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In recent times Pioneer have gone from a company that seemed to be ignoring the surge in demand for hardware controllers, instead concentrating on their CDJs and mixers to now becoming arguably one of the rulers of the roost in the DJ Controller market with options to suit every budget as well as all of the most popular DJ software titles around.

Some days you wake up and just have a blinder — for Dusky that blinder has been pretty much every day for the last year. It’s fair to say that the London duo have — in technical parlance — well-and-truly smashed it. Number #1 iTunes Dance Single of 2012? In the bag with the beyond-ubiquitous 'Flo Jam'. Radio 1 Essential Mix? Done, knocked off with style, and shortlisted for mix of the year. They’ve helped shift the paradigms for dubstep and house, had productions rinsed by everyone from Loefah to Calvin Harris, and killed it in Ibiza at DC-10. Ebullient and still humble, is it any surprise that Dusky producers Alfie Granger-Howell and Nick Harriman are loving life right now?

“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.”

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.

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...

Air guitar contests are generally considered an oddity, so when I entered one last weekend (no, I didn't win) and saw a competitor accompanied by...

47. The WMC & DMC DJ Spin Off

Reckon yourself as a bit of deck demon or just fancy checking some ill skills? Get on...

After an exciting year for new DJ products, we are proud to announce the winners from the 2004 T-Scan Awards, as decided by our readers...

Few DJs represent the spirit of UK dance music like Jack Adams does. A lifelong student of hardcore, drum & bass and grime, he is...

Porter Robinson opens his mouth and words come pouring out at a mile a minute. When the North Carolina wunderkind is excited, like he is...

Dressed in black t-shirt and cap, garage don DJ EZ stands in stark contrast to the bright white walls of the south-east London studio that...

“I'm a straight guy,” says Ten Walls, aka Lithuanian producer Marijus Adomaitis, also known as Mario Basanov, as he fixes his gaze directly across the...