Midland (GB)

Although house, techno and dubstep are being woven ever more tightly together, few producers have the genuinely unbiased output of Midland. His music spans Washed Out, Stateless and Caribou remixes; house, garage and bassier fare (sometimes on the same EP); and it gets played—and praised by—Sasha and Braiden alike. Accordingly, the Leeds-based producer's DJ sets are just as unpredictable. "I love Lawrence, Bibio, Radiohead," says Harry Agius, enthusiastically. "And Workshop stuff, and Laid Records, plus I've grown up with a revered view of the R&S horse." As the list goes on, there's no unifying it, but one thing does become clear: Midland is still very much exploring the electronic world around him. He has no one agenda, no diehard principles. He's just making music that pleases him. "When I make music I don't go into it with any plans. It would be easy to think oh, 'Sasha's playing my tunes, I'll go off and make something he'd like,'" he explains, perched on a sofa in the house he shares with old friend and Hessle Audio chief, Ramadanman. "But I don't get that feeling. For me, when you're making music, you get to a stage in the song where it's cool; it's working, but unless I really get that feeling in my chest, that hairs-standing-on-end feeling, then I'm not really achieving my goal. Distance is a big part of it—leaving stuff a while before sending it off so you can listen to it in different contexts; see if it still works."