Interplanetary Criminal infiltrated the mainstream, now he’s shaping the underground

For all the cigarette-wielding, aura-maxing on social media and in the booth, here’s Interplanetary Criminal, dressed in grey sweats, signet rings off and renting a Pirate Studio room by the hour like the rest of us. He’s meekly sitting on the one chair in the room, lightyears away from the image of a superstar DJ, taking a break from prepping for his set in the Mixmag Lab tonight, which he dubs “the sweatbox” following his 2022 appearance which was dubbed “the hottest room in the world” by just about everyone in attendance . “It’s an hour-and-a-half, which is perfect, but if I’ve been blessed with it,” he enunciates, “I should practice it.”

The weekend before was a homecoming of sorts at his favourite stage of his favourite venue in Manchester: Concourse at The Warehouse Project. This stage is usually an intimate alternative to the wide-open Depot stage, but as Interplanetary Criminal steps on at 8:30PM, right as the biggest swell of ravers came into the warehouse, it becomes a different kind of beast. The place is suddenly teeming to the point where navigation in and out is like old Black Friday videos of consumer carnage, set to IPC’s soundtrack of bumpy garage. Best of luck grabbing a drink now.

Perched on the side of the stage and through the grassland of people, I can just about see the DJ himself, ironically in a camouflage cap. He looks at the rows of 10 mixers in front of him, then up to the flashing lights revealing brick. The crowd is his broth, and they’re waiting to be brought to boil. When he cues up an unreleased edit of General Levy’s ‘Incredible’, the first impact lands warmly, but not rapturously. Come the second, as he puts it, “that’s when the vocal comes in and everyone just went mad.”

Scenes like this have earned 31-year-old Zachary Bruce the itle of the foremost UK garage tastemaker of the 2020s. He’s a figurehead for the Northern club sounds that lurked at poster-only parties for years when they were deemed “dead” in the South of England, starting with speed garage, then bassline, hard house and donk. But on his travels around the world, he’s clued into the numerous exciting international garage scenes in development and platforming them like no-one else. 

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In a fast-fashion DJ culture that tosses out tunes after a few months, his timesplitting productions live and die by that which came before it — enough horsepower to satiate the Gen Zers, but classy enough to be seamlessly mixed with hidden gems from 25 years ago. He’s capable of reviving a long-forgotten speedy g whizzer from Jeremy Sylvester’s G.O.D. alias, or flipping a 2001 Public Demand twelvy and turning it into a UK Number One. He probably has your favourite dubplate, that you’ve spent years scouring for, sitting at home or in his travel case.

On the decks, he operates with the coolness that comes with knowing your history. In person, his brain is a meeting point for an absurd amount of labels, artists and tunes, which seem to pour out of him. Ask him a question, and his mind unravels into a series of tangents like an accordion folder. There’s room for some Northern sarcasm, too. “My grandma is fully Singaporean, and my mum lived there until she was 15,” he says. “Out of all the places in the world my family could have lived, they picked Blackburn,” he snarks.

Bruce’s upbringing was marked by movement, born in Blackburn, then moving above a chippy in Liverpool, before shifting to Manchester, then eventually settling in Bolton at six years old. As a kid, Bruce threw himself into multiple subcultures. He wanted to wear super baggy T-shirts like his favourite rappers, then a few years later, played guitar in a metal band with “a bunch of older guys - dead weird but harmless”. Bolton, the one of the biggest towns in the UK by population, was less than accommodating to his urge to stand out. “It can be quite a small-minded place,” he says frankly. “Being Asian, there is a sense of not belonging. There’s a lot of that, and that was such a big thing growing up, this identity. I didn’t know where I sat.”

Bolton in the 2000s was soundtracked by the litany of commercial UK garage hits like the rest of the UK, something Bruce notes. But more locally, he was raised in a time where the Northern club continuum met the early internet, creating local heroes out of brick phone videos of kids rhyming over donk. “The Blackout Crew were huge when I was in high school,” he references the omnipotent ‘Put a Donk On It’ hit-makers. “All the girls were obsessed with these MCs. Blackout Crew, MC Smally from Wigan. There were under-18 nights where they performed.” It carried on past his school years. “We’d go to [Bolton nightclub] J2 and on the top floor, every single tune was donk edits,” he recalls. “That USB with all those tunes must be worth so much because you can’t find these songs anywhere. They were really of their era.” You get the sense that he’s spent years tracking them down, then chasing the feeling through his music.

A turning point came when he started absorbing what he calls the “golden era of deep house and post-future garage music” around 2011/12: Hessle Audio, Hemlock, Swamp 81 sitting closer to what was dubbed “post-dubstep”; Aus, Dogmatik and Dungeon Meat which leaned more towards house; Anjunadeep for his fix of trance; and so on. The speed and density of his knowledge accumulation was down to formative car stereo rituals forged with his best mates. “We were going around in the car to moors and other scenic areas in Bolton that I guess could have been dogging sites,” he says, tickled. “But we used to go, smoke weed and listen to burnt CDs I’d made. We were doing that every single night.” On Fridays, they would switch to BBC Radio 1 and follow on for six hours as Skream & Benga teed up Pete Tong, who then introduced the Essential Mix afterwards. Those mates are still his best mates today.

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Gradually, their weekends morphed into trips to Manchester, as it was only 20 minutes on the train. Bruce found himself itching to go to the city time and time again. “Everyone is honed in on their own thing in Manchester,” he says, making blinkers with his hands. “I could wear baggy jeans and people wouldn’t be eyeing me up like in Bolton. That’s what I love about it, no-one paid no mind to that.”

By 2016, he made the move permanent, working in the Northern Quarter’s fashion institution Oi Polloi (RIP). He had already begun to produce his own club music, releasing spooky two-stepper ‘ALLOW YOURSELF’ in 2015 before pivoting to lo-fi house, which was all the rage. His 2018 cassette-only album ‘Get Money’ - featuring material stretching back to 2016 - blended cloudy breaks and sluggish garage with tape saturation and samples from the rap music he grew up loving.

Taking a step back once the lo-fi movement died down, he circled back to the likes of El-B and Jeremy Sylvester, connecting it to the future garage and deep house of his gallivanting car stereo years. “The skippy elements and vocal cuts just felt very UK centric,” he reflects. “You could almost tell the artist was British from that.” Manchester label Dansu Discs reached out about putting some tracks on wax, and the result was ‘Confused’, a flex of Bruce’s atmosphere-building which sharply recalls MJ Cole as phasing synth chords render vocalist Amethyst a figment of a dream. It was the kind of deep two-step you’d find on a white label with no information that goes for £75 on Discogs. Quality, but, at least in the beginning, anonymous. “Something that was really important was not letting anyone know what I was doing in the beginning,” he says. “I just wanted to do this and if it takes off, it takes off.”

Around this time, it started to take off. Spending lockdown hoovering up obscure garage records with the likes of Bristol-based DJ Cosworth and Copenhagen’s Main Phase, he gathered steam on the Bristol label Shall Not Fade and its garage-only sub-label Time Is Now. “I was starting to meet people in Manchester, studio and radio stations that would be playing bassline and this old speed garage,” his train of thought stops for a moment. “But not the serious stuff - the fun speed garage coming from the North. That’s when I took notice of it.”

That’s the thing - while garage may have been “dead” in the South of England, it became a language in the North. Speed garage never went away, and in fact its warpy shenanigans formed part of the basis of 4x4 bassline in the mid-2000s. “Because of what I knew of the fun donk stuff, and you’d hear this same attitude in speed garage, it just makes sense,” Bruce adds. That regional heritage shined on Bruce, whose increasingly guns-blazing productions were turning heads while wider tastes aligned around the history in his record collection, making Interplanetary Criminal a fitting spearhead for the fresh wave of interest in speed garage. Doing it all from Manchester, a focal point for the collision of these North-built hybrid scenes, helped build his figurehead status. “I’ve always been proud of being Northern, and I like the idea of when people think of a city, they think of an artist, you know?”

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Teaming up with digging partners DJ Cosworth and Main Phase to form the one-off-release Ruff Kru supergroup in 2022, Interplanetary Criminal would continue creating with the latter as ATW (All The Wicked). Crowds across the world went ballistic as the Arabian plucked string on ‘100%’ buries itself quickly into an unexpected sandstorm of bassline heat, the rolling ragga vocal sample on top aking the tempo feel faster than it is. “I can't even find the original vocal for that one,” he confesses. “It was just so in the moment, those tracks just came together so naturally. It’s so interesting, the way that we cut up the vocals. We really pushed the boundary with some of those tunes.”

This wouldn’t yet give him a swarming fanbase that could fill fields, but a UK Number One sure would. In the summer of 2022, ‘B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All)’ with Eliza Rose grew from the most essential garage tune of the year to a historic UK chart-topper, sealing it in time as the irrefutable song of that summer. “I keep seeing people posting about the summer of 2022, you know?,” he bobs his head, amused at how it’s already reached the nostalgia point just three years on. “To be honest with you, sometimes I have to remind people that I did that, you know.”

How you wear a Number One can define the rest of your career, with the industry machine more than capable of chewing up and spitting out promising talents. “It was such a blur, because you got to see a world that you never think you're going to enter, and it's very cutthroat. The real music industry is a scary place,” Bruce says, alluding to complications behind the scenes without divulging further. Ultimately, he wanted to keep on feeding dancefloors, and was conscious of side-stepping the one-hit-wonder tag. “You can be the sort of artist that really holds on to that one song your whole life, and that's really not what I wanted,” he says.

A packed tour schedule in the ensuing years cemented IPC as one of garage’s top-tier DJs, becoming one of the first of the new school to tour the US amid dates across five continents. The newfound prominence saw him tapped to curate a Locked On compilation ‘All Thru the Night’ in 2023, establishing his scene-leader role with a showcase of “every crucial artist” in contemporary garage, operating as his own RIYL list. In 2024 he rejoined the major label world, singing with Sony sublabel Room 2. Since then, his tracks have largely courted original vocals from the worlds of UK drill, dancehall and Toronto rap. ‘Races’ is an ode to Manchester’s history of icy bass music, with Harlem Spartans rapper Blanco staying atop like he’s rapping to keep warm. ‘No Time’ places Canadian rapper SadBoi on a ‘Brat’-adjacent update of the electro-house of Mason and Ian Carey Project, earning a Juno award for Dance Recording of the Year. “What I love about [my collaborators] is that they all built their own thing,” he says about his choice in artists. “And I feel like I built my thing, you know? So the collaborations make sense.”

Then there’s ‘Slow Burner’, a misty-eyed convergence of organs, piano and Reese bass. The way he samples a verse from Original Koffee wraps his story and his greatest dancefloor memories all into one: “I don’t play / you will never ever find another like me / you should know you made my day / and I lost my woes when you came my way”. Its sincere simplicity makes the song effective as an earnest percy, and it’s a skill he’s learned when making tracks.

“When I’m in the process of making tunes, sometimes it's very simplistic and I'm like, ‘oh god’,” he says, hand clutching the back of his neck at the expected reception from the heads to a track that wields only its most essential parts. But he’s learned to be somewhat comfortable with a straightforward composition and arrangement, as it often makes for the most effective results. “I was at the White Hotel for New Year’s Eve a couple years’ back, and I remember hearing a track that was just a bassline, a really fun little synth to mimic the bassline,” he pinches the air in one hand, “and an acapella over it. In that moment, it switched my brain. It was the sickest thing I'd ever heard. The way the song makes you feel means more than anything, you know?”

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Though homage and simplicity are vital to his music, originality is the name of his game, particularly in a garage scene that has been dominated by bootleg culture. “The genre was getting saturated, almost everyone was making speed garage - I already had an amazing edit of a song, and now there's about 10,” he laughs. “You mentioned me being a figurehead earlier, right? With that, you have to change what the norm is.”

This mission is what powers Interplanetary Criminal’s DJing. His Rinse FM residency is deceptive in its range, as can stumble into the raptor house of DJ Babatr as easily as he can throw on a deep cut from Depeche Mode. He has an acute sense of when to really dig into the archives and deploys left turns as smoothly as a lighter flick.

Case in point: his 2023 Dekmantel set, in which he gave the Amsterdam crowd a clinic of classic Dutch hard house all on vinyl. Folding in Big Ang edits and piano-licked breaks from GutterFunk, his play of Crisp & Chewy’s ‘Rockin the House’ sent a camera-shaking force of limbs into the air as though Ajax had just scored. It was a moment where young fans of IPC were being introduced to a style they weren’t born to see its pomp, and older heads were left dumbfounded by his ball knowledge. “People mention that set to me all the time and there were some issues with that,” he says, beginning to think about the headphone latency and monitor feedback that led to him having to mix without headphones, “but the only thing that I really hold onto was the track selection. I think I absolutely nailed that.”

In the UK, hard house is yet another club style that has been kept alive by Northern institutions like Tidy Trax long after its supposed heyday. It links to IPC’s North West club roots perfectly, no less because the mid-beat bounce of Dutch hard house would later be turbocharged into the donk rhythm. Many producers were inspired by how IPC reinvigorated the Northern club continuum to the masses by merging it with garage, rippling into a wave of hard house garage fusions from the likes of Soul Mass Transit System, N4tee, Auramatic, Mance and more. Last December, IPC hit with late track-of-the-year contender ‘YOSEMITE’. Working with KETTAMA to imbue seed garage bass with trance euphoria and a seraphic vocal sample.

“Hard house is so similar to speed garage,” his analytical brain whirrs once more. “But the hard house I grew up buying was a lot of the Dutch stuff, which was so militant, so serious. The hard house that comes out of the speed garage scene is very fun and inspired by [the likes of] Club Caviar.” That he is able to spark new ideas and have people take note is a great power used responsibly, and according to him, is owed to the healthy creative place the UK scene is in. “Everything’s merging into one, and it's just the sickest thing,” he says. “To the point where I’m able and allowed to play all these tunes, you know, I’d say the UK is up there right now.”

Interplanetary Criminal flexes his curatorial powers further alongside his kindred spirit Main Phase with ATW Records. Originally a self-release imprint, the label has transformed into one of the most globe-trotting, visually recognisable labels in garage in the past year. Hurtling towards its 50th release after having just two at the start of 2024, ATW has showcased the UK’s newest wonderkids, embraced the newfound international strains of garage — the madhouse bumpy garage of Melbourne, as well as techy Argentinian garage from Pablo Aristimuño — and platformed regional heroes of bassline such as Jamie Duggan and IPC’s favourite, Big Ang. 

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It’s all in service to the history that’s sculpted him. “I think about old bassline labels from Birmingham, like Ecko Records, or in Sheffield, you've got Reflective,” he names. “If you want to hear that era, go to those two labels. We want ATW to be that for today’s era in 20 years’ time.” He admits to regularly geeking out over the look of and names on the grid of releases on the label Bandcamp page, but not every release has gone to plan. “ATW003 was [originally] a huge record of Shaggy ‘It Wasn't Me’ edits that was meant to come out,” he lets slip. “It never did, because we tried to be professional about it, but couldn't sample it. It was four edits from Big Ang, Introspekt, me & Main Phase and Soul Mass Transit System.” I wipe a tear from my eye.

Sealing a massive 2025, Interplanetary Criminal is planning one of the biggest UK shows of his career, a sold-out, headline show at Brixton Academy on November 29. “I’m worried in a good way,” he says. “Worry is good, because it’s not often that you feel like that. It’s sort of like when you’ve got your first DJ set - you’re nervous, but it’s a good energy to have.” While a storied live venue, IPC is no live show artist, and he doesn’t intend to rock-ify his catalogue. Rather, he is thinking how the venue can be shaped to be more club-like. “When we talked about how many lights we wanted, I didn’t want any - just a flashing strobe,” he says, wondering whether he should even spill this. “It’s gonna feel like there’s low ceilings and lots of smoke and darkness. I want it to feel like you’re in a club in Europe, because for me, that's the epitome of clubbing.”

However, the lead-up to the show has not been without controversy. For the announcement, IPC commissioned an art piece taking viewers through Bruce’s journey from Bolton to Brixton, created by AI artist Arthur Chance. Some fans lambasted the video, calling it “AI slop” and “a shame”, with one popular comment saying, “using something that replaces human creativity to promote your music and the scene you grew up gives me the ick [sic]”. Where generative AI is known to train itself using the work of artists, in many cases without the artist’s consent, the sentiment is understandable. “I get why people on the surface would see it as a bad thing, because it's stealing work,” he begins to explain. “But we didn’t do that. Arthur Chance is an amazing artist, and we really, really worked hard, because as far as I'm aware, prompts are hard. You have to really fine-tune, so the first draft was not the final draft. I think people just thought it was lazy, it's a shame and I felt bad for [Chance]. People are dissing his work, but this is an artist that is utilising a tool to make art, and I don't see there's anything wrong with that. I think that is art.”

He goes on to give his wider views on generative AI. “I had never heard this term ‘AI slop’ but I don't like this energy around AI. People just saw it and reacted, and I think this is what annoys me. You didn’t look into it, you don’t care about it, you’re just a hater.” A few days later, he emailed some final thoughts on the matter: “I understand how hard it is for artists currently with things like AI scraping and of course, AI needs to follow best practices as it’s increasingly integrated into life. That’s what I tried to do by working with an artist, to achieve something not normally possible by conventional means.”

I come back to his signet rings - “the sovereigns”, he calls them when I bring them up. That name became associated with “chav culture” and was mocked regularly by the British media in the 2000s. Bruce sees them as a symbol of his achievements. “Growing up in Bolton, being this scrawny kid with not much weight on me, I saw those rings as a sort of armour,” he says. “There's not many things you can really look at and go, ‘I've earned that’, apart from gold.” Though Manchester is his city, he’s recently come to terms with the town that never understood him. “I did a Boiler Room at AVA Festival in Belfast, and I finished this set with this ‘Ozone Bounce; record which used to be sooo big in school,” he emphasises the ‘so’ for three full seconds. “I had been waiting for this record to come up on Discogs for two years and I finally got it, and it was such a sick moment for me to be able to write a love letter to Bolton.” No matter where he goes, Bolton is always wrapped around his finger.

Interplanetary Criminal is headlining Brixton Academy on November 29

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