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Estornel was born 11 July 1978 in Cuba, but established his career in Miami. Not long after he got this start in the industry he began setting trends on his own, exposing the city to a blend of hard hitting low end mix, topped with subtle pulsing synth swashes. His music also featured strong dance influences integrating bass lines dripping with acid house influences and heavily syncopated guitars treated with flanger effect, which seemed to beckon the work of Chic guitarist Niles Rodgers.
Over the years Estornel has used a number of aliases in addition to his most recognized stage name Maceo Plex. The others include Maetrik, Mariel Ito, Plaex, Tali Wackas, and Eric Entity. Some of his earliest documented material was released in 1999 under the latter two monikers, both through Illmatic Records. He put out a variety of 12” singles and two feature lengths under the name Maetrick, some which dated back to 2001. As Mariel Ito, he released a studio album through SCSI-AV in 2005 as well as an EP entitled “Indexed”, which was issued by Manchester label Modern Love Records (whose list of artists include the likes of Andy Stott and Demdike Stare).
It was not until 2009 that Estornel began releasing material under Maceo Plex. Within a few years time he already developed a profuse catalogue with this project. He released the EP “Clubs” in 2009, which was followed by the 2010 single “Vibe Your Love”. 2011 saw the release of his first studio album “Life Index” as well as an additional 7 releases including 2 DJ mixes, 4 EPs and the tech house single “Your Style”.
Though Estornel fell into the rave culture in America in the early 90s and his sound was largely classified as techno and house, he has since progressed into a more classic driven electro funk sound, channeling the influences of Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic, and Isolee.
This change in framework was somewhat evident with Estronel’s move from the US to Valencia, Spain. During Estornel’s career as Maceo Plex he has toured multiple festivals such as the Amore Festival in Roma and in 2014 he factored in at No.5 on Resident Advisor’s poll for the “Top DJs of 2014”. Maceo Plex has also been involved in remixes throughout his career, editing material for Royksopp and having his own compositions revised by artist such as Nicolas Jaar who treated the single “Gravy Train”.
As the son of a DJ, Tiga has always been around electronic music, touring with his father around Goa, India, in the 80s. Beginning to DJ in Canada in the 90s, Tiga saw that there was little to offer in regards to the rave scene, deciding to take matters in his own hands and organized his own parties, taking credit as one of the first people to throw Canada’s first proper rave. Tiga took things further, starting the techno-oriented record store, DNA, as wells the Turbo label, along with DJ Mark Dillon.
It was not until the 2000s that Tiga began to produce his own music, releasing the successful mixtapes, “American Gigolo” and “Mixed Emotions.” He also found a hit with his collaboration with Jori Hulkkonen, on a reinterpretation of Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night,” as the duo, Tiga & Zyntherius, reaching number 23 on the UK Singles Chart. Tiga continued with his remixes and relentless touring, helping to keep him at the top of his game. A successful contribution to the K7 series of mixes, DJ Kicks, came out in 2003, making a big contribution to the current trends in the scene.
In 2006, Tiga released his debut album, "Sexor," which went on to win at the 2007 Juno Awards for 'Dance Recording of the Year.' "Ciao!" followed in 2009, again released to critical and commercial success, from both the underground and mainstream press. Tiga's duo with German techno producer, Zombie Nation, ZZT, released their debut record, "Party's Over Earth" in 2011, helping to expand Tiga's output. A new mix, "Tiga Non-Stop" followed in 2012, premiering his new single, "Plush," to great fanfare. As well as his solo output, Tiga is also the host of the popular BBC 6 Music show, "My Name is Tiga," to which he plays the hottest tracks in electronic music.
Born in West Wickham, Bromley in London on 1 June 1986, Skream started making music at the age of 15. As a teenager he worked at Big Apple Records where he made connections including one with Hatcha, another dub-step pioneer. He would frequently skip school to work at Big Apple and much of his early production work was with older artists.
As dubstep started to pick up in popularity, Skream’s music started to develop more, away from darker, garage rock to more of dub, house and even jazz. He continued to record and released his song “Midnight Request Line” which was extremely well received. It has been praised as “dubstep’s most recognizable crossover hit” in 2005. Skream also released a number of records through various labels like Tempa, Tectonic and Big Apple; additionally he worked with Niall Henshaw as the duo named Spectrum. He released his first full-length, self titled album with Tempa in 2006.
Skream has performed all over the world, and in 2006 started to host a radio show called Stella Sessions. In 2009 he further grew in popularity and prominence when he released a remix for La Roux’s “In For the Kill” which peaked at number two on the charts and was featured on a television show called Skins.
Eric Estornel, better known by his stage name Maceo Plex is an expert in deep house and electro. He has been working the circuit since 2001 and over the past ten years he has gone from a simple DJ to a high quality performer. He has an unteachable high proficiency when it comes to music and mixing live which has seen his reputation flourish on the circuit amongst fans and critics.
He is now highly recommended so every crowd seems to be getting bigger and bigger especially when he stops off at the likes of the Parklife and Ultra Music Festival. The tents get packed to the rafters and everybody shares the mentality that they are there to have one hell of a party. For over an hour Maceo provides the soundtrack with original mixes worked within remixes for the likes of Röyksopp and more. The crowd does not stand still for a second and the roars echo around the tent as real celebration of this talented DJ.
I’m not easily impressed by live DJs although I love listening to techno and electronic dance music, so I was a little apprehensive when I went to see Guy Gerber perform live. I must say though, I was extremely pleasantly surprised at the awesome show he put on. The reason I don’t enjoy some of the DJ sets is because the artists pre-record all of their mixes and tracks, and simply switch between them in their performance, but Gerber was using live synths, mixers, samples, and even drum machines really using his talent to mix and create awesome music.
At the beginning of the set, he called out for everyone to ‘put your phones away, enjoy the vibe’, which was great, because I always think it’s a shame to watch a live show through a screen! The music started off pretty chilled out, and everyone was wandering round with drinks enjoying the vibe, and as he build up the tempo of the music, so everyone began moving forwards and dancing. He was really great at engaging with the audience, from everything to dancing along to his music, to calling out to see if we were having a good time. The tracks he played were a great selection of his own hits, such as Belly Dancing, to his collaborations and remixes, so there really was something for everyone.
Canadian DJ-producer Tiga (real name: Tiga James Sontag) has messed around with almost every subgenre of electronic dance music, but he’s perhaps best known for his work in electro. He’s been in the game a long time; long before electro, electro house, etc, had filtered into the mainstream. I held some of his early productions in the same high regard and some of the first Justice tracks, and his mix compilations in the early noughties were some of the best from that time, as were his remixes. Of course Tiga is an acclaimed and renowned performing DJ, but it’s always surprised me that he hasn’t had more mainstream recognition. Perhaps the semi-underground space that he inhabits suits him better. I first saw Tiga perform at XOYO in 2011. It was the first time I had ever been to the East End underground basement; this was before the refurb, so it was even dingier than it is now. This dark, gritty space was the perfect setting for his underground club music. Tiga’s set was more up-tempo and bass-y than usual; there was little in the way of vocal samples and points of it shunned melody all together in favour of harder techno beats. Of course, it was the funky electro cuts that got the best reception, but on this night Tiga proved that he was adept at toying with plenty of other genres. As a sidenote: upstairs in the completely empty bar area, Pariah and Blawan smashed out wicked sets, literally just before they blew up. Great night.
Butch is a DJ, producer and remixer.Over his years behind the decks he has shown great ambition in perfecting a sound which transforms the dance floor into an ecstatic crowd. His skills as a producer and remixing sits between Neo-Trance, Techno and Minimal and are defined through their high quality sound productions and the trademark sounds, which have enabled him to release productions on labels such as Great Stuff, Craft Music, BluFin and Still for Talent (Oliver Koletzki’s label).
A selection of original material such as the infectious 'Life Is Deadly' merged with his acclaimed mixes for the likes of Whebba has boosted his notoriety on the electro/dance and won the producer support from the likes of John Acquaviva, Benny Benassi and Oliver Koletzki. The talented musician keeps crowds dancing throughout his energetic sets, playing cult hits such as 'Amelie' to the bating audiences below as they cheer beneath the frantic strobe lighting. After a stretch in Australia, Butch now returns to the US to play some huge shows and for fans of electro/dance/house tickets are recommended.