Armand Van Helden

House music isn’t a genre that’s necessarily popularly associated with the United States - for one reason or another, it’s often seen as a much more European sound - but whilst Armand van Helden’s Dutch roots certainly provide him with a name that carried plenty of credibility in that respect, he’s actually one of America’s premier DJs, emerging from Boston in the early nineties. He had a slew of chart hits throughout that decade, including ‘Cha Cha’ in 1996, but he didn’t really break through on the record front until 1998, with his seminal 2 Future 4 U becoming a key release in the genre’s history. Today, he continues to be revered, and has continued to find ways to sneak into the mainstream; along with A-Trak, he forms part of the duo Duck Sauce, who went to number three in 2010 in the UK with the novelty hit ‘Barbra Streisand’. His live sets, too, remain at the forefront of the house genre; referencing a career that’s now been ongoing for almost twenty-five years, he mixes classics of the style with new cuts and inventive remixes to ensure that he’s still a staple of the clubs in both the UK and overseas.