Gesaffelstein aka Mike Levy stands apart from the current techno scene in Paris. At the moment when techno and dubstep are producing new heroes amongst a handful of French DJs, Mike Levy has chosen a different route for his musical expression. His energizing techno, dark and obsessional, works the dance-floor yet at the same time continues to mine emotional landscapes and powerful atmospheres.

It’s three years since SBTRKT first came to wider attention with his debut self-titled album. Since then, he’s toured the world, and received global acclaim for his soulful, textured take on electronic music. If we didn’t know the face behind SBTRKT for a long time – with him preferring to obscure his identity behind a mask – then we always knew the heart. Now he’s back with a new LP, and its title is perfect. Wonder Where We Land is an experimental, inquisitive, magical record, the result of off-the-cuff inspiration and surprise collaboration.
This time around, SBTRKT has expanded his palette, creating an album inspired by classic LPs of the past, by the Beatles, Pink Floyd or Radiohead. As ever, he’s looking to go beyond the usual categories and trends of electronic music. To this end, while composing and producing the entire album himself, he’s also called on an even bigger roster of collaborators; not to create a sequence of “featured” tracks, but to keep pushing the envelope as far as possible. So alongside returning artists like Sampha and Jessie Ware, the album features contributions from Ezra Koenig, Caroline Polachek, Koreless and A$AP Ferg, plus exciting new voices like Raury and Denai Moore. “The essence of collaboration is to build something stronger than you can individually,” he reasons. “That has always been my goal.”
The album highlights SBTRKT’s improved confidence in all areas of music-making, from composition to mixing and mastering. As ever, analogue instrumentation is mixed with digital sounds, with SBTRKT making little distinction between the two. The recording process was “all about not being a slave to the sequencer,” he explains. “It was about making it more freeform, then reining it back in afterwards.” So – is there a SBTRKT “sound”? “I’ve never really wanted that – any SBTRKT ‘brand’ has always been made up more of the aesthetic of it, than the production sound of it”.
What we are left with is a layered and powerful record, filled with sonic invention and leftfield storytelling. It veers from the eeriness of Look Away, laced with Polachek’s keening vocals, to Koenig’s irrepressible, bouncy rap on “NEW DORP. NEW YORK”, to the soulful leanings of “Temporary View” – another classic Sampha collaboration. But Wonder Where We Land is still remarkably cohesive. And with good reason: the album first took shape during fixed, intensive recording sessions, first on Osea Island, off the Essex coast, and later in Los Angeles, and then downtown New York.
“I was toying with finding a studio in London,” he says. “And the more I thought about it, it just felt like I’d be in a cold, dark, soulless box”. He has no desire to be just a laptop musician – an artist who uses only digital sounds, or fires off instrumentals by email. Live instruments, and live collaboration, are vital. “I was watching documentaries of the Police recording in Montserrat in the early 1980s, in George Martin’s studio – they were creating a certain distinct palette of sound, just because they were in that space,” remembers SBTRKT now. His models were artists who insisted on a sense of place, so that this place permeated the music.
Which takes us to Osea Island – the perfect starting point for the album. Located off the British east coast, it’s barely inhabited, and only accessible when the tide is out, with SBTRKT first arriving there in the dead of night. It’s here that he created the album’s title track, a moody, minimal affair with Sampha on vocals. It was composed at 3am, in total darkness, while Jerome’s mini-projector screened clips from Rene Laloux’s cult animated films, across the glass walls. No wonder Sampha wrote that key line: ‘I wonder where we land?’ Spontaneity and surprise are the essence of each collaboration. “Every track I ever create with a collaborator is done on the spot – it’s never pre-written,” he reminds us.
If each collaborator is given total freedom to write whichever lyrics they like, they’re inevitably guided by the music SBTRKT makes, and the context they record in. Composed at a time of huge emotional upheaval, the result is a rich, heartfelt music. SBTRKT may be a fine producer, but he didn’t want the album to sound too slick or knowing. “Generally, the stuff I like the most is the stuff I feel like I haven’t ‘written’; it feels like it just happened. That, for me, feels like I’ve succeeded – because if I feel like I remember every part of it, it probably sounds a bit too produced.”
Osea Island’s weird atmospherics also played a part in “Look Away”. The tone was set when Polachek missed her window for getting across to the island – and had to go find a sailor in the local pub who might be able to row her over to the island – by fishing boat. The off-kilter tune she and Jerome then created, may be surprising (“it sounds like something you’d hear in The Ring”) but it’s typical now of a SBTRKT track. “When you listen back to it, you realise how many genres and spaces fit into the space of those five minutes. It goes from something sounding very techno, to something that sounds a bit contemporary hip-hop, to something which is more esoteric. It’s that combination of things which I feel makes up SBTRKT.”
Over in America, he carried on in the same vein. A pitstop in Los Angeles, jamming with Warpaint, bred the riff for album closer “Voices In My Head”. He’d first come up with it on Osea, when he was trying to write something with “a sombre, iconic piano hook”. In LA, Stella from Warpaint helped add some drums, and then in New York, A$AP Ferg laid down his own paranoid, hypnotic verses.
At the other end of the spectrum is Koenig’s cheeky rap on “NEW DORP. NEW YORK”. The song evolved from a conversation the pair had about making a track with an early 80’s, spoken-word, New York feel. So when they hooked up in the studio, Koenig ended up using a lyric he’d had in his head for a while; a cheerily eccentric skit about the Big Apple, and New Dorp (which does exist – it’s a town on Staten Island), involving “gargoyles garglin’ oil”.
Wonder Where We Land also sees a shift in SBTRKT’s visual identity. While the mask remains on the producer himself, there’s a new visual emphasis with the introduction of the spirit animal that, on the album’s cover, sits calmly in the palm of an open hand. And during the ever-expanding SBTRKT live experience, the same creature provides a dramatic focal point, towering over the performers and crowd alike. This beast is inspired by the Alebrijes, sculptures from Mexico which were born of an artist’s mad, hallucinogenic dream in the 1930s. It invokes the tribal theme of SBTRKT’s previous artwork, and captures the same paradox: something colourful and vivid and demanding attention, but also mysterious, hard to pin down – “keeping away from having to be known, or named”, as he puts it.
And so, here we have Wonder Where We Land; a kaleidoscopic and experimental record that features the whole spectrum of sound and emotion. Unlike many of his peers on the electronic music scene, “I’m not someone who’s trying to improve one single formula”, says SBTRKT. As this album proves, that’s some understatement.

It’s the hottest day of the year. Slender bodies swaying in the heat haze. You’re on a beach, but it’s more than a beach – the colours are brighter, the sunlight warmer, the cool sea a more psychedelic shade of turquoise. And somewhere nearby there’s a band playing…

This is where Jungle want to take you. An infinite holiday, a place called bliss, a great escape from the grey and the everyday – because, as aesthetes from Oscar Wilde to Pharrell Williams knew, there is nothing so serious as fun and nothing as subversive as happiness.

There is no blueprint to Jungle’s irresistible, life-enhancing, report-to-the-dancefloor sound but there are many ingredients. It’s P-Funk and ‘Grand Theft Auto’, it’s Curtis Mayfield and ‘Tron’, it’s the Beach Boys and Joy Division and Marvin Gaye and Can, all cut up and refracted in a London neighbourhood where anything can happen.

Those with long memories might detect a resurrection of A Certain Ratio or Chakk’s fractured funk here. But for most of Jungle’s growing and increasingly fanatical crowd it’s not about the history. It’s about a remedy for overstuffed pop and bloated stadium house and dull social realist rock. It’s about getting back to the groove.

And behind the rising buzz – the BBC Sound of 2014 nomination, the 4 millions plus plays of the ‘Platoon’ video, the US tour that sold out on the back of their SXSW appearance before Jungle even had an official record out in America – it’s a DIY story. Working from their home studio in Shepherd’s Bush, the core Jungle duo known only as J and T set out their store long before they came on any label’s radar with a brace of handmade mini-classics. A couple of singles – ‘The Heat’’s supple 4am soul snap, the ice-cold search-and-destroy beats of ‘Platoon’ – connected 2014 and 1974, London with Rio and New York, the feet with the unconscious mind.

Adding to the buzz and mystique were game-changing videos, made by the band and their mates, featuring skaters the High Rollaz and a stunning 6-year old breakdancer called Terra. They racked up major views on YouTube and spread the word far beyond the music hardcore that here was something different. Inscrutable press photos compounded the intrigue, suggesting that there might be two people in Jungle or there might be thirty. Who could tell? Like their sonic ancestors Public Enemy or The Art Of Noise, Jungle were a delicious riddle, an enigma with attitude.

Now perhaps some explanation is in order. We can reveal that J and T are a pair of sound obsessives called Josh and Tom, sharp and meticulous West Londoners who each play “pretty much everything” and tend to finish each other’s sentences too. “The initials weren’t a big deal, they’re just our nicknames,” explains T. “We weren’t trying to hide ourselves, but we didn’t want the whole thing to be about us. We wanted it to be about at the music. ”

They’ve known each other they were ten years old, when J moved in next door to T’s house in Shepherd’s Bush back in 2000. T lived a mere stone’s throw from the legendary Townhouse Studios where (omens ahoy) everyone from ABC to Frank Zappa recorded. J climbed over T’s back garden wall and they’ve stayed friends ever since, from the time he tried to sell T his first guitar for £20 (Tom: “it was broken”) through roller-skating to sharing music – Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jehst, Braintax – to their first experiments with making their own.

“You know what it’s like,” says J. “You get a guitar and a busted old PC, then you find a bit of software on the Internet and suddenly you’re actually doing it. Even when we were kids the idea was, Yeah, we can do that. You don’t need a label or expensive equipment to make music. You just need to have a go.” Their interest in sound became an obsession. At school T spent a year dissecting Marvin Gaye’s ‘What’s Going On’ and the Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’ until he knew them inside out, two records he still adores for their marriage of recording technology with pure joyous emotion.

Shepherd’s Bush gave them a musical identity before they even knew they wanted one – that stew of hip hop, rock, electronica, soul and reggae that comes from a true culture collision. “We love it round there,” says T. “All of our mates are there. It’s one of those parts of London that’s kept its identity.”

A brief spell in a mate’s band confirmed that the worn-out strictures of indie rock weren’t for them. Specifically it made them realise that if you’re going to make music at all, it’d better be your own – something that you can pour your heart and soul into, something that you can up stand for, something you’re proud of. “Jungle brought us closer together,” says J. “It made us realise why we’re best friends, and why we wanted to make music that’s fun and honest and true to itself.”

So they threw themselves into finding a sound that only they could make. Something epic and rhythmic, euphoric and sexual. “It’s always been visual for us,” explains the enthusiastic J. “We want the feel of a video game or a cartoon landscape, a hyperreal, colourful, surreal place. We want everything to be realer than real.”

Half recorded at home and finished in the studios of their new label XL, where The xx made their own first album, Jungle’s intoxicating self-titled debut delivers all that and more. There’s technique and care in these seemingly weightless tracks but above all it feels effortless, a breath of fragrant fresh air, a touch of psychedelic sweetness for sour times.

Meanwhile things are gathering pace for Jungle. They’re hearing covers of their stuff, rappers rhyming over ‘The Heat’. The shows get bigger. They had to break off recording for a quick tour with Haim, and the expanded seven-piece Jungle live band keeps swapping instruments, reworking songs on the fly, getting better and better.

“When people come to see us we want to shock them and surprise them,” says T. “Getting people’s hips and bodies moving is what music should be about.”

“This stuff started out as escapism for us,” adds J. “Now anyone can escape into it.”

Damn right they can. Get your swimsuit together, lose those grey urban perspectives and begone, dull care. Underneath the pavement, the infinite beach of the mind awaits. And you know who’s playing there – tonight, and every night.

Before 2012 Duke Dumont was known as a ‘producer’s producer’. He was the name on a 12” record the DJ knew to reach for when he wanted to please the crowd, without them knowing who had constructed the mesmerising sonic confection they were dancing too.

In 2012, two EPs on Tiga’s Turbo Recordings (with whom Duke has had a long standing relationship) changed all that. ‘For Club Play Vol. 1 & 2’ offered up sweet ecstatic deep house & UK bass cuts that have united people across the spectrum of music, from early club adopters like Annie Mac, Erol Alkan, Diplo, Martyn and Jackmaster to Fearne Cotton on daytime Radio 1, Trevor Nelson on 1xtra and even podcasts by Tiesto and Avicci. On some nights in Duke’s beloved Fabric London, you would hear the anthemic ‘The Giver’ being played in all three rooms at the same time.

Duke’s early career was mentored by Switch (last sighted producing for Beyoncé) and he made his name as the ‘go-to’ man to remake a pop song for the dance floor (Lily Allen and Bat For Lashes were notable clients). In 2011, he moved out of London to the countryside (Hertfordshire, where his studio overlooks a forest) to focus on his original material.

Synthesizing his influences from techno to UK garage and house he brought back goodies from this zen-like exile. ‘For Club Play Only Vol. 1’ was released in April 2012 on Turbo. With ‘Street Walker’ and ‘Thunderclap’ on there, it alerted the heads to the Duke movement and received support from the likes of Jamie Jones and Simian Mobile Disco.

Remixes for AlunaGeorge and Santigold quickly followed, then in August ‘For Club Play Only Vol.2’ featuring ‘No Money Blues’ and ‘The Giver’ made Duke the man to watch. ‘The producer’s producer’ had become the ‘people’s producer’.

‘Need U (100%)’ features 17 year-old starlet AME on singing duties. With a chunky low-end, funky stabs and silky vocals this is like an early 90s house classic couched in 2013 techno techniques. In 1988 Inner City would have been jealous of this one.

Co-written by teenage wonder-kid MNEK (who recently sung on Rudimental’s ‘Spoons’ with Syron) the Duke will release ‘Need U (100%)’ on his newly minted Blasé Boys Club label.

"Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years, it's a name that the streets taught me, a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment, and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name. but it's time to expand and move on."

From humble beginnings, San Diego based producer, Ookay (pronounced "Okay") exploded onto the electronic dance music scene and left a permanent mark resembling his now iconic bandana. With a rapidly growing fan base, due in part to his hilarious Twitter persona, Ookay has proven that age isn't a factor and has quickly become one of the young leaders in the league of superstar Trap producers.

With tracks like Congrorock's "Bless Di Nation Ft. Sean Paul" (Ookay remix), Steve Aoiki, Chris Lake & Tujamo's "Boneless" (Ookay remix), and breaking down the boundaries between Hip Hop and EDM while also achieving mainstream success with Freshman and Sophomore releases on Ultra Records charting in the Beatport Top 10. More recently, Ookay teamed up with electronic music superstar to realase their take on Avicii's "You Make Me" (Ookay & Diplo remix). With these successes as well as support from main stage giants like Tiesto, Steve Aoki, Diplo, Major Lazer, Borgore, Showtek, Chuckie, Kife Party, Dirtyphonics, Krewella, Adventure Club, and many more, Ookay has quickly become a household name in the bass music scene.

Not satisfied with his already stunning discography, Ookay teamed up with Dutch superstars Showtek to create 'Bouncer', one of the most highly anticipated singles that is sure to get everyone ready for festival season. Be sure to grab 'Bouncer' on March 24th from Skink Records, and watch the preview here (http://bit.ly/1gxJNc6)

Out of a desire to branch out and express himself in a completely different genre, Ookay began a side project named "Coaster" that encompasses the young producer's love for Tech and Deep House. By itself the music produced under the Coaster persona is impressive enough, but when compared to Ookay's more well known Trap catalogue, you can really begin to appreciate just how talented and diverse this young producer really is.

With 6 years of DJ experience under his belt, Ookay has gained a reputation for putting on an unbeatable live performance that features flawless transitions, supreme song selection, and even some comedic MC'ing from the man himself. Shaking festival grounds, bringing clubs to their feet, and rocking concert halls, Ookay has impressed and moved thousands of fans with what he manages to do behind the decks. Ookay's grand impression on the world will continue to stay strong and grow in the many, many years to come from this young producer/DJ