Lineup

South African house music DJ and producer Black Coffee built his career gradually over nearly two decades, riding the growing global interest in his home country’s burgeoning dance music scene and eventually becoming arguably the biggest DJ in Africa.

Reserved and intellectual, this unlikely superstar was born Nkosinathi Maphumulo on March 11, 1976, in Durban and grew up surrounded by music, particularly influenced by his uncle’s extensive reggae collection. At the age of 12, after his parents’ divorce, he moved with his mother to the poor township of Mthatha, Eastern Cape. Two years later, on the day of Nelson Mandela’s release from Robben Island, Maphumulo lost the use of his left arm when he was one of dozens of people run down by a taxi driver in a politically motivated attack. Throwing himself into music even harder than before, he eventually went back to Durban to study music theory at Natal Tech, majoring in jazz. He dropped out before the completion of his course, though, and he and two friends, Thandukwazi “Demor” Sikhosana and Mnqobi “Shota” Mdabe, became backing singers for acclaimed folk-blues guitarist Madala Kunene before going on to form the soul-pop trio Shana. At the same time, he continued learning about electronic music production, and in 2003 was accepted into the Red Bull Music Academy, jump-starting his career.

Black Coffee’s 2005 eponymous debut album, recorded in his bedroom on cheap music software and released on his own Soulistic label, introduced his tough deep house style, which incorporated jazz, R&B, and African influences without ever resorting to cheesy “soulful” or Afro-house clichés. The record, combined with his infectious DJ sets, made him a household name in South Africa. Over the next decade, he released four more albums: Have Another One (2007), Home Brewed (2009), the epic three-disc Africa Rising (2012), and Pieces of Me (2015). Each displayed an increasing level of production values and musical sophistication, and their international distribution through a deal with Universal, combined with his numerous appearances at major clubs and festivals, led to increasing acclaim in the U.S. and Europe. At the same time, he became a bona fide megastar in his home country, beloved for his tireless promotion of local talent and charitable work.

In 2010, Black Coffee attained the Guinness World Record for longest-ever DJ set when he played for 60 hours nonstop. His international success was confirmed when he won Breakthrough DJ of the Year at the 2015 DJ Awards in Ibiza and Best African Act at the 2016 BET Awards in Los Angeles. He broke through to a mainstream audience when he was sampled by Drake on the rapper’s 2017 “playlist” More Life, leading to interest from other major U.S. R&B stars like John Legend and Usher. “Drive,” Coffee’s 2018 collaboration with David Guetta and Delilah Montagu, became a major hit, and he ended that year with his own seven-song Music Is King EP. The following year, he teamed with Usher for the single “LaLaLa,” and in 2020 he collaborated with both Sabrina Claudio (“SBCNCSLY”) and Celeste (“Ready for You”). ~ John D. Buchanan, Rovi

Fragments is a huge event, destined to be one of the crossover electronic records of the year, and it might very well be Bonobo's masterpiece. Certainly for Si Green, the man behind it all, it was the most emotionally intense record yet to create, and it shows. Its electronic sounds are more powerfully hypnotic, the beauty of acoustic instruments is more exquisitely realised, the two are interwoven more totally — and the songs are unforgettable. Its structures are full of tension and release on both an intimate and an elemental scale, it manages to touch on the most delicate and fleeting of emotions but also on existential terrors and an unabashed celebration of life in the face of fear and uncertainty. It's truly a record for our times. But there were times when it felt it would never happen: where previously Green had always written on the move, this time he had to fight to get it out, in isolation, as the world changed around him.

Of course these last few years have been a wild ride for everyone, but for Green, it was more a case of the rollercoaster suddenly stopping. It's now been over 20 years since he started Bonobo as a solo project, and over a decade since it expanded to include an arena-filling live band plus a parallel DJ and remixing schedule that puts Green up there with the biggest names in dance music. That expansion and acceleration has been constant, from a small town rural upbringing, through the small, funky clubs of Brighton on the English south coast, living in NYC then LA to working with Erykah Badu, Ólafur Arnalds and Jon Hopkins (plus remixes for Michael Kiwanuka, Gorillaz, George Fitzgerald and London Grammar). He has received three GRAMMY nominations, played huge arenas (selling out London's Alexandra Palace three times, as well as Denver's legendary Red Rock Amphitheatre, not to mention Glastonbury, Coachella, Lollapalooza, Primavera Sound and Fuji Rock) and most recently landing a top ten album in multiple countries, top five at home in the UK and a Billboard dance album number one in the US, with 2017's Migration.

This sounds dizzying, but the process of getting there was always so continuous, there was rarely any dramatic step change that made him take stock. His childhood was quietly cultured with his parents (his father a well regarded English folk musician) and sisters in Hampshire and Sussex. It was natural from there to gravitate to Sussex's party capital Brighton, where his eclectic tastes matched with the funky and exploratory club scene of the mid 90s, DJing jazzy, soulful global and electronic sounds in funky basements. Releasing on Brighton's own Tru Thoughts at the turn of the millennium led to signing to Ninja Tune, which gave him a global profile and let him build up a live band. And on it went… each step was logical and organic.

But as Green embarked on the Migration tour — during which he and the band would play to two million people — this constant acceleration combined with a feeling of the world in flux provided a feeling of uncertainty. He recalls the album dropping just as Trump took office in January 2017: heading to LAX for the start of the tour he saw it surrounded by protestors against the new travel ban. "It was deeply strange," he says, "There was very much a feeling of 'Oh well, here we go — off into a weird new world,' not even knowing if we'd be allowed to come back." And touring was becoming gruelling. He had not long before had to deal with both his parents' passing, and that sense of "the madness intensifying out there in the world, especially in North America in that summer of 2017 — it all got a bit much. I had a bit of a moment." He started to pull back into himself — where previously he'd enjoyed and taken inspiration from the endless transit and crowds, now he felt like the constant cycle of cities and stop-offs was stifling. For the first time, crucially, he wasn't writing new music as he travelled.

And this sense of everything shifting and unravelling didn't abate when he got back: he arrived home after two years touring to find California on fire, and then the pandemic hit. His only way of processing this was to spend time in nature. Already on tour, he'd begun to take the scenic route. While the tour bus rolled on, he'd drive alone, and between cities "find the places that were alien and unique and awe inspiring, and just be there for a while, take pictures, get weird and be feral for a few days — I'd literally walk into the venue to soundcheck in my muddy hiking boots." This continued: in 2020, his only escape from confinement was to go camping. He'd take a Jeep out into the Californian desert — one time inadvertently visiting Death Valley on the hottest day in its history. With the temperature hitting 54.4°C, he found himself genuinely fearing he might not make it back to his vehicle, encountering a rattlesnake didn't help either.

Exhausted and wrung-out, Green was wrestling with feelings he found hard to express. He was unable to get home to the UK — where formerly he'd been back and forth regularly — but his vivid experience of heat and news footage of fires raging in California made him realise "the place I call home now might not be viable for life in the near future." The real and present danger of climate change was suddenly unavoidable. Yet at the same time, his abiding memories of the sheer scale of Canadian mountain ranges — on tour, he'd driven solo through landscapes uninhabited for hundreds of miles — was a reminder that life goes on, that nature is much bigger than any of us. Maybe in the green Utah valleys he camped in to escape the US election fever — because as a Brit he couldn't vote — he was harking back to his upbringing in rural England, yearning for the giddy innocence of teenagers drinking round bonfires. All of this was weighing on him: but with the need to make a new album looming, he was still struggling to get his ideas out.

The emergence of what would become Fragments from Green's psychic blank canvas came in phases. First was setting banks of modular synths in motion during lockdown in 2020. At first this was a diversion "from just pushing a kickdrum around on a computer screen, going off, making a cup of tea, then pushing it round some more" — but then he became addicted to the complex undulations of sound that came from the machines. The fact that "it was chaotic but you could exert some degree of control over just how chaotic it should be" resonated with his deep feelings about elemental threats and human frailty: it was a way of interfacing with them and expressing them sonically. Also around this time, he dug out some recordings he'd made of harpist Lara Somogyi just pre-COVID, and found that these also fit his mindset.

The flowing, rippling tones of the modular synths and the harp working together set the tone of fluidity and cyclical patterns. Working with arranger and string player Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, musical themes began to rise out of the unconscious jamming and sample manipulation — and recording orchestral musicians in actual studios helped bring the songs "out of the box" and into real, physical space. A rhythmic framework started to come together too: the structures of UK bass music and rave began to seep into beats that would become tracks like "Otomo" and "Sapien," some of the most hip-shaking grooves he's ever made. This was because Green, unable to return to the UK because of COVID and Visa issues, was obsessively listening to radio and DJ sets from back home and picking up on the future-retro rave, jungle and UK garage sounds he was hearing. Of course he retained his own connections to the UK scene — notably overseeing the first in the prestigious fabric Presents DJ mix series in 2019, and launching his own dance-focused label OUTLIER in late 2020, writing a radio smash together with fellow Brit Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (and later signing Damon Albarn protege Poté).

Still, though, this wasn't a complete record yet. There were musical and psychological themes, but it wasn't connected, and — aside from the "old school, Detroity, Moodymann and Theo Parrish inspired" "Shadows," recorded with friend Jordan Rakei — there weren't songs. Once COVID hit, the vocalists Green reached out to, it seems, were struggling as much with creative block as he was. But finally, well into 2020, "right at the end when I thought everything was off the table, and I'd ground to a halt," Chicagoan singer and poet Jamila Woods sent back her vocal parts.

Green listened to the vocal back in the studio after an evening out and it was a magic moment. The last creative blocks dissolved: "I knew I had a centrepiece for the album, I knew how it was all going to sound." The track became "Tides," and all of the themes of ebb and flow, of the cycles of nature, of the inexorable nature of the elements fell into place around it. That moment became a figurative turning of the tide. The US was opening up from lockdown, and other vocals started coming in thick and fast, bringing new collaborative energy to the album. O'Flynn's co-production contribution on "Otomo" — he effectively remixed it, turning Green's sample of the haunting Bulgarian choir 100 Kaba-Gaidi into a dramatic breakdown and beat drop — also gave the process a boost, reminding Green of the sense of dancefloor abandon and surging crowds that by now he missed with a burning passion.

So the album is the sound of both struggle and isolation — personally and collectively — and of a surging, joyous return. This falling-together of elements was rapid, and a huge relief, coinciding with a return to socialising and a return to dancing. While there is sorrow and introspection here — see the beautiful melancholy of Joji's voice and the dense textures of the ballad "From You" — there is just as much a sense of release, of going with the flow and freedom. It's about the dancefloor in many ways, about how "I remembered all over again how much I loved crowds and movement and people connecting with each other" — but the positivity isn't just in the uptempo rhythms: even the most introspective and melancholic pieces have joy in them.

The beatless "Elysian," which follows "Tides," lets the fluidity of Somogyi's harp and Atwood-Ferguson's strings flow over the listener, enveloping you in bliss. And another ballad, the closing "Day by Day" with Kadhja Bonet — the only vocal recorded in an in-person session — glows with hope, with the sense that despite it all life goes on, and that even in small ways, individual action matters. Drawing all the threads together is the single "Rosewood" — another nod to Detroit house, with a feeling of both celebration and a deep yearning, it both harks back to the small jazz, funk and soul clubs where Green cut his teeth but has the epic scale of the biggest festival stages too. Fragments isn't just a musical salve — far from it, it has pain and fear and struggle shot through it — but it is a gorgeous reminder of of how out of struggle and disillusionment, creativity and hope can emerge at the most unexpected moments.

Channel Tres, emerged from Compton's musical scene as a purveyor of innovation, pushing the traditional spirit of West Coast rap into unexplored territories. He's toured globally, from major festivals to sold-out arenas. For Channel, music is about reconnecting with his own history, whether it's in his lyrics, or through the influences and musical history that he uncovers in his production. His last EP i can't go outside debuted in Spotify's Top 10 US Album Debuts with features from Tyler, The Creator and Tinashe. With his forthcoming debut album Head Rush, he opens his most exciting musical chapter to date. For Channel Tres, the decision to finally drop an LP is a deeply personal one. "There were things about my story that I didn't know how to express, musically or lyrically," he says. But after a sometimes trying period of growth, he's finally ready to articulate this chapter of his life: "I would say my artistry has grown to a place where I'm comfortable sharing this much at one time." Head Rush is a richly layered record, but one that feels totally intuitive, without a trace of doubt or self-consciousness. Throughout his career, Tres has blended recognizable genres, textures, and points of view into a truly singular form all his own. Longtime listeners will recognize in Head Rush the hallmarks of a Channel Tres record: a mastery of rhythm, the rare ability to make songs sinister and fluorescent at once.

For their fourth studio album, Disclosure have taken things back to basics. Alchemy has no guest features and no major samples. They're releasing it without a record label, and they don't intend to tour it straight away. Instead, the focus is on the two faces behind Disclosure: brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence.

On Alchemy, Guy and Howard embrace a new sense of freedom and expression. This is bold dance music that expands the definition of what a Disclosure track can be. Guy's production embraces everything from jungle breaks and trancelike supersaw synth riffs to rapid tempo four-to-the-floor club tracks. Meanwhile, Howard's ear for classic melodic songcraft is sharper than ever, and he uses his own vocals and lyrics more than any time before. "This record is a celebration of us feeling liberated right now," says Guy. "We're not signed. We're not going to tour this record. We can do whatever we like and be super creative."

Yet to describe Alchemy as a simple and straightforward return to Disclosure's electronic roots would be to ignore the deeply personal story of its creation. Alchemy was written while the British duo were at two very different points in their lives. On one hand, Guy was recently married and settling into a new home in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. On the other, Howard was reeling from heartbreak and exhausted from a 150-date tour. Alchemy was an obvious title: "There was this combination of deep heartbreak and sadness, but also deep admiration and appreciation," Howard says. "Let's turn this horrible feeling into something beautiful. The whole idea was to channel pain into beauty — which, in hindsight, is always the aim."

Alchemy reflects this spectrum of emotions. Musically, it's warm, uplifting, and energetic — see the rapturous 143bpm bliss-out of "Sunshowers," or the summery bounce of "Simply Won't Do." Yet Howard's poignant vocal phrases add a bittersweet dimension: "Maybe… maybe we could be a little bit in love," he sings on "A Little Bit." There's an acute humanity on display, captured in the intimate field recordings and interludes that give the album its impressionistic, diaristic, almost narrative quality: the gentle strum of guitar chords recorded on a phone, the sounds of a pet dog, the flight boarding call in an airport. "All our other albums were written in third person," says Guy. "Before now, very few of our songs were about things that happened to us and our lives."

The album began life after Disclosure wrapped up the tour for their 2020 album ENERGY last year. Howard temporarily relocated from London to Los Angeles and began separately writing sketches, assisted in the studio by friends and collaborators Max Margolis and DonnyBravo. When Guy received the demos, he sat with them for weeks, allowing him to absorb them fully before adding his own touches. The process was then reversed, with Guy writing his own sketches — including on an early version of "Higher Than Ever Before," written with the acclaimed songwriter Cirkut, which keen fans may have heard during Guy's recent secret set at Glastonbury — and Howard working on them. Finally, they met up together in London to finish the record.

This writing process was closer to where Disclosure started, harking back to their debut album Settle over a decade ago, albeit with the honing and refinement of their skills over the years. "With our last record, the emphasis was on finishing the tracks as well as we could. Whereas with this one, it was on starting them as well as we could," Howard says. Alchemy's album artwork also calls back to the brothers' past while reflecting where they are in the present. The cover image is a photo of a tapestry, designed and created by hand by the textile artist Llinos Owen, that depicts Guy and Howard on Los Angeles's Lexington Avenue during the making of the album. It's the first time that the brothers themselves have appeared on an album cover since Settle.

Disclosure released their debut single, "Offline Dexterity," in 2010, when Guy and Howard were still teenagers. Today, Guy is 32 years old and Howard is 29. Their previous albums are Settle (2013), Caracal (2015), and Energy (2020). Disclosure have clocked up over 11 billion streams, sold over seven million albums, and collaborated with the likes of Sam Smith, Lorde, and The Weeknd. They have played major global shows, from a sold-out Madison Square Garden, to headline slots on Glastonbury's Other Stage, Reading & Leeds, Parklife, and All Points East, to large scale sets at Coachella and Bonnaroo, plus packed out shows at Alexandra Palace and The Warehouse Project.

Amanda Shultz, better known as DJ Mandy, is well known for being the best worst DJ on the internet. She is based in California where she attends UC Berkeley as a full-time student while also pursuing her DJ/Producer career. Mandy is known for going viral on TikTok for creating innovative and comedic mixes where she intertwines a wide variety of genres and sounds. She is inspired by all genres ranging from house and techno, to jazz and classical. Mandy aims to create a space that brings people together through the power of music (and comedy).

Kaytranada, the Montreal-raised producer, arrived during the early 2010s with ear-perking remixes and an array of sounds that veered from J Dilla-inspired hip-hop beats to distinctly woozy house grooves. Numerous commissioned works and short-form solo releases led to his debut album, 99.9% — which went on to win the 2016 Polaris Music Prize and the 2017 Juno Award for Electronic Album of the Year. Since signing to major-label RCA, the Haitian-Canadian has released his sophomore album, Bubba.

Kaytranada has produced for a wide array of artists including Anderson .Paak, Chance the Rapper, Robert Glasper, Lauren Faith, Mick Jenkins, GoldLink, Snopp Dogg, Freddie Gibbs, and Alicia Keys. His 2016 debut album, 99.9% features guest appearances from Phonte, Craig David, Vic Mensa, Little Dragon, and more.

Bubba, his second album, was released the following December with Pharrell, Kali Uchis, and Masego among the contributors — and has won the young producer 2 Grammys at the 2021 Grammy Awards.

NEIL FRANCES is a Los Angeles-based duo comprising Australian-born Jordan Feller and Southern California native Marc Gilfry. They have been working together since 2016 when they first teamed up to write for other vocalists as a production duo, an initially unsuccessful venture that resulted in a few demos living on a soundcloud account. By 2018 after their Soundcloud demos were discovered by tastemakers such as KCRW and triple j, NEIL FRANCES had — practically by accident — become a force to be reckoned with all on their own.

It's easy to see why Gilfry and Feller got together in the first place. Feller, an old-school hip-hop head and one-time rave kid, had a gift for sonic recall and beats-based production, while singer/guitarist Gilfry could write melodies and hooks on command. The music that has resulted is genre-spanning and comprised of club-ready grooves with sonic influences ranging from '80s/'90s rave culture, '70s funk and soul, yacht rock, and classic hip-hop. In a NEIL FRANCES song, you will just as likely hear a sample flip as you will an indie guitar run through a tape machine.

Their debut EP, Took A While, (2018), featuring the hit single "Dumb Love," not only showcased their infectious sound but also garnered critical acclaim from Complex, The Fader, and others, quickly surpassing 100 million streams. Global attention soon followed when their cover of "Music Sounds Better With You," the classic house track by Stardust, went viral, earning Gold Certification in Australia and racking up hundreds of millions of streams worldwide.

In 2022, they released their debut LP, There Is No Neil Frances, a concept album thematically centered on manifestation and self-realization. With their sophomore LP, It's All A Bit Fuzzy, released in 2023, Feller and Gilfry let their love for a collaborative process guide them even further and joined forces with rising talents such as dreamcastmoe, St. Panther, PawPaw Rod, and DRAMA to create an adventurous, shape-shifting collection. The record was supported by the likes of KCRW, BBC6, Travis Mills, This Song Is Sick, SPIN, Rolling Stone, NME, and more, with GRAMMY.com saying, "its eclectic mix of layered, infectious tunes begs for multiple replays."

Known not only for their recording prowess but also as dance-floor sociologists, NEIL FRANCES thrives on the live experience. Feller explains, "I was a DJ before I was in a band. I just love the energy of a club room, some of my most formative experiences were in nightclubs listening to Dj's. So when we perform it's important to me to feel the audience moving and to feel them responding in some way with their body."

The project has always been devoted to building the ultimate live set experience. From the beginning, the pair organized a live band for performances, which includes Greg Cham on bass and Rhythm Luna on drums, both of whom are also regular contributors in the recording process. With this configuration, NEIL FRANCES has become known for their captivating stage presence. They have sold-out numerous North American tours, including Brooklyn Steel and The Novo, opened for acts like Jungle, Odesza, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra, and have evolved into a staple in the festival circuit, having graced the stages of almost every renowned North American festival, including Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, Corona Capital, Portola, Outside Lands, and over fifteen others. In 2024, they are already confirmed for Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Electric Forest.

At the core of NEIL FRANCES' evolving musical journey is a commitment to collaboration, innovation, and an unforgettable live experience. The duo's ability to bring together diverse influences and engage wide audiences on a profound level marks them as a force to be reckoned with in the ever-evolving landscape of indie and dance music.

Spencer Brown has firmly established himself as a leader in the next generation of progressive House in 2023. His world-class DJ skills, combined with a keen ear for discovering, creating, and playing cutting-edge music, are elevating him above his contemporaries.

GRAMMY® Award-winning, platinum-certified, international icon, Tiësto has over 8 BILLION global streams across platforms, 36M+ Total Record Sales, 30M+ Social Audience & over 160M TikTok Video Views across users. The DJ and producer is the only artist to ever hold the titles of “The Greatest DJ of All Time” courtesy of Mixmag, “#1 DJ” according to Rolling Stone, and “The Godfather of EDM,” as proclaimed by Billboard. From his underground dance floor bangers to his high-profile Las Vegas residency and crossover success, Tiësto created the blueprint that defines what it means to be a success in today’s dance music world.

In the years since their inception WhoMadeWho have established themselves as one of the definitive underground bands of their generation. A group whose grasp of emotional depth, heartrending melody and inspired songwriting is exceptional, the Danish outfit is comprised Tomas Høffding, Tomas Barford and Jeppe Kjellberg. They have become renowned for their exemplary back catalogue, consummate professionalism and standout performances all over the globe, from Roskilde to Sonar, Melt! to Burning Man, producing six albums and a plethora of EPs, singles and remixes on labels like Kompakt, Innervisions, Life & Death. With Barford’s penchant for electronic music poetically juxtaposed with Høffding and Kjellberg’s respective backgrounds in rock and jazz, their music is an electrifying combination of sounds, merging a variety of influences to produce a unique sonic fingerprint that is emotive, irresistible and immensely satisfying.

Molly Otto's sound blends plucky guitars, beds of synths, and harmonized melodies, redefining what it means to be a "conventional" artist in electronic music. Starting her career as a lead guitarist in a rock band, Molly has transitioned into a genre-defying solo project. In 2022, she launched her debut EP, ‘Starting Again’, which she produced, performed, and mixed entirely on her own.

Molly then released a collaboration with Lamorn, "Lonely Light," on mau5trap, deadmau5's acclaimed label. She has also contributed remixes for The Wrecks, Alex Bone, and Lamorn, showcasing her versatility. In 2023, she released a track on bitbird's ‘Gouldian Finch 5’ compilation and followed it with a solo single, leading to her opening for San Holo at the start of the year. Since then, Molly released her sophomore EP, ‘Snowball’ on San Holo’s bitbird imprint, marking a new era of her musical evolution.