News — The Forum

style="text-align: center;"> When Justin Strauss had his first band, Milk 'n' Cookies, signed by Island Records at just seventeen-years old in 1975, the glam-kids, the punks and the disco freaks in his native Long Island surely began to wonder, “Who is this kid?” Nearly five decades, several hundred remixes and dozens of musical projects later, dancers on club floors worldwide continue to ask the same.Strauss was perhaps one of the first notable ‘resident’ DJs in the contemporary sense when he scored a gig furtively mixing all types of records at the legendary Mudd Club in TriBeCa, spinning to a very hip,...

The Japanese artist Zongamin arrived on record shelves and over club soundsystems during a now distant, post ‘mash-up’ period in which retro funk, electro, pop music and vintage house converged to drive a fashion concious-club scene. Delivering records on both XL Recordings and Parisian label Ed Banger during it’s critical and commercial peak, Zong was an ambitious outlier on this scene, whose records nonetheless got rinsed by everyone: Bongo Song, a percussive, cut-up, arms-up anthem released on the latter, was a go-to curveball for scene leaders such as 2ManyDJs and our own Erol Alkan, who has consistently featured his productions...

Since founding the influential Highlife parties in Glasgow a decade ago, Auntie Flo has existed on the boundary between experimental, international music and the UK dance scene. Also closely associated with the label Huntleys & Palmers, Auntie Flo, real name Brian D’Souza has shifted to Giles Peterson’s Brownswood imprint for his latest, most ambitious album, ‘Radio Highlife’. The result of seven years travelling across the world and collaborating with a broad range of artists, ‘Radio Highlife’ is a diary of sound that tastefully flirts with pop and dance arrangements, establishing D’Souza’s nous as an excellent, open-minded collaborator. Guests on the...

Martyn is arguably one of the most consistently innovative names in electronic music over the past decade. Whether as a producer, DJ, collaborator or label boss, the humble Dutchman (long since adopted by the East Coast of the USA) holds his evolving style down in myriad ways. When dubstep and bass were at their creative peak, Martyn was among the forward-thinkers personally mutating a shift into house and techno tempos, having already evolved out of the DnB scene. Even more impressive still, was that he often pushed these sounds within the walls of Berghain, by that point, a world-infamous rave...