Few individuals have played as significant a role in the development of the modern DJ as John Acquaviva. As well as establishing seminal labels such as Plus 8 Recordings and Definitive in the 1990s (alongside Richie Hawtin, his long-term business partner), the Italian-Canadian went on to play a crucial role in the development of Final…
Before there was techno, before there was even music, there was the ‘drone’ – the primal, underlying sound that began with the earliest ancient civilisations – an aural expression of a universal hum we can only hope to fleetingly channel. The influence of the drone on music, ritual and popular culture is the subject of a new…
Few dance acts have experienced such a meteoric rise as Solardo, the Manchester-based outfit comprised of Mark Richards and James Eliot, which burst onto the scene less than five years ago and have since become festival stalwarts, as well as headlining some of the world’s biggest venues. Having broken through with 2016’s Tribesmen, recently the…
Good things often come in threes, and that’s certainly the case with the Thunder & Lightning EP, just released on Hot Creations, which sees Lee Foss, Detlef and Anabel Englund team up on an impressive collaboration. The two-track release, which was unveiled last Friday, marks the first time that Foss has teamed up with Greek…
He’s been described as a ‘benchmark setter’, and ‘the DJs DJ’… and in our eyes legendary selector John Digweed is so consistently reliable, you could set your watch by him. Having cut his teeth during the formative years of acid house, Digweed has defied definition over a close to thirty year career – blending house, trance,…
If you needed someone to soundtrack this most unprecedented of years, Bob Holroyd might be a good person to ask – the Surrey-based producer’s extensive catalogue, which dates back to the early 90s, is just the tonic for these strange times, blending ambient electronica with experimental global beats. It was arguably Coldcut’s epic 70 Minutes of…
Having set the template for the ‘bleep’ movement with 1989’s The Theme, Unique 3’s combination of jacking house, urban hip hop and scything breakbeats made them one of the most influential groups of the acid house era. Comrpising Edzy (aka Adrian Collins), Cutz (Ian Park) and Delroy Brown, and signed to Virgin’s 10 Recordings, Unique…
The author F Scott Fitzgerald once remarked that “there are no second acts in American lives”, but Jamaica-born, New York-raised hip hop maestro Kurtis Mantronik would be likely to disagree. During the 1980s, Kurtis, born Kurtis el Khaleel, was responsible for some of the sickest beats in popular music as part of electro-funk duo Mantronix, a…
Reared in San Francisco and residing in Berlin, Kevin Knapp is a custodian of jackin’ house beats combined with hip hop sensibilities – as renowned for his work on the mic as he is on the ones and twos. With releases on Hot Creations, Dirtybird, Hottrax, Sola, Truesoul, Crosstown Rebels and more, Knapp enjoyed recent success…
Paul Woolford has been pushing musical boundaries since the turn of the Millennium. Under pseudonyms such as Special Request and Bobby Peru, as well as under his own name, the Leeds native has built a reputation one of dance music’s true chameleons, capable of crafting house, minimal techno, speed garage, 1992-era hardcore – you name it…
