For Nicky Romero, 2015 was another typically hectic year. Playing at all the biggest festivals across the world, including Ultra Miami, Europe and Japan, at EDC Las Vegas and Tomorrowland in Brazil and Belgium, the DJ/producer still found time to drop the first installment in his new ‘Lighthouse’ trilogy of productions.

Nicky also knuckled down to get his Protocol label bubbling more than ever before.

“We’ve got some seriously great talent on our roster,” he says, “and we had our 50^th release at the beginning of the summer. We’re also taking our Protocol nights around the world, and they’re always great fun. I’m so proud of everything that is coming out there.”

Dutch house titan and last month’s DJ Mag cover star Chuckie is going through something of a reinvention. The Dirty Dutch superstar, real name Clyde Sergio Narain, has recently been dabbling in ‘traphall’, aka trap x dancehall — the genre he’s now spearheading.

Speaking about the last 12 months, Chuckie reveals he’s had an amazing year. “I travelled around the world many times and played some of the biggest festivals in the world,” he says.

Having always embraced a multitude of genres, he has this year debuted his Metamorphosism world tour — a mega showcase of floor-fillers spanning between five and nine hours, and an antidote to the (allegedly sometimes) pre-recorded 45-minute festival set. 

Despite having encountered many corners of the globe in 2015, Chuckie’s only lament is that he wishes he “could have had more time in the studio. It was almost impossible to combine it with my hectic tour schedule.”

In our cover story, over a cup of builder’s tea, he admitted to flying 452 times last year, and he explains how “all flight attendants and pilots are allowed to fly only a certain amount of time because of safety measures. We all know that DJs fly way more than whatever is healthy”, the chameleonic producer finishes. FELICITY MARTIN

 We know what you’re going to say: ‘Disclosure aren’t real DJs’. While they are predominantly a live outfit, they do DJ a lot, especially at their Wild Life shows, and considering DJing is generally pressing a succession of buttons these days, no one can accuse Disclosure of not pressing buttons — given the size and complexity of their live shows.

2015 has been a busy year for the Lawrence brothers; they scored a No.1 album with ‘Caracal’, a collaborative album that saw old faces like Sam Smith rub shoulders with new artists like Lion Babe. 

As well as a new album, they’ve somehow found the time to put on their own festival, Wild Life, in Shoreham (near Brighton), and more recently Las Vegas, and they’ve also been quietly creating their own underground hit factory with their Method White imprint that has seen a spate of club smashes from Jonas Rathsman, with ‘Wolfbane’, MJ Cole with ‘Bouldaz’, and more recently Eats Everything’s pulverising rerub of Tiga vs Audion’s ‘Dancing’. 

Who knows what else the brothers have in store for the rest of the year. Don’t bet against a raft of killer remixes of Caracal’s juiciest cuts, a new live show, which is even more impressive that their last from what we’ve seen, and a few surprises too.

ANDREW RAFTER