With day one of 2025 quickly approaching, we have rounded a bunch of festivals and shows where your favorite drum & bass and dance music maestros will wreak havoc!
Zhu – Fresh Start (San Francisco)
San Francisco’s 40,000-square-foot culture hub, The Midway, concludes this year and begins 2025 with Fresh Start, a two-day block party stapled with heavy hitters from all channels of dance music. Indexing multiple stages and tapping into a new venue space, this robust line-up brags Charlotte de Witte, Cloonee, DJ Pee .Wee (Anderson .Paak), Noizu, Azzecca, Chris Lake, Zhu, and more.
House/deep house great Steven Zhu hits Fresh Start on day 2 – New Year’s Day – sitting atop a card that is loaded with producers Chris Lake, Justin Jay, Austin Millz, J. Worra, and Disco Dom. Zhu will be seen performing a sunset session as well as at a ‘BLACKLIZT’ afterparty along with Odd Mob and Emanate.
Chase & Status – Field Day Festival (Sydney, Australia)
‘Backbone’ connoisseurs and crafters of the inescapable ‘Baddadan, baddadan, baddadan’ earworm, UK duo Chase & Status leap to Aussie shores on New Year’s Day, trouncing upon Field Day dance festival in Sydney. Stamping their presence at The Domain in Sydney, a nearly 50,000-capacity area, the winners of the BRIT Awards‘ 2024 Producers of the Year will make their first appearance of 2025 as part of an impending Australia tour, where they will also perform at all three legs of the Wildlands Festival in Adelaide, Perth, and Brisbane on New Year’s Eve.
The drum & bass juggernauts share the card with Pendulum and Luude (b2b set), RL Grime, horsegiirL, Wilkinson, and English DnB vocalist and songwriter Issey Cross to name a few. Attendees will have to choose their allegiances or alternate between camps periodically at this venue as Chase & Status and German DJ, singer, and songwriter horsegiirL will both be performing closing sets at the festival.
Sasha (Vagalume, Tulum)
UK’s Renaissance Records and SINNER Tulum team up for the first time, orchestrating a New Year’s Day showdown unlike any before at Vagalume in Tulum, Mexico. Welsh DJ/record producer and foremost Renaissance habitant Alexander Paul Coe, who goes by Sasha, takes over the dance floor with his distinguished sound, which folds acappella, acid house, and piano house. Earning the top spot for DJ Mag’s Top 100 DJs in the year 2000, Sasha throws down folds of house, techno, and trance during his dance sessions.
Sasha will be joined by the music director at Vagalume, Antonio Vite, Italian music producer Miganova, (co-founders of SINNER Music), Mexican DJ Mehill, Renaissance’s Gabriel I, and Marcus James. Sasha also made an NYE appearance at Vagalume last year notching up party levels alongside Vite, Miganova, Negrinm, and DJ team Laion and Joselito, collectively known as Nitos Tulum.
Tickets to Renaissance x Sinner with Sasha in Vagalume, Mexico are brought to you by The Ticket Fairy
Andy C – No One But Us (Perth, Australia)
A true savant of drum & bass and co-founder of RAM Records, Andy C jets off to western Australia for his first performance of 2025, emanating from Langley Park in Perth. His appearance is fastened to the upcoming No One But Us multi-city spectacle fanned over Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and Sydney. This concert on January 1 sees the Englishman flanked by artists Bou, Dimension, Hybrid Minds, Shy FX, Alix Perez, and Lens.
Highlighting an interview with DJ Will Spin, when asked about the best country to DJ in, Andy C described playing in Australia on New Year’s as “incredible.” He stated, “A few years ago, you could say that maybe one country was better than another: the UK was hot, Canada picked it up really early, and Germany, and then it spread to America, then Japan, and Australia. I was in Australia for New Year’s and that was just incredible”
Solarstone – Trance Sanctuary presents Euphoria (London)
Ireland’s trance music frontrunner Richard Mowatt, under the alias Solarstone, ships his brand of progressive and uplifting trance concoctions to Trance Sanctuary’s first event of the year Euphoria NYD, which also marks 25 years since the first Euphoria CD was released.
Beaming from the Steel Yard in London, Solarstone will upturn the main room, paying tribute to winged artists who have contributed to Euphoria’s history. Darren Tate Music (DT8 Project), Dave Pearce, Adam White, Moussa Clarke [PF Project], and Mark Landragin are chalked in to perform while Solarstone will also shake up Room 2 with a complete trance session.
Hyping the significance of this showcase, Solarstone took to social media and shared, “The Euphoria album series was a very important part of my journey in the world of trance and I know for a fact that they provided a soundtrack to the lives of many people throughout those years. I’m really honored to have been asked to play at this special celebration!”
AMÉMÉ (Bonbonniere, Tulum)
Bonbonniere’s prominent scarlet red hue will acquire a smear of deep house, dance, and juicy house blends on the first day of 2025 as Benin-born Afro-house flagbearer AMÉMÉ (Hubert Sodogandji) makes this Caribbean getaway his first stop of the new year. The Brooklyn/Berlin-based AMÉMÉ visits Mexico as part of a travel itinerary that also contains a New Year’s Eve performance at Mayan Warrior in Tulum alongside Salomé Le Chat and DJ Omri.
Talking about Afro-house and its prominence worldwide with Grammy.com, AMÉMÉ expressed, “The next big move that I hope happens and I hope I am a part of is for the Afro-house world to collide with the Afrobeats world. I think that’s when major things are gonna start happening. Afrobeat is massive on a commercial and pop level.”
The parties continue into the new year with Bonbonniere sheltering Hot Since 82, Maceo Plex, Ancestral Soul, and Carlita in the following days.
Tickets to AMÉMÉ in Bonbonniere, Tulum, are available on The Ticket Fairy
DJ EZ (London)
UK garage powerhouse figure Otis Roberts, best recognized by his alias DJ EZ, will present yet another marathon set, taking over the E1 dance club in London on NYD. This DJ session, Z-Uncut, commences from 4 PM onwards and spans 8 hours in duration. DJ EZ has invited a motley of MCs, namely Viper, CKP, Creed, PSG, and MC DT, to drum up the energy levels at this venue.
EZ had previously piloted a massive 24-hour non-stop live-streamed DJ set in 2016 to raise funds for Aid of Cancer Research UK in 2016.
I Hate Models – Fury Festival (Barcelona)
Independently handled hard techno festival Fury lodges a 12-hour spectacle on January 1 at the Palau Olimpic de Badalona in Barcelona, Spain. This event collects techno, hardstyle, hardcore, and hard-techno stalwarts to deliver a thumping, day-long rave session. Headling this showcase is French export I Hate Models, the stage name of Guillaume Labadie, who thrives in the realm of dark techno, trance, and industrial techno sounds.
Finding his way to music in middle school, the DJ/producer adopted the moniker ‘I Hate Models’ because of his non-conforming approach to rigid norms or genres, thus lifting the lid on any restrictions laid by them. His debut album ‘L’Age Des Metamorphoses’ was released in 2019. ‘I Hate Models’ has a busy December schedule, consisting of ten shows across Europe before making his way to Fury. Techno acts Dyen, Kozlov, Gaston Zani, Mad Dog Revenga, and Suttlek are also plastered on the bill for the show.
Adana Twins – Day One (Cape Town, South Africa)
Melodic techno and indie electro pulses arrive in South Africa as German duo Adana Twins flail their brand of deep, dark, and experimental house-inspired productions at Cabo Beach Club, Cape Town. The pair are locked in to get behind the decks for Day One, an avant-garde New Year’s Day celebration by the waterfront hosted by event community Music People.
Co-headlined by Swiss house music whiz Jimi Jules, the artist line-up also features acts BLOEM, Kyle Watson, CLINT LEE, Cole Knight, Dean Fuel, Sonic Bloom, duo The Fogshow, and Ricardo da Costa. Adana Twins also take over Amnesia Ibiza in Cape Town, a day prior for a year-ending show.
Fatboy Slim (Savaya, Bali)
English record producer and stalwart of the big beat genre Norman Quentin Cook, best known as Fatboy Slim, begins the New Year by leading the masses literally on the edge at Savaya, Bali. Voted DJ Mags’ number 1 club in Asia, Savaya welcomes the likes of Aaron Sevilla, Sonny Fodera, Monolink, Artbat, The Martinez Brothers, and Black Coffee.
In addition to his Rules of DJing post, which lists points such as “never wear shoes” and “Hawaiian shirts always,” speaking about his sets, Fatboy Slim conveyed to Billboard Magazine in 2023, “I look at the crowd and feel the atmosphere and the evening and take a little mental snapshot. Maybe everyone’s like ‘What the hell’s he doing? Is he having some sort of major panic attack?’ But it’s a good thing.”
Interplanetary Criminal – Let Them Eat Cake (Melbourne, Australia)
Proudly representing all forms of UKG on his recent visits across the United Kingdom, Europe, and North and South America, Manchester-born DJ/producer Zach Bruce aka Interplanetary Criminal has his sights set on the land down under towards the tail end of 2024. The ‘B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All)’ beatmaker has seemingly hit all the right spots in his tour of AUNZ, occupying slots at Hidden Valley, Hidden Lakes, Lost Paradise, and Electric Circus music festivals.
On January 1, the UK garage trailblazer makes way for heritage-listed Werribee Mansion Grounds in Melbourne for a festival that sits at the crossroads of electronic music, culture, and arts – Let Them Eat Cake. Interplanetary Criminal is currently the only international act from the UK on the banner, with a chunk of Australian artists filling up places. Electronic acts Colette, Jennifer Cardini, JYOTY, KETTAMA, KI/KI, Flansie Moktar, Pretty Girl, Roza Terenzi, General Zeng, and more are listed.
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