12 emerging artists you need to hear: October 2022

The sound palette of London-based producer Tom Jarmey transcends several genres. Jungle, ambient, techno and cinematic soundscapes snake through his releases on Holding Hands, Dansu Discs, Banoffee Pies and more. In 2018, he released his debut LP ‘Amber Glass’, weaving warm-up moods with emotional electronica. Recently, however, the Wiltshire-born artist has leaned more into jungle, and he’s due to release his most jungle-driven EP yet on X-Kalay, featuring a Tim Reaper remix. 

Jarmey also heads up his own imprint, Wing Theory, where he self-releases sultry breaks and downtempo vibes — but who knows what Jarmey will produce for his ‘Wing Theory Part III’ edition? His DJ sets echo a similar explorative approach, with mixes for Feel My Bicep, Refuge Worldwide, and Balamii whipping up a dreamy trip. Over in Manchester, you can catch Jarmey DJing IRL at Wax Villainy, the party he co-runs with Dom Thompson. Niamh O’Connor

For fans of: Daniel Avery, Coco Bryce, Djrum

The slick synth boogie of Polyswitch sounds like it’s made for leisurely cruising in convertible cars as day turns to night. On his debut album ‘Praise The Sun’, the Casablanca, Morocco-based artist assembles various manifestations of electronic funk, abetted by an all-star cast of guest musicians. Glenn Astro appears on ‘In Good Spirits’, where dreamy chords combine with jazzy horns over a languid beat, while Byron The Aquarius remixes ‘Endeavor 212’ into a contemplative but bumping slice of soul-inflected house. Moroccan artist Saib appears on ‘Things Change’, and pianist/broken beat star Mark de Clive-Lowe lends his considerable finesse to ‘The Great Conjunction’. 

The title track, meanwhile, is a slo-mo house caper with spry electronic leads and a lush vocoder vocal. ‘Praise The Sun’ is the third release on Polyswitch’s own Astrofever label, and bodes well for the future of this promising artist. Ben Murphy

For fans of: Dâm-Funk, Garrett, Mndsgn

Photo: Joseph Ouechen

London-based Paige fuses thumping and hypnotic techno grooves, producing potent energy from the get-go. Guest radio shows on KINDRED, Rinse FM, Balamii and many more reflect her hard-hitting style, and she channels the same vibe in her Night Service (NS) sets at FOLD and Venue MOT. Paige co-runs the series with Bailey Ibbs, and in recent months, it has evolved into one of the most tastefully-curated parties in the city. D.Dan, Grace Dahl and several other rising stars have soundtracked NS nights, and artists including Dyslecta and Jacques Greene have released on the eponymous label. 

Paige and Ibbs have also programmed NS takeovers on HÖR and Foundation FM, spotlighting local and international names. Besides DJing and promoting, Paige is a digital designer and visual artist with a signature steely aesthetic — just like her selections. Currently, Paige is cooking up event collaborations with UK and Berlin-based collectives, and her return to HÖR Radio is on the cards. Niamh O’Connor

For fans of: Randomer, Tasha, LSDXOXO

Born and raised 15 kilometres from Cape Town, Gugulethu’s Siphe Tebeka has been producing since 2007, drawing new musical outlines every few years. The artist is in constant exploration mode, having dabbled in hip-hop, tribal house, dubstep and Afro-tech, and is fast becoming a standout artist in South Africa’s talent-rich scene. 

His ‘Ndiyahamba’ EP, out on Shimza’s Kunye imprint, journeys deep into melodic, uplifting Afro-tech and has already won early support from Black Coffee, DJEFF and Sondela’s Sef Kombo. The artist has also played at top-tier festivals, including Cape Town’s Rocking The Daisies and Belgium’s Tomorrowland. But what most interests Tebeka is the search for a new sound, and his current aim is to spend the next two years honing his follow-up EP. Sounds like an overly cautious move for someone hitting their stride. “I’m still maturing into my sound,” he replies. “I’m in no rush.” Ria Hylton

For fans of: Black Coffee, Shimza, Culoe De Song

It’s one thing to have supported an internationally touring DJ, it’s another to be hand-picked to support two of the biggest names in the scene by the artists themselves. Thanks to her impeccably mixed deep US and UK garage and house selections, Lady Passion can claim that honour, having been selected by both Overmono and Joy Orbison to support them.

Her top-drawer selections and mixing have also landed her sets with Boiler Room, Keep Hush, Ministry Of Sound and Rinse FM. Watch a Lady Passion set back or catch her live and you’ll notice she plays wax, and her relationship with vinyl goes back to when she started collecting records at the tender age of 11. Catch her every Friday on London’s Vision Radio UK, and keep an eye out for a TBA event later this year in Brixton. Dan Brashaw

For fans of: Eliza Rose, STICKY, Frankie Knuckles

Birmingham’s TU3SDAY is already getting backing from tastemaker DJs like Mary Anne Hobbs and Jamz Supernova. Made with DJs in mind, the artist’s ‘Love + Rage’ EP covers a lot of musical terrain, from drill and d&b to soulful 2-step, and also has the producer on singing and rap duties. Lead single ‘Evil Eye’ was featured as Hobbs’ Near Future Record for BBC Radio 6, while ‘Reparations’ got a shoutout on Supernova’s BBC Radio 1Xtra show — not bad for a debut EP. 

But TU3SDAY’s ambitions lie further than industry acclaim; they’re on a mission to amplify the voices of artists like themselves at every opportunity. “I am going to be bringing big Robin Hood energy, and support people who live at similar intersections to me to have access to opportunities to learn, grow, shape and develop,” they tell DJ Mag. “We all deserve to live rich and sustainable lives.” Ria Hylton

For fans of: Fiyahdred, Lady Leshurr, Amplify Dot

Electropop artist Barron S shared the stage with Rihanna on her Anti World tour, served as direct support for Chromeo, and even made history in 2018 as the NHL’s first female DJ, but these days, she’s redirecting some of her empowering energy toward British Columbia’s youth. The Vancouver native helms #MentalHealthMatters, a project she describes as “one-part TED Talk x one-part PARTY”. Indeed, class appears a bit less boring for the students in her beat-packed sessions, during which she examines how music and dancing positively impact brain chemistry and overall wellbeing. 

For listeners who are safely outside of their teacher’s ear range, we recommend popping on her breakout single ‘BO$$ BITCH’ which sees the triple-threat deliver tongue-in-cheek lyrics about all the reasons why it takes one to know one, wrapped up in trappings of radio-ready EDM bliss. Her next tune, ‘TKO’, arrives October 13th and sends her knockout stylings swirling into tech-house territory – it’s the exact dose of attitude your mood-boosting playlists are craving, so get pumped. Megan Venzin

For fans of: Blossom, Ke$ha, Kim Petras

She pushes the boundaries of low-end bass, but NotLö’s ambitions for greatness hardly top out there. The Denver-based, South Carolina-bred artist’s reputation as a crusader for positivity, acceptance, and inclusion is already cemented, and her filthy, wubbed-out productions are an integral component of that radical love language. On stage, her energy reaches fever-pitch, but it’s NotLö’s social impact initiatives that reverberate further than any festival speaker system is capable of (though those were certainly rumbling at Electric Forest, Deep Tropics, and Electric Zoo, to name a few recent appearances.) 

For starters, 100% of the proceeds from her July 2020 ‘Evolve’ EP went to support the NAACP that challenging summer, and her self-curated NotLö N Friends online streaming event named RAINN — an organization dedicated to aiding survivors of sexual violence — as its beneficiary. A second edition helped raise money for homeless women living in Denver during the holidays. More intentional tunes just dropped on September 30th in the form of her ‘Trailing Winds’ EP. The four-track collection (out via CloZee’s Odyzey imprint) is a glitch-laden romp through the outer realms of organic bass. It’s dreamscape music that aims to be different, and make a difference, all at the same time. Expect those cuts and a few other newbies to paint her FEMME House guest mix, due out later this month, too. Megan Venzin

For fans of: CharlestheFirst, CloZee, Wreckno

There’s an intensity to the music on Hagop Tchaparian’s debut LP, ‘Bolts’, that’s both otherworldly and firmly grounded. It brims with an alchemistic, near-spiritual aura to the tracks, with sounds ranging from the boiling techno of ‘Round’ through the near-abstraction of ‘Ldz’, to the motifs of his Armenian heritage; a bounty of field recordings instilling the songs with corporal heft. Tchaparian has spent a lifetime collecting those recordings — taken from Armenian wedding clips, for instance, or of street musicians, or from trodding the gravel roads of the Lebanese village of Anjar, where his father’s family took refuge after being driven out of the Armenian-Turkish town of Musa Dagh in 1939. 

For a debut, it’s an impressively accomplished work — but Tchaparian is hardly a stranger to music. He served as guitarist for Symposium, a ’90s post-grunge punk band that earned enough attention to play the 1998 Warped Tour and open for Red Hot Chili Peppers and Metallica; later, he became tour manager for Hot Chip and Kieran Hebden, aka Four Tet. He began producing remixes for Hebden to play in his sets — apparently, Hebden liked what he heard, because ‘Bolts’ is coming out on Hebden’s Text Records on October 28th. It’s an emotionally rich collection of tunes, one that deserves to be heard. Bruce Tantum

For fans of: Four Tet, Neotropic, Nadastrom

For a debut house release, Sair Bashir’s ‘Clubhouse’ EP is a remarkably swaggering affair, a confident release that would slot nicely into peak-time rotation at your local basement party or megaclub without breaking much of a sweat. But it’s the little touches — the squelching synth line of ‘Need,’ for instance, or the eccentric piano sample of ‘I Know,’ or the warbling tone that runs through ‘Distractions’ — that give the tracks their distinctive flair. They sound like the work of an artist who’s been honing their skills for years. Which, as it happens, is the case for Bashir, who hails from the South Jersey town of Vineland. He’s been experimenting with the house sound for years — but his focus has been on hip-hop, with production on albums from The B.L.U.N.T.E.D. Crew, The Outsiderz, Kool Kim of Staten Island’s U.M.C and his own solo work, ‘One Stage Many Mics’, just to name a handful of Bashir-touched projects. There’s plenty of room for both house and hip-hop, though — we suspect that Bashir will keep a foot in both worlds. Bruce Tantum

 For fans of: Mood II Swing, Demarkus Lewis, Finest Wear

Emerging tech-house talent Miane kicked off her career with a DIY mindset, and learned quickly that hard work and ingenuity are the cornerstones of any star-making run. But it was through releases on Hot Since 82’s Knee Deep In Sound, Matthias Tanzmann’s Moon Harbour, Lee Foss’s Repopulate Mars as well as an official remix on Hot Creations for head honcho, Jamie Jones, that her trajectory was assured. Now, after years of cutting her teeth (formerly as Taty Munoz) and running her own Syne label, the Ibiza-based producer is serving up some of her most fiery dancefloor fillers yet — like ‘For One Night’, which dropped via Chris Lake’s Blackbook Records in August. 

Fuelled by deep basslines and enveloping vocal chops, the four-on-the-floor cut infiltrated setlists during Labor Day weekend festivals and appears primed to rattle club walls well into this chillier season. Still, that’s hardly the final groove fans will get this year. On November 11th, she'll unveil 'Fears in The Fire' (via Insomniac), and then December marks her return to Eli Brown’s Arcane imprint with ‘All The Night / Love Yourself’ — another pair of techno bombs that speak to Miane’s versatility inside the studio and out. She’ll play Insomniac’s Escape Halloween at the end of the month if you want to see the latter for yourself. Megan Venzin

For fans of: Chris Lake, Jamie Jones, J.Worra

The Pakistan-born, Canada-based Fahad Ahmad isn’t exactly a newcomer to the music world. Since 2017, he’s been making techno and post-punk-tinged industrial music as one-half of MDD; in 2013, he helped to found Toronto’s Format collective and parties, which have hosted the likes of Function, DVS1, Paula Temple, and Ben Sims. Those names should give you a pretty good idea of the music that he makes and plays as Measure Divide, a moniker that Fahad first used as far back as 2012, but had been on long hiatus until last year’s ‘Green Parallel’ EP. 

Ahmad’s latest effort as Measure Divide is a just-released five-tracker titled ‘Evidence Of A Rhythmic Pattern’, that, like ‘Green Parallel’, is out on the excellent, no-screwing- around Manchester, UK label Clergy. The EP is brimming with serious-minded techno, with cavernous kicks anchoring an array of precise percussion and dubbed-out effects; the one downtempo cut, the billowing ‘333’, is a thing of beauty. It’s late-night music that would sound fantastic in its natural environment: over a big soundsystem on a pulsating dancefloor. Bruce Tantum

For fans of: Function, Planetary Assault Systems, Porter Ricks