Eight emerging artists you need to hear: June 2024

Masaka Masaka’s new album ‘Barely Making Much’ is a woozy, dreamlike affair. Opening track ‘Mental Construct’ disrupts shoegaze guitars with scattered beats. ‘6pm Waiting On You’ and ‘NRG’ pair muted melodies with the clickety-clack of trap percussion, while ‘Gone’ and ‘Nothing Makes Sense’ twinkle like modern lullabies. On ‘Elv8t’, 808 booms and trills meet a spritely arpeggio that wouldn’t go amiss in a footwork track, and ‘Before I Go’ and ‘Let Me Out’ reconfigure drum & bass templates into dancefloor abstractions. A lot to take in on paper, the reality is an incredibly beautiful and cohesive body of work, where the juxtaposition of jagged beats piercing hazy atmospherics and melancholic moods is the glue that binds everything together.

This contrast is used “to infuse energy and vitality into the composition,” Masaka Masaka explains. “This mirrors the duality of my environment, where soft empathy coexists with the necessity for tough decision-making to drive progress.” That environment is Kampala, Uganda, a place that’s become a hub for future-facing music. The album was written at the Nyege Nyege studio, and released via their Hakuna Kulala imprint. Masaka Masaka discovered electronic music via a set by experimental local DJ, Scarface. “It planted a seed within me,” he recalls. “I felt compelled to delve into the unknown, driven by the belief that the future always holds a similar feeling of excitement and possibility.” BEN HINDLE

For fans of: Actress, Dean Blunt, Mndsgn

Lush chords, jackin’ drums and splashes of ’90s house, electro and prog ripple across BELLA’s debut EP ‘Note To Self’. It’s everything you’d expect from a record on Sally C’s Chunkers label — infectiously groovy and loaded with colour and a carefree attitude. The title tune dips into both new and old skool palettes, merging grime-style vocals with an ’80s vibe synth line, conjuring up images of disco balls, double denim and big hair: a true dancefloor gem. Another highlight is ‘Odd Symphony’, built with bouncy drums, a punchy melody and squiggly motifs, perfect for those hazy hours in the club just before sunrise.

Encompassing three tracks from BELLA and a remix from Olsvangèr, ‘Note To Self’ showcases BELLA’s skill in producing, complementing her deft hand at DJing. Born and raised in Amsterdam, BELLA first came on the scene DJing in De School, Lofi and several more spaces across the Netherlands, where she later met Sally C at a festival. The pair instantly hit it off, and performed an impromptu B2B the same day. Fast-forward to 2024, and BELLA’s demos for Chunkers are now fully-fledged productions, platformed by Sally’s unwavering support and a leading label in house music: the key ingredients to encourage a talented emerging artist like BELLA. NIAMH O’CONNOR

For fans of: Gabrielle Kwarteng, Roi Perez, OK Williams

Based in Berlin but originally from Montreal, Data Plan is busy making waves on two continents. In the German capital, the up-and-coming DJ and producer has played at popular clubs including Fitzroy, Renate and Tresor, while over in North America, she’s a regular on the Montreal underground scene thanks to her zinging electro selections. She’s also been a long-time affiliate of Texture, a Detroit party series focused on “spatial and musical exploration”. This makes her a fitting candidate to inaugurate the newly launched Texture Records imprint with her EP, ‘Late To The Party, Start Without Me’.

Across the EP’s five lysergic tracks, she brings a cool, psychedelic atmosphere to the dancefloor, showing her range from the bass-driven electro of ‘Hydrance’ to the prismatic grooves of ‘On Ice’. It’s a confident step up from the Detroit flavours of her self-released 2020 EP ‘sych2o’, and the cultivation of a sound that has seen her orbiting the same line- ups as the likes of Martyn, Sepehr, D. Tiffany and SBTRKT. Check out her mix for Rinse FM France in February and you’ll get the idea, as she connects the dots between electro and eclectic percussive rollers, visceral techno and wavey rave. CLAIRE FRANCIS

For fans of: Nite Fleit, Aurora Halal, Priori

Much like his sets, Anthony Kitambala’s DJ name is a nostalgic mashup of childhood influences. Broodoo Ramses denotes his b-boy roots and high school days spent listening to Hendrix classics, as well as his love for fictional Disney characters and early fascination with Egyptian mythology. As Ramses, he has a knack for spinning original sing-along jams — often-times sped up — with high-energy bangers, fusing melody and harmony with club-ready hitters. In an hour he’ll lay down genres as wide-ranging as southern rap, batida, alternative rock, ghettotech, bleep techno and UK funky.

Take the set we witnessed earlier this year, where he ventured back and forth between ’90s slow jams and vintage ’00s hip-hop/R&B collabs, before dropping acid classics and Jersey club cuts. The sonic flavours on offer felt current and wistful all at once. “Music is so trans-generational,” Kitambala tells DJ Mag, when we touch on this. “Some people feel that the only way to keep the crowd intrigued is to propose tracks they know, in the now. I know there’s a lot of DJs that think like this, but for me, I always try to bring the now and the past together — it can inform what could be the future.” RIA HYLTON

For fans of: Teki Latex, Crystallmess, BADSISTA

Things are happening for ROZET. In April, they recorded a guest mix for Rinse FM France, a swirling, rhythmically broad mix of R&B-adjacent tunes that alternates between swoon and stomp; in May, they released a similarly-minded single, ‘Thinking A Lot’, on Young Art Records, produced by the dream team of Jesse Boykins III, Machinedrum, Richard T. and MeLo-X. Another single and full EP are due soon, then two more singles and yet another full EP in late summer and early autumn, followed by a tour with Young Art founder TOKiMONSTA.

Not only that, but their vocals also feature on a single with Machinedrum, the floaty pop-meets-d&b cut ‘Rise’, off of his new Ninja Tune long-player ‘3FOR82’. Phew! Raised in Miami, ROZET’s a self-described “global citizen” — and the music reflects that freeform aesthetic, with the sound of an artist searching for deep emotions and hidden truths. It feels as though that destination is within their reach.. BRUCE TANTUM

For fans of: Kaytranada, Rochelle Fleming, Bok Bok

Brooklyn is home to some of turntablism’s finest, and Mark Matsuki AKA Matsu is keeping that reputation high with his ‘Pressure’ EP. In the new project, which arrived via A-Trak’s Fool’s Gold Records on 31st May, Matsu teams up with fellow BK-based producer Matthew Law on four heaters that are screaming for the spin back. The title track packs one hell of a peak-time punch — its resonant vocal stutters, spacey toplines, and far-out filters are primed to send dancefloors into overdrive, while the extended player’s remaining cuts keep that energy at fever pitch. ‘Couch Idea’ might sound like a sleepy selection, for example, but that’s a psych out — the rowdy breakdowns within share a sonic aesthetic with that of intergalactic battles (or at least that’s how our ears decoded the mayhem.)

‘Pressure’ EP’s breakneck compositions mark another win in Matsu’s long-running list of triumphs. The skilled DJ is a familiar face at some of the world’s foremost turntablism competitions, such as the Goldie Awards and Redbull 3Style, where he nabbed the runner up prize at the USA Finals back in 2019. When he’s not doing damage on the decks, he co-owns Slow Roast Records with his longtime friend Craze, another scene legend, and it sounds like they’re cooking up plenty more gems still to come in 2024, so stay hungry. MEGAN VENZIN

For fans of: A-Trak, Craze, Skratch Bastid

He may have been born and raised in England, and he may currently call Berlin home, but there is something inherently NYC-esque about Lavan McNaughton’s music. He’s got that classic New York sound down pat — the kind forged by labels like Strictly Rhythm, King Street, and Emotive, both subtly soulful and utterly groovy, it’s a sound that’s timeless. Hints of jazz drift through his latest, the ‘It’s Happening’ EP on London’s always on-point SlothBoogie label — emotive chord progressions, a preponderance of electric piano tones, even a breezy organ solo on leadoff track ‘Tremendous’ — but at its core, ‘It’s Happening’ is just rock-solid house goodness, a bit sophisticated yet party-ready.

Lavan’s been perfecting this sound for a while, having learned the ropes on cracked music software and his father’s old funk and soul records, followed by an introduction to ’90s house via a roommate. EPs like 2020’s ‘Balance’ (released on Beats Of No Nation) and the following year’s ‘Loose Change’ (via Wah Wah 45s), among others, made converts of US garage–friendly spinners worldwide — we’d bet the house that ‘It’s Happening’ will continue that trend. BRUCE TANTUM

For fans of: Masters At Work, Brawther, Abacus

Celestial meets ancestral — that’s one way to describe ‘Spacer’, the newest single from French producer Baron and his frequent collaborator Mel Bundo. The nearly seven-minute groove, which dropped via Get Physical on 26th April, is the stuff of slow-burning magic. Listen through and get lifted on reverberating layers of dreamy synths and psychedelic guitar solos, all floating atop a cyclical, primordial drumline that never lets up. The track may be out of this world, but Baron runs with a decidedly down-to-earth crew.

Now based in Brooklyn, he serves as head of A&R for AMÉMÉ’s One Tribe NYC imprint, which has earned its name for bolstering the next wave of Afro house talent in North America and beyond. Baron himself is well-known in that world, first performing as part of Mòo & Jo — a duo that racked up releases on the influential MoBlack Records label, as well as Anja Schneider and Ralf Kollmann’s Mobilee Records. Nowadays he’s keyed in on solo aspirations, creating rich compositions that meld elements of jazz, disco, and other global textures. ‘Spacer’ is just one example of how he’s making that combo his own — a feat that may well send him soaring among the stars. MEGAN VENZIN

For fans of: AMÉMÉ, Bontan, MoBlack