The drum & bass veteran talks about bass music eras, dance culture in America and his new album, Contact.
British artist Nicolaas Douwma, AKA Sub Focus, has been steadily putting out big-room drum & bass since the early 2000s. In more recent years, he's become staggeringly popular, releasing a string of Top 40 UK pop hits that have made him synonymous with a more mainstream sound. His influence looms large across a whole generation of young producers, particularly in the US.
In this Exchange, Douwma sits down with Resident Advisor editor Gabe Szatan at the beautiful Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. They speak about how he hit number one in the US dance music charts last year, as well as how drum & bass moved from being popular with a "secret clique of people" to becoming what, for lack of a better term, could be called "brostep."
There's a new Sub Focus album dropping on November 21st called Contact, which includes collaborations with Grimes and Katy B. Grab your copy when it comes out. Watch this interview in full on our YouTube channel, or listen to the audio via SoundCloud, Spotify or Apple Music. -Chloe Lula
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The drum & bass veteran talks about bass music eras, dance culture in America and his new album, Contact.
British artist Nicolaas Douwma, AKA Sub Focus, has been steadily putting out big-room drum & bass since the early 2000s. In more recent years, he's become staggeringly popular, releasing a string of Top 40 UK pop hits that have made him synonymous with a more mainstream sound. His influence looms large across a whole generation of young producers, particularly in the US.
In this Exchange, Douwma sits down with Resident Advisor editor Gabe Szatan at the beautiful Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. They speak about how he hit number one in the US dance music charts last year, as well as how drum & bass moved from being popular with a "secret clique of people" to becoming what, for lack of a better term, could be called "brostep."
There's a new Sub Focus album dropping on November 21st called Contact, which includes collaborations with Grimes and Katy B. Grab your copy when it comes out. Watch this interview in full on our YouTube channel, or listen to the audio via SoundCloud, Spotify or Apple Music. -Chloe Lula
The gifted London DJ and curator goes big on bass futurism.
"To pull a thread." This old English adage means to follow a small detail that might unravel into something larger and more significant. It's also the inspiration behind London artist mi-el's NTS Radio show, and a neat way of understanding her approach as a DJ.
Take mi-el's rich archive of mixes. From NTS to The Trilogy Tapes, they show her to be a deeply personal selector and curator, pushing past functionality into something more expressive, narrative and often political. A show about Refugee Week? Afrofuturist world-making? Interlocking systems of domination? All material is putty in her hands.
Now based in Berlin, mi-el is simply a wicked club DJ. In just a few years she's played Panorama Bar, De School and FOLD, as well as festivals including Waking Life, Terraforma and Field Maneuvers.
Alongside peers and predecessors like Josey Rebelle, she represents a new generation of Black British artists reinventing the wheel, and as we mark the beginning of UK Black History Month, no other candidate felt more fitting.
RA.1007 shows why. The 55-minute session is a deft balancing act of depth and playfulness, humour and heaviness, rooted in club intensity and the futurism of the UK hardcore continuum. It's firm confirmation that, in mi-el's hands, the art of the DJ mix is alive and well.
@miellllllll
Find the tracklist and interview at ra.co/podcast/1026
RA Podcast
The drum & bass veteran talks about bass music eras, dance culture in America and his new album, Contact.
British artist Nicolaas Douwma, AKA Sub Focus, has been steadily putting out big-room drum & bass since the early 2000s. In more recent years, he's become staggeringly popular, releasing a string of Top 40 UK pop hits that have made him synonymous with a more mainstream sound. His influence looms large across a whole generation of young producers, particularly in the US.
In this Exchange, Douwma sits down with Resident Advisor editor Gabe Szatan at the beautiful Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado. They speak about how he hit number one in the US dance music charts last year, as well as how drum & bass moved from being popular with a "secret clique of people" to becoming what, for lack of a better term, could be called "brostep."
There's a new Sub Focus album dropping on November 21st called Contact, which includes collaborations with Grimes and Katy B. Grab your copy when it comes out. Watch this interview in full on our YouTube channel, or listen to the audio via SoundCloud, Spotify or Apple Music. -Chloe Lula
