Erik Strauss

Erik Strauss is an Italian DJ and composer, born in Treviso in 1984. His DJ aesthetic revisits the performance aesthetic of David Bowie, a deeply inspiring artist who symbolized constant renewal and experimentation. Erik listens to the jazz of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk, as well as the electronic music of Aphex Twin, Ricardo Villalobos, and Floating Points. His first EPs, "Untitled" (2017), "All This Blue Is About Happiness" (2020), and "I Am Sure I Am Happy" (2021), as well as the album "Urbanature" (2020), delineate a trip-hop/downtempo period, drawing on the influence of artists such as Massive Attack, Portishead, and Tricky. In 2021, with Shawn Lee's approval, he released an instrumental cover of "Kiss the Sky" under the original author's label, Ubiquity Records. The album FTUR (2024) led him to further experiment, fusing his previous beats with sounds that oscillate between ambient and IDM, a genre he approached in an "embryonic" way on his first independent EP, "White Paper" (2011). But it is with "METAFISICA" (2025), a single that consolidates the search for new sounds, that he outlines a path inspired by philosophical concepts, by the expression of the ES, a term that includes the initials of his stage name.