Elliot Adamson's thunderous house is making an Impact

Impact is a series that's dedicated to profiling new artists who are about to turn dance music on its head. Next up: Elliot Adamson

These days, the way artists promote themselves and their music is key and the digital age can be pretty unforgiving if they don't do things right. Elliot Adamson is someone who seems to have found the perfect formula in terms of his profile and his music. The 21-year-old has been rumbling away for a few years now but the last 12 months has been somewhat explosive for the outspoken young gun.

His SoundCloud is a treasure trove of bumping house that comes with a sense of rowdiness coursing through its veins and popular remixes of 'Strings Hoe' by Dizzee Rascal and 'Enfants' by Ricardo Villalobos have caught a lot of attention. His edit of 'Weak Become Heroes' has amassed over 110,000 plays but that's no big deal for Adamson. His tactic seems to be to drop something wild on socials and SoundCloud, stir up a certain amount of buzz and just when people are getting really excited, he takes the tracks down and moves onto his next club weapon.

After catching the attention of Patrick Topping, Jackmaster and Eats Everything, three artists who he's now collaborated with in one form or another, his popularity has risen beyond the scores of SoundCloud listens that he commands. His sets are high-octane exercises in thunderous tech-house, techno and, of course, a light sprinkling of classics.

One look at his Facebook reveals two things. One, that he has an outrageous amount of life-affirming gigs coming up, including a support slot for Sven Väth, appearances at Parklife and Defected in Croatia and more headline gigs than ever before. The second thing you notice is that he really doesn't give a fuck. His opinions run riot, they mock the seriousness of the music game and they portray a young artist who's thriving with the spotlight shone on him. Much like his associates Eats and Jackmaster, his online and real life persona is just as loud as his music.

With over 18 hours of unreleased music in his locker, an arsenal of releases coming via Edible and Me Me Me and more ambition than you can shake a stick at, it's only a matter of time before Adamson reaches the dizzy heights of the artists that are whole-heartedly backing him.

You grew up super close to Newcastle, Sunderland and Durham – what was it like musically?

I'm actually from a town called Houghton-le-Spring in the middle of them all so I'm actually a bit of a mutt. Houghton is kind of a void in terms of music culture, unless you count the sounds of MC Tazo & MC Ace blasting from car stereos, which you shouldn't, but some groups of people are now getting into house music which is wicked to see. I haven't been out in Sunderland in a while, but it was very small town 'Avicii, with a bit of MK and lots of three trebles for a fiver offers' which is what I'm actually into so I think it's great.

The Haze lads over there are doing bits, but most of the time when I'm out in Sunderland I get dragged to a Wetherspoons by my friends from school and get unfathomably drunk to make the music more enjoyable. Not trying to send shots at 'spoons here since it is actually mint but: Brexit. Durham has beer pong - better than it sounds even though I'm shit at it. Newcastle is great, it's kind of the small city with big legs, it feels like home. I feel like it's about the party in Newcastle though, we went to parties with stacked line-ups loads of times and just ended up in the least busy room chatting shit and cracking on.

We used to go to Loop every week until licensing cracked on to it and now the weekends are a bit less structured, I've had them coming out to shows round the country which usually winds up with everyone real pissed and a group of radge Geordies making sure the booth is boxed off from people trying to charge their phones. I actually thought Newcastle was a bit crap until I moved away from it but that's what it's usually like with families I reckon.

When did you start going raving? What were your first clubbing experiences, from sneaking into raves and consuming live music.

Oh I'm actually not too sure, I think I was DJing before I was raving which is quite a strange one. I was holding down a room two residency at a monthly event at Digital when I was 17, no idea if the promoter knew how old I was but I'd always get to the club before the door staff were there and sneak in through the smoking area so they didn't stop me playing.

I went to see Boddika and Joy O when I was 16 with the local shopkeeper who I worked with doing a paper round, which is a bit mental in hindsight, but I think he thought he was going to a bottle service club and not into a proper techno rave – which it was, obviously.

You've received loads of props from people like Jackmaster, Eats Everything and Patrick Topping. How did that come about? When did your relationships with them build and how did they grow?

I first knew Patrick through the promoter I was doing that room two residency for back when I was 17! Might sound like I'm giving that promoter props but let's not make it sound like that 'cause he wouldn't pay me anything or cover my taxis so I had to lend money off my mam to be able to play for him - bellend! I came out to see Patrick play a show in Sunderland and met him for the first time; I can remember standing next to him when he was DJing because I didn't know anyone else in the club, playing all of his productions and blowing my absolute mind. It reminds me of this time last year when I saw him play Bleaker's 'Jam' and it blew my mind so much I swear I started talking in tongues.

Patrick blew up and we started talking less, I'd start talking less too in that situation 'cause I can be quite annoying, but we ended up linking back up when I'd travel back to Newcastle to get my haircuts done and time that conveniently with when his Motion parties were. He started playing my tunes from when I made that Ricardo Villalobos 'Enfants' edit and then couldn't get me out of his inbox from then really. I met Jackmaster at a Motion party too, quite a funny story where I spent half an hour looking for a bottle of vodka for him and we wound up getting quite rowdy as a result of said bottle. He hasn't been able to get me out his hair since and he'd probably regret meeting me if I didn't make that Dizzee Rascal edit, which was actually his idea to make!

I met Eats 'cause Patrick was playing my tunes when they were touring America last year – we've just come back from touring America actually, which was pretty cool, we had a game where we kept trying to grab each other's crotches, so you could say that we're pretty tight now.

What's your relationship specifically like with Patrick? How was the b2b at WHP and how did it come about?

It's mainly Kanye West memes actually. There was a time when I'd add him into Facebook groups like Buckfast Talk UK/EU, Wetherspoons Talk, Greggs Talk, Facebook and so on and he said he was gonna stop playing my records, but he must've been joking since people only come out to his shows to hear my tunes anyway. You could say that I made that bitch famous.

What's your release policy, you seem to wait to release a lot of your bangers. Seems like that's the key to your success right now.

I think I'm actually a bit scared of releasing music in a way. I see loads of people accidentally wind up with a reputation as an X label, Y label guy and loads of labels fall victim to being the 'sound of their time' and drop off when that sound inevitably changes. I think my release policy is to release things with the right people at the right time, just so far the stars haven't aligned much on that and I wanted to get my management in place until we moved forward on releases. I have 18/19 hours of music under my name and various aliases in my Rekordbox, and I've been through a few different laptops so that 18/19 hours is music that I'm actually playing out – which is pretty mental.

It seems you're very much a product of the digital age. Do you think it's easier to get noticed that way with labels?

I think labels are just becoming a little less relevant overall, for a minute anyway. It used to be labels that broke an artist, then it was the blogs, then it was the labels again, now it's the fucking 'Identification of Music Group on Facebook', it's absolutely daft. Getting your audience is definitely done on the ground now and then labels will peak their ideas once that audience is in place. No matter how good your music is, if you have less than 100 followers on SoundCloud you're gonna have a very difficult time getting good labels picking your music up. Most of gaining that audience for me probably came from having the right people playing the records – mostly Patrick, thanks Patrick – and then people realising they can't get them. You can't really be a flash in the pan until you get in the pan, so to speak.

You banter is pretty decent and you have a very strong online persona. Is that conscious or is that just how you want to be?

My New Year's resolution was actually to talk to people a bit more this year, it should've actually been "stop being a twat on Twitter". I think I'm just quite an open person, I used to get a load of stick from people saying "wind your neck in on the internet", "stop being like that", "you're turning off people from working with you" etc, but for some reason they aren't in my inbox with that kind of crack like they were last year. Maybe I have piped down, maybe not, I don't really know. I read somewhere once that embarrassing yourself can make people feel more open when meeting you, and I definitely do a lot of embarrassing stuff and people are definitely really open when meeting me so maybe it's that. I've never met someone and have them greet me like "hey, asshole" – not yet, anyway.

What's coming up with Edible and Man Power's label?

We're doing some music together and that! Two EPs out in the next three months with those guys, exploring two different veins of my work, really excited to be putting out some of my weirder productions with Me Me Me and people have been waiting bloody ages for that 'Still Workin' EP. This won't be the last time working with either label too.

What gigs are you excited about?

All the ones I can't talk about!

What's your best joke?

It's a common misconception that I'm actually funny.

Anything else you want to add?

Whatever you've heard or read about orgies and drugs, it's all true.

Funster is Mixmag's Deputy Digital Editor. Follow him on Twitter