing as I am at the moment,” he tells us. “I’m not thinking about the next steps at all, I’m just focused on what I’m doing now. I feel really creative at the minute, I’m making like a tune a day — really high-quality tunes as well, like I’m getting the whole, in-depth idea out of my head straight away, using all my synths, mixing it perfectly, mastering it all in one day — I don’t know how I’m doing it!”

He does kind of know how, though. Hemsley’s current creative flurry is a deliberate strategy, a decision to channel his not inconsiderable drive and focus into creativity, rather than hedonism, an attempt to use his powers for good, so to speak. Through the course of our chat he mentions that he thinks he’s always had an addictive personality, a character trait that has made him vulnerable to the pressures and excesses of the international DJ circuit. “It’s hard being away from family and friends,” he says. “You feel like you’re not based somewhere permanently and that creates loneliness, even though you’re around people.”

With his increasing DJ fame came a corresponding increase in money, time away from home and his usual support structures, and perhaps inevitably, an increase in the availability of alcohol and drugs. And all of these elements together became problematic for him. “Last year my mental health dipped quite a bit,” he tells us. “I was struggling with just partying too much — so you can class that as addiction — I had to cancel some shows. I felt so bad about that, but I’d just got too involved in the partying side and had to learn how to keep my head screwed on a bit... I took it way too far, and I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore’. And the only way I could focus was to not have any other distractions. I had to cut music out for a bit and just focus on myself. I still party, but I’ve learned how to control it.”

Trance, once again for Hemsley, was the answer. It’s how he’s got on top of his tendency towards harmful addictive behaviour, by channelling his energy into his music, catering to whatever neurological need he has that used to drive him to chase a buzz through partying, and generating alternative, comparable highs instead: the high you get when you really nail a tune, when you first play it out, when you first get DJ feedback, when your fans sing it back to you. “So now I’m doing another six months sober again,” he continues, “this will be my fourth week with no drugs and no alcohol, and I’m back in the studio more, writing every day.” It’s an approach that many artists employ to navigate the pressures of the music industry and stay on top of their mental health while remaining creative.

Certainly, hitting the studio hard is, usually, considered healthier and more productive behaviour than staying up partying all weekend, but ironically, for those with obsessive or addictive tendencies, it can quickly overtake everything else too, just like other addictions. “I think I can overdo it though,” admits Hemsley. “Like, I’m definitely going to go for a walk later today just to get some fresh air and actually feel like I’ve moved my body instead of sitting on my arse all day!” He pauses and grins. “I’ll never do it though, ’cause I always end up obsessed with a tune. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being addicted to the music, but yeah, maybe I do need to give myself more time!” He laughs again, the gleam in his eye confirming that there’s no way he’s going for a walk later, not when there’s another tune to be mixed and mastered.

One of the biggest highlights of Hemley’s 2023 was his two-month residency at Ibiza Rocks, where he brought his high-octane, fast-paced, no-prisoners, party-friendly soundtrack of trance, rave and techno to a packed dancefloor all summer. “It was class, it was really good,” he tells us. “And I felt it's what Ibiza needed in terms of music. You go to a club and you hear the same set everywhere, the same vibe, and there wasn't any alternative. So when I got approached to do my residency, I was like, ‘Well, what do I want in the party? And it was Manumission and Cream, parties I never experienced, because I wasn't old enough obviously. But I watch videos and I listen to mixes from back then and I wanted to bring a bit of that.”

With the emphasis firmly on having a good time, Hemsley brought in a broad range of DJs to keep his dancefloor happy, including Todd Terry, Kettama, Daddy Trance and LF System, “just adding a bit of fun and spice to the island instead of having just one steady thing all night. Like, there's nothing wrong with that sort of stuff and I love those nights, I’m a fan of Circoloco and Solid Grooves, but I think I pulled off what I wanted to do. And I think other people wanted it as well.” As he talks about DJing at Ibiza Rocks last summer, about the thrill of looking out into a crowd made up of people just like him, all of them checked out of their everyday life for a week or two, creating memories that might just live with them for the rest of their days, Hemsley reflects on his own journey: “Mate, I used to live in a shit apartment, it was the worst apartment ever, literally a two-minute walk around the corner from Ibiza Rocks,” he told us. “And when you’re on holiday, you can feel a certain type of energy when people are away from the fucking rat race and away from the bullshit. And when you’re DJing there and you can see everyone having a good time? It’s just amazing.”

With the trademark Hemsley mix of dream-come-true disbelief and calm acceptance that this was all utterly inevitable, he tells us of his plans to go even bigger in ’24 with a full-length 12-show run at Ibiza Rocks, along with shows outside the residency and in other venues too. It might be a challenge for him to top 2023, though. For 2023’s Ibiza Rocks closing party, Hemsley brought a chunk of his extended family — “me mam, me mam’s two cousins, me uncle, auntie, dad, stepmam and all the other friends” — up on stage with him all day. “We went to Pikes afterwards, I can’t remember much of it, but you know when you wake up thinking that was a good night? That was the best day of my life I think!”

It seems like an appropriate moment to ask Hemsley how he feels about his career now, looking back over the last couple of years. After a pause that’s nearly as long as a classic epic trance breakdown, he tells DJ Mag, “It’s flying by! The first Creamfields set was 2021, and I’ve been touring now for only two years. That set doesn’t feel like it’s a long time ago, but it’s like, wow, a lot’s happened since then. It came out of nowhere, because I was making music for more than 10 years before then, and I knew it was coming but I didn’t know it was coming at that scale, or that quick. I’m really happy with it all, I'm buzzin’!”

For 2024, Hemsley will be splitting his time between DJing, his own production work, and bebé Recordings: the essential components of Hemsley’s patented Three Point Plan to advance the trance. And he’s planning on adjusting his DJing schedule to accommodate his renewed focus on production. “I’m not gonna tour as much next year,” he tells us. “I’m doing bigger shows in the UK, like the On The Waterfront show in Liverpool, which should be very fun... but I really want to build the label. And I want to build the party for the label and just put as much music out as I can. Because at the minute I’m just full-on producing and I’m feeling so creative, I don’t want to force anything. I’m not trying to force myself to be like this superstar DJ. I think as soon as I start doing that, I’ll probably dip.”

Like all producers, he has a list of artists he wants to collaborate with, but unlike most producers, Hemsley’s quiet self-belief has led him to actually make them happen. “Everyone I want to work with at the minute, I’ve sort of got pencilled in already,” he tells us. “I’m wanting to do something with Calvin Harris. He's up for it, though I've sent him a bunch of ideas and he hasn't gone for any of them yet. But I'm sure it'll come, and I don't want to force it.”

Hemsley also has Chicane “pencilled in”, has started working on tracks with Armin van Buuren, and along with enlisting Yomanda and Lange for bebé, he’s doing all he can to promote his beloved trance sound. “All these legends I’ve got something planned with,” he reflects, “and that’s all I ever wanted to do. I never want to be like a big pop star or anything like that. I just stay true to myself as an artist and then whatever comes alongside it, as long as I’m getting booked, I’m happy.”