In Session: Dubfire

The EDM bubble's burst and and you can feel boredom with the drop-after-drop formula sweeping across the United States.

In Big Room's wake has arrived a healthy interest in darker sounds as well as a rise in boutique festivals that book underground DJs. One such event is CRSSD, where Dubfire will headline later this autumn. He's become a talisman of the type of techno that the US' maturing dance music audience is gravitating towards. They crave dance music that's fresh to them and artists like the long-serving Iranian American are the perfect guide.

It's perhaps a happy coincidence that the arrival of a doe-eyed batch of electronic music connoisseurs collided with the monumental introduction of his dubfire:liveHYBRID concept, an eye-catching amalgamation of Dubfire's special breed of techno, his invested interest in technology and the coming together of both. It's an "assault on the senses", as he puts it himself, that cuts out the element of playing other people's music and allows Dubfire to showcase his own catalogue through and through. Though HYBRID made its first debut two years ago, 2016 alone has seen Dubfire bring his mesmerizing display to Movement in Detroit and arguably the largest stage for innovative music performance, Coachella.

"While it hasn’t been easy to convince promoters and venues to book the show due to the production commitments as well as financial strains (for me and them), I’ve been very pleased with the progress and how hopefully, I’ve done my bit to elevate the 'techno' genre to greater heights," Ali said of his project and its journey so far. HYBRID is set to officially retire in April 2017, making way for what seems like an obscenely overdue debut album and yet another live counterpart to come.