Tarantist

I popped back to Wellington during summer travels having been asked to play a peak time slot at Third Eye Hi-Fi’s Druid’s Temple event. Rabid Foam brought some dope set pieces, and the visuals looked great. The premise was roughly centred on breaks & garage, but contained all sorts. Clova ended with dubstep before me, and after dabbling briefly there, I dove into my new loves of turbo & breaks before wandering into garage adjacent areas to end out ahead of Kameano’s bassline & garage.

I had the pleasure of working Circulation Festival this year. This incredible festival is a small, circus focused event that happens just outside of Dunedin. Over a hundred workshops during the day, dozens of spectacular circus & circus adjacent performances, with a fire circle running through the night. The music is key but definitely secondary & supporting the circus arts, especially the flow jams. I came on at 4:00am, and wanted to bring some energy for the fire spinners with halftime, before coasting downwards into dubstep to set up a lush and introspective From Dust to Mountains set, bringing in the sunrise ahead of Soundsalad (a three piece band) ending the arc.

Young Gho$t in Wellington runs a monthly drum & bass night on the first Thursday of the month at Valhalla. I’d been a regular, and got to play the last one before I left Wellington. The dj before me, BBMage, was playing rad breaks, so I used it as an opportunity to work my way up into fulltime drum & bass from there, through turbo & footwork, before dropping into some driving halftime. Great to revisit some of my earlier influences in the d&b realm by traveling there from the newer breaks focus.

I got booked to play Thursday night at Island Wubs, in a DNB context. I’d been planning on playing around with halftime & dnb, but found the dj before me playing garage/grime in the 130bpm area. As I’ve been loving that zone lately, I started with breaks to match where he was at, and from there worked my way up through higher bpm breaks, to turbo & footwork before settling into halftime and finally fulltime, high energy Drum & Bass to finish it out ahead of Hey Its Pablo. Although it took me a bit to get my feet, and the first little bit struggles for it, I ended up pretty happy with the arc & mixing, especially as it evolved through the set.

Recorded at my kiwi pal Tyler’s place in Wellington, on the Dirty Hertz soundsystem, for an application to Island Wubs at Otherworld. Had the pleasure of meeting Tyler & the Dirty Hertz rig when I played at Kiwiburn 2025, at the Secret Sasquatch Society sound camp. Wanted to try going from Dubstep, a classic Island Wubs sound, into gutteral, bassy breaks, and see how it felt.

My dear friend Kevin (Arktic) invited me out to Pender Island for a dj getaway with the Dolly crew out of Vancouver. It was a great party weekend with some lovely folks, playing lots of incredible techno & other 4×4 beats. Turned 32 in the middle of the mix, and went b2b with Kevin on some techno steez later on.

My guy Lane (Vaulto) & I had been jamming for awhile at this point; we both love drum & bass, and have very compatible tastes and mixing styles. When it came time for me to plan some sweet parties & hangs to celebrate with my Victoria crew before heading on a sojourn to New Zealand, my friend Jerrett & I came up with the idea of having six djs pair up and do whatever they like with two hours each. Electrostatic was born, themed around the idea that some species of spiders use electrostatic force to travel long distances. I really wanted to show the fam what Lane & I had been up to, and we decided on a 40/40/40 split of the two hour slot. Lane played 40 mins, then we went b2b for 40, then I finished off. It was a total blast, we got to play some of our favourite dnb tunes, then I took us in a different direction through some halftime/breaks/turbo/footwork vibes I’d just began fucking with, to set up for Erski & J.F. Killah to come after us

Early into my experimenting with breaks, I started to play with the journey up from 140bpm or so into footwork. This is a sketch I did early on of that pathway.