Six emerging artists you need to hear: July 2026

DJ, producer and founder of the Continuum Bass collective and Kanto Cult Radio, Ezzrei is at the heart of a new wave of sound system-shaking Filipino electronic music. Informed by her background as a music journalist, she describes her relationship with music as “deeply active”; she’s always researching, listening, digging for interesting sounds and cultural significance.

She took up DJing after moving to Siargao Island (around 470 miles from the capital, Manila) in 2015, as nobody else there was playing the music she wanted to hear. Today her sets chart a course through dubstep, hip-hop, breaks, jungle and more, unearthing connections through the movement of the drums and low-end heft.

She namechecks DJ Shadow, Photek and Roni Size & Reprazent as key inspirations. “From there, bass music became less of a genre and more of a way of thinking,” she explains. “I loved that it never asked you to stay in one place. Dub, jungle, grime, footwork, hip-hop, techno, sound system culture. They all seemed to speak to each other. There was always room to experiment, to borrow ideas respectfully, and to keep pushing the music somewhere unexpected.”

Her own production experiments began last year and have already borne fruit. ‘Ang Daigdig Ko’y Ikaw’ is a gorgeous jungle cut with creative breaks, and samples of iconic Filipino singer Celeste Legaspi that are positively psychedelic. The blissful ‘Sinta’, meanwhile, draws from juke/ footwork, harnessing the sound of a kubing (a traditional bamboo jaw harp) to put an extra spring in its step.

Ezzrei is about to drop her ‘Baby Vortex’ EP; four dubstep tracks built around excitable percussion and plenty of bass pressure. She highlights the philosophies of spiritual jazz musicians like John Coltrane and Sun Ra as influential on the project. “Their records feel like conversations with something beyond themselves. There is space, intention, repetition, improvisation, and this sense that every note exists for a reason.”

In her own music, “every layer has to justify its existence,” she says. “I’m not interested in adding percussion because it sounds clever. I’m interested in asking what emotional or cultural role it plays within the track.” That feeds directly into her exploration of “pre-colonial Filipino rhythmic traditions” on the release. She explains how “the Filipino sonic ancestry is so intricate and fascinating that literally every single moment between birth to death has either an instrument or a song/chant for it... Instead of one dominant groove, you hear multiple rhythmic voices weaving around one another, each carrying its own role while contributing to a larger whole... I wanted [my] percussion to feel alive, constantly moving, shifting and responding to itself, while the bass remains the gravitational centre.”

Through releases such as the ‘Gunitâ’ compilation, Ezzrei’s Continuum Bass collective have also explored ideas around Filipino identity, but her ultimate goal for the project is much more far reaching. “I realised that if we’re serious about building culture, we can’t just create exciting moments. We also have to build systems that can outlive us and withstand setbacks. That’s why Continuum Bass has grown beyond club nights into a label, radio platform, publishing projects, educational initiatives and international collaborations. Every one of those projects strengthens another part of the ecosystem.” BEN HINDLE

“Dancers are the heartbeat of the dancefloor,” says Joshua Gadget. “I play music that makes people move.”

It’s a lived philosophy that inspires the London-based Nigerian DJ, whose years spent as a professional dancer inform the energy of his sets today. With genre-spanning blends of Afrocentric electronic music, the rising star conjures a “sweaty, high-energy” atmosphere wherever he plays, trusting his instincts and reading the dancefloor without any pre-planned structure in mind. “I am one of the most unplanned DJs,” he admits. “I play what moves the room.”

Take his recent appearance at Group Therapy in London back in March, for example. Mid-way through his set, he sensed the crowd needed something a little different, so he made a decisive pivot from the raw, syncopated rhythms of gqom to the deeper vibes of Afro-house. “It was a moment of troubleshooting,” he admits. “I always pray before my sets, and I felt it was the right move.'

Gadget's journey as a DJ began in 2023, after he sustained a dance-related injury on set for the film production of Wicked. What started as a hobby to fill the hours of recovery quickly changed his life. Within two months, he was playing a private event for amapiano star Uncle Waffles, and MC’ing alongside London breakthrough Skyla Tylaa at her debut headline show. What followed was a string of viral TikTok clips that built his reputation for weaving Afrobeats, EDM, hip-hop and R&B into amapiano, Afro-tech and Afro-house sets. “Being Nigerian, I find ways to incorporate elements of that into my sets,” he says. “Since I live in the UK and love Southern African music, my sound is a melting pot of all the cultures I experience. I try to put my own spin on global music without it becoming too gimmicky.”

Whether it’s on your FYP or IRL at clubs and events like fabric, Colour Factory, Piano People and Fête de la Musique, Gadget takes the responsibility of sharing the music he loves very seriously. “Even if I'm not posting music, you recognise me as someone with deep knowledge of the scene,” he says. “My job is to play good music and educate people through sound.”

Part talent, part grind and entirely a product of a “don't-ask-don't-get” mentality, the past few months have seen him play everywhere from Paris and Milan to Lagos and Nairobi. Where to next? “Hopefully Ibiza, Coachella, and of course South Africa,” he enthuses. “Playing on line-ups with actual South African producers would feel like a real stamp of approval.” PANASHE NYADUNDU

For Parisian DJ and producer Bambi, the most important thing is patience. Dive into her catalogue of recorded mixes, radio broadcasts and live sets, and you’ll quickly realise her knack for slow-motion soundscaping. When she plays, lush dub techno ambience and sub-soaked downtempo tends to lead the way, cascading like fog down the side of a mountain, mesmerising, strange and irresistible. It means that by the time things fully kick into gear, which they inevitably do, you’re already immersed in the world she’s been building. Whether swerving toward deep psychedelic techno and pitched-down Goa trance, or through passages of percussive club stuff and dubstep, there’s an atmosphere first, bangers later mentality that keeps things thematically rooted and consistently captivating.

This ethos permeates her entire approach. “I tend to be quite an anxious person, so one of my main guiding principles is to enjoy the process rather than obsess over the outcome,” she says. “I constantly try to remind myself that it’s okay to take things slowly and evolve at my own pace.”

It’s an outlook that’s working. From a childhood spent listening to R&B and hip-hop at home, through years of dance classes and formative raves at the Bois de Vincennes park, to queer parties in NYC and learning to DJ during COVID, her love affair with club music has been one of gradual discovery and evolution. These days, she’s a resident at the Macadam club in Nantes, hosts a monthly show on Rinse France, and is a member of Paris’ HORS-SOL crew. She’s played everywhere from Nowadays in New York to Monument Festival in Norway with friend and frequent sparring partner, Beatrice M., and recently debuted on EMA’s Woozy label with the sublime ‘ Lotus Glow ’. After taking some time off in nature to recalibrate and renew her energies, she’s now in the midst of a busy summer that’s taking her to festivals such as Memori, Paradigm, Module, and Chimaera. “I feel like the music I play naturally resonates with outdoor and nature settings,” she says. “That environment makes such a difference to the whole experience.” EOIN MURRAY

“When you bring completely opposite styles together, there are two possibilities,” says Leo Cheng, AKA FINGERGAP, over the phone. “The first is that they create a new sensation. The second is that they cancel each other out, a bit like the flavours of a Strawberry Matcha Latte.”

The Hong-Kong based producer makes heartfelt electronic music by contrasting the romanticism of classic Canto-pop with the hard, syncopated beats of Chicago footwork. Inspired by the way DJ Rashad’s ‘Double Cup’ “sampled a lot of love songs and preserved their sentiment,” Cheng does the same with his choice of genre fusion, letting his silken pop vocals glide over rhythms imbued with a euphoric intensity.

Cantonese is a tonal language, so poetic lyrics were (and still are) an essential way for popstars to convey meaning. “If I want to say ‘I miss you’, I can’t just say that, because the song’s melody might not fit the Cantonese melody,” he explains. You’ll detect such flourishes in his tracks too, like recent single ‘One Bit Faster’, in which he sings words that translate to, “If I let go of the hand held tight now / The finger gap might rust.”

With more new music on the horizon, balancing Canto-pop’s strawberry sweetness with Chicago footwork’s matcha mettle is an ongoing experiment for Cheng. “But that’s the fun part,” he says. “Music creation is about curiosity for me.” JOSEPH FRANCIS

London’s SIMMS has only been mixing for five years and producing for three, but already he’s earned a rep as one of jungle’s most promising upstarts. He says he loves how “vast and diverse” the genre can be musically, and his output reflects that attitude. His sets are packed with modern cuts that nod to the old school, running the gamut from soulful to tearout. His range from the fun, R&B bootlegs of his ‘Pretty Ppl Love Jungle’ EP to the six lush tracks of his new ‘Traversal Tapes’ EP, which opens the scoring for Passionfruit Records and takes its cues from classic Good Looking Records.

“I wanted to recapture those feelings and shed light on the more atmospheric side of the genre,” he says of the release. Certainly there’s more than a hint of artists like LTJ Bukem and Big Bud in the cosmic pads and bubbling arps of tracks like ‘Perpetual Motion’ and ‘Lifestyle’, while the rolling ‘PIPE DREAM’ puts us in mind of Seba at his most hypnotic.

The icing on the cake is ‘Missing U’ a playful cover of Angie Stone that juxtaposes rough breaks with Lizzie Berchie’s silky vocal. Inspired by collectives like “Singularity, Distant Planet, Sexy Lady Massive, Rent Is Due, Hardcore Babes, Jungyals and Gays”, which he calls the “life force” of the UK scene, and with top secret plans for the year ahead, he’s one to keep a close eye on. BEN HINDLE

A Bolton girl through-and-through, Megan Wroe’s vocal garage can turn on the magic like prime Jay-Jay Okocha and lay down melodies as colourful as the neon above the legendary Ritzy.

Wroe’s desire to sing has been a constant since she was in the backseat of the car listening to her dad’s club compilation CDs as a kid. At university, her boyfriend introduced her to the new generation of bass and garage artists like Denham Audio and Groovy D, the latter of whom reached out to record her vocals. “I thought, ‘Yeah, you know what? I could see myself singing more dance tunes and learn to make them myself’,” she says.

What followed was a series of self-produced, organ-spritzed SoundCloud originals and collabs with Sheffield’s Silva Bumpa (including the bulletproof ‘Without U’), all leading to her fil rouge: Lovestep. A label, event series and the title of her latest EP, Lovestep echoes classic dance sounds, Big Ang bootlegs, Bodyrox’s electro house, ATB’s trance twang, filtered through NUKG sheen. “I’d love to be writing more songs for other artists as well as myself, and develop the Lovestep event,” she plots. “I’d also love to have a side project writing in a band, but who knows?” NATHAN EVANS