Dusky

Techno as a whole seems to be a difficult genre to comprehend. On the one side we have the enormous party jams that can only really be stomached in a dark room filled with people raving so hard they could cause some serious harm with a single limb. On the other we have the austere, impenetrable head music that makes Phillip Glass at his most concrete sound like Oasis. It’s one of the very, very few genres of music around where the extremes of the genre are the most well-known. What better examples of this are there than Tomorrowland being one of the world’s largest music festivals the same year that Aphex Twin releases a top ten album the world over? However, London based duo Alfie Granger-Howell and Nick Harriman, otherwise known as Dusky, prove that the two extremes can be put harmoniously together in their live sets. Yes, the music draws influence from and contains samples from the likes of Jazz, Classical and avant-garde Electronica but that doesn’t mean that you can’t dance to it like an absolute maniac. In fact quite the opposite, the effect of such strange music being so danceable is unlike few others in the world of electronic music. Techno is a difficult genre to comprehend but so are most genres when you think about it, Techno just needs more artists like Dusky, who can bring together the best of both extremes and give everyone a show to remember because of it. Highly recommended.

Neil Young said it was better to burn out than fade away, but if you ever need a second opinion, you could always ask the members of Guru Josh Project - they’ve first-hand experience of having done so. After forming in 2007, they met with almost instantaneous success, releasing various mixes of their debut single, ‘Infinity 2008’, in the eponymous year and sitting back to watch it become a worldwide smash, dominating European clubs for months afterwards and picking up the award for best house track at the International Dance Music Awards in Miami. It looked, at this point, as if Paul Walden, Anders Nyman and Darren Bailie had the world at their feet. However, they’d soon afterwards bring a new meaning to the term ‘one hit wonder’ by releasing a second song, ‘Crying in the Rain’, that failed to chart, and split soon afterwards, in 2009, due to musical differences. They still occasionally perform live together - blending house and techno to deliver frenetic DJ sets - but it seems that the strange alchemy that afforded them to hit such highs with ‘Infinity 2008’ was a one-off; they won’t be forgotten in the clubs, but they weren’t around long enough to make a genuine impression on the public more widely.