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Once known simply as the bastion of underground, sub driven music, taking in everything from dubstep, grime and garage to hardcore and jungle, these days Kode 9's Rinse FM are expanding into every arena of electronic music – and beyond.

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.

Belfast drum & bass auteur Calibre is a true enigma. Prolific, classically-trained, with a melodic, futuristic style all his own, he shuns the limelight. But with a new mix CD for Fabric — his first — in the offing, we're granted a rare audience with one of the most fabled artists in dance music...

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.”

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.

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...

For better or worse, 2016 has been a whirlwind year.

The world seems to have crammed about a decade’s worth of news into a mere...

Simon Ratcliffe is attempting to cook tofu stir-fry for dinner at his home in London when we get a hold of him, via a fuzzy...

A longstanding DJ, curator and booking agent, Lerato Khati AKA Lakuti has been an essential figure of the global underground for over two decades now...

“Everything around you is so cluttered. If you go online and look at social media, it’s this big bombardment of stuff. I really wanted to...