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Soaring ascents, the kind that can take an artist from obscurity to stardom in what seems to be the blink of an eye, don’t occur often, in dance music or elsewhere – those who are lucky enough to have that experience often disappear just as quickly. But there’s little chance of a quick fade for South Africa’s Palesa Desiree Shilabje, the DJ and producer known to the world as DESIREE, who in just a few short years has proved to be one of the international festival circuit’s most exciting new stars. Here, Bruce Tantum hears her story, and about how her evolution through music has been as organic as they come

With his Shaytoon Records label, Sepehr has built a platform for underground techno and electronic music from the Iranian diaspora. But the versatile New York-based producer and DJ fights oversimplified categorisations and pigeonholing at every turn, extracting influence from obscure ‘90s rave records as much as Persian mythology. Alongside a 90-minute On Cue mix demonstrating this sound, he tells Marke Bieschke about his Flower Storm project with Kasra V, the influence of Silent Servant, and his grunge-influenced new band

Ploy demonstrates his percussive, pulse-racing and sub-bass-shaking sound for the Recognise mix series, and speaks to Katie Thomas about gradually finding his groove on imprints like L.I.E.S, Hessle Audio and Timedance, and his new label and party, Deaf Test

In this series, Selections, we invite DJs, producers and label heads to dig into their digital crates and share the contents of their collections. This week, Lucrecia Dalt spotlights ‘70s salsa, early 20th century Armenian folk music, abstract dembow, pioneering electronic minimalism and more