Get to know Hugo Massien, the UK artist splicing house and techno with hardcore

There might not appear to be much common ground between the UK folk scene and its hardcore continuum, but both have played a role in making Hugo Massien the artist he is today.

“My first introduction to music was going to folk festivals with my parents, he says. “Getting into d’n’b when I got older was rebelling against that a bit.”

Growing up in suburban Reading, Massien felt the ripples of movements coming out of nearby London as a teen. He first fell for d’n’b, but when dubstep came along he felt he’d finally found a scene he could fully immerse himself in.

“Dubstep happened at the right time for me,” he says. “A load of us from Reading started travelling to London for FWD>> on a weekly basis.”

Dubstep had such an impact that he decided to go to uni in Bristol, hoping to get involved in the city’s fertile bass scene. But once there he found it a case of right place, wrong time.

“Tectonic and Punch Drunk were massive for me, so Bristol had this magnetism,” he explains. “I turned up in 2009 and dubstep had kind of reached its natural conclusion. Everyone in the city seemed to be into house!”