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DJ Mag finds itself in a desert, 200km from the nearest city and surrounded by enormous soundsystems for Monegros Festival, but is the music as far out as the location?

Ready for crazy but cohesive collages of classical strings, bumpy dance beats and leftfield pop hooks? You better be ‘cos Clean Bandit have ambushed the mainstream with their refreshing blast of irreverent electronic/instrumental brilliance. But they aren’t easy to pin down...

This Take 10 feature could almost have been invented to showcase the Optimo duo's magnificently eclectic influences. Renowned for their legendary Sunday night sessions at the Sub Club in Glasgow in the nineties and noughties.

Barely a week goes by without some muso or other declaring the death of the mix CD. And you can understand why, given the proliferation of free mixes that pop up like pop-ups each and every day on the worldwide web. Once every four or so years, though, all that changes, people forget to argue and unite in appreciation of the form once more.

“Everyone wants to call dance music EDM these days but I call that shit that’s popular — you know, the cheesy stuff — I call it PDM,” says New York DJ Dennis Ferrer.
“That stuff everyone is going on about, it’s pop dance music. I take offence when someone calls my shit 'EDM' and lumps it in with all the crap. What I do is what I’ve always done, and I don’t like someone calling it anything else.”

The musical feast that is BPM Festival helped us to catch up with lots of up-coming acts who had been on our radar for some...

It’s the middle of November, at the very beginning of the first ever Dream Valley festival, and it’s hot. So hot.

“I love listening to a cool techno DJ, in a club, but if you go and see Swedish House Mafia DJ, for example, there’s no artistry involved. They are just getting behind the decks, with a finished CD, and pressing play then putting their hands in the air. This is something that is so wrong, because they get paid so much money for that.”

Kidkanevil and Daisuke Tanabe are two young trailblazers who have come together to form Kidsuke, inspired by their shared love of Japanese culture, new technology and kids' toys. DJ Mag spoke to the guys about their new album and subsequent tour, and the difficulties of putting it altogether when living worlds apart…


In the mid-‘90s, drum & bass was the most futuristic, kick-ass, innovative UK-derived music around. After a gestation period in the underground, breakbeat science exploded into the mainstream, although that led to assorted TV ads and theme tunes and suchlike co-opting a d&b element to them. But because the scene itself was controlled by the DJs — Bryan Gee, Fab & Groove, Goldie, Hype etc — it was able to be steered back underground, so that by the end of the 20th century d&b was largely associated with the dark tech-step sound of No U-Turn et al.

The release of the CDJ-2000 shook up clubland’s DJ booths and changed the way many DJs the world over prepared and played their sets — as well as bringing Pioneer to the forefront of DJ technology once again.

Realising that Drums Of Death is not really under a voodoo curse, but actually a good-humoured chap from Scotland, is the grownup equivalent of acknowledging...

The DJ market is awash with controllers covering various price points, from bargain basement to high-end luxury, but out in the middle ground, is there really that much difference in what your money will get in regards to control and ability? We take Denon’s MC3000 and pit it head-to-head against Vestax’s VCI-400 to find out if these two controllers are worlds apart.

Amsterdam – Europe's liberal experiment – a place where culture and beauty sit beside decadence and desire. Where the buildings loom peerlessly above the multiple...