Aquarian

Nearly a decade and a half into his career, Aquarian is as restless as ever. The Canadian-born, Berlin-based artist’s discography is liable to give genre purists indigestion, but the music itself moves with a brutal clarity: raw, urgent, emotionally charged club music built from unorthodox combinations and served straight to the body. Recent years have seen Aquarian sharpen his hybrid instincts into increasingly high-pressure club forms. His acclaimed Dekmantel EPs contorted wrong-footed IDM, progressive trance euphoria, and French filter house into thrilling new shapes. His latest release, A Rush of Fat to the Head, marks his first full EP for the zeitgeist-defining Colombian label TraTraTrax. A tribute to the label’s Global South–centering club vision, the record is a pressure-cooked collision of baile funk, dembow, neurofunk, tearout dubstep, ballroom, and industrial menace, with a hefty side of Wot Do U Call It? The result is at once thrillingly hedonistic, menacingly dystopian, and unmistakably Aquarian. As a DJ, Aquarian threads fast techno, pitched-up gqom, prog-garage, baile funk, footwork, jungle, power house, and Italo disco into propulsive, unpredictable sets. His DJ and live performances have been showcased at Sónar by Night, Pukkelpop, Dekmantel, Rewire, Bangface, MUTEK, Positive Education, CTM Festival, Berghain, Tresor, and many more.