Spotlight: Five artists to check out in July 2025

Every month in our Spotlight series, we profile five emerging artists from across the globe. Up this month is Cairo's Assyouti, Amsterdam's BELLA, Gothenburg's Deki Alem, Texas' Joy Guidry, and London's yingtuitive.

Assyouti’s industrial club music is a workout for the senses – a whirlwind journey through percussive club experiments and hypermodern bass mutations. Drawing from the “friction between different worlds: film and reality, rhythm and dissonance, narrative and abstraction”, the Cairo-born artist blends a cinematic approach to production with one that feels concise and otherworldly, each track a saga of intricate storytelling. “Growing up immersed in internet era music discovery shaped how I approach sound: non-linear, borderless, sometimes chaotic or random, but always instinctive,” he explains. “I’m also constantly influenced by the people around me, collaborators, peers, and friends whose work feels pure or uncompromising. That kind of energy keeps me curious, and reminds me to stay honest in what I make.”

Now based in Berlin, Assyouti has become a fixture of the scene with regular performances at clubs including RSO, Tresor, and Panke, while also appearing on line-ups across the breadth of Europe. Alongside Jehia, Assyouti runs an event series under the name No_Stone in Barcelona and Berlin, showcasing a cross-pollination of experimental genres from around the world. “There’s a lot in motion right now,” he explains. “I’m putting energy into a new wave of No_Stone events – I’ll also be returning to Unsound Festival later this year for a debut b2b with OKO DJ, which I’m really looking forward to. It feels like the right moment for that kind of exchange. Toward the end of the year, I’ll be heading back to Uganda for my third Nyege Nyege Festival, which always feels like a reset in the best way.”

Recommended work: Assyouti at Berlin Atonal 2024

“My set at Berlin Atonal last year felt like the clearest reflection of where I’m at as a DJ. I was trying to play with contrast and pacing in a way that felt less like mixing tracks together, and more like unfolding moments. I allowed myself to stretch and move through different energies of restraint and intensity without needing to stay locked into dancefloor-friendly territory in the usual sense by chasing momentum for its own sake and building tension just to release it, but rather to sit in the uneasy moments and let them simmer. That freedom to let things fall apart and reform, made it feel the most honest to my relationship with music and DJing right now.”

After appearing on Sally C’s lauded Big Saldo’s Chunkers imprint last year, Amsterdam-based club favourite BELLA has risen steadily with a sound firmly rooted in classic house music. Now with releases on Peggy Gou’s Gudu Records, beloved queer imprint HE.SHE.THEY., and Munich-hailing Slam City Jam, BELLA’s productions encompass a range of sonically effervescent club music, with groove-laden basslines and sharp kicks laid under hooking vocal chops. “Sometimes it’s total peace in nature that sparks something, other times it’s the energy of dancing in a crowd or playing for a moving crowd,” she says. “It’s all about a certain feeling or frequency – deep conversations, random moments, shifts in atmosphere.”

Now, as she navigates the biggest summer of her career yet with shows from Melbourne to Berlin and soon London, where she’ll step up alongside Peggy Gou at her annual Gou Talk all-dayer, BELLA is reaping the rewards of her success so far. “I just released my third EP, ‘We’re Good, All Good’, on Gudu Records, which I’m super proud of. When I’m home, I’m spending a lot of time in the studio working on my next EP, and I’ve got a remix coming up too that I can’t wait to share.”

Recommended work: BELLA ‘Note To Self’

“I’d love to share my debut single ‘Note To Self’. Even though I’ve been producing longer than I’ve been DJing, this was the first track where I felt like, yes, this is me. I called it ‘Note To Self’ because it really felt like a moment of clarity, like I was writing something to my future self, saying: “Remember this feeling.” It’s the beginning of everything that’s followed.”

Visionary duo Deki Alem are fast on their way to becoming a main stage act with their futuristic sound and style, and a true showman attitude on stage. Sonically, twin brothers Sammy and Johnny Boakye Bennett pull from a range of influences – from their jungle-indie crossover ‘Shadowman’ to their latest trip hop-leaning single ‘Fun’, self-described as a “an ode to giving in rather than enduring the tedious work of resistance”, finding some resemblance in peak-era The Prodigy. Lyrically, Deki Alem are enjoying themselves experimentally, toeing the line between punky, no-holds-barred verses and gruelling real life topics. “We’re influenced by survival, staying afloat, being happy, and chasing what keeps me inspired when nothing else does,” says Sammy.

Since the release of their debut EP ‘Among Heads’ in 2022, Deki Alem have made a name for themselves in their native Sweden, now taking their fascinating new sound across Europe as they complete a tour in countries including France, Romania, and Italy. Next up, the duo are preparing to release their debut album, ‘Forget In Mass’, on August 8, before embarking on a headline tour in the autumn with a pit stop at Berghain.

Recommended work: Deki Alem ‘Razor’

“I’d recommend our first track, ‘Razor’. I wouldn’t say it reps us the best out of all tracks, but it’s got an urgency and spontaneity to it that’s very true to us.”

With productions that sound as if they belong to a film soundtrack, Texas’ Joy Guidry is crafting elegant and joyous music that sits somewhere at the intersection of ambient, jazz, and experimental. “I’m very inspired by the rural areas of the American South, specifically in Texas and Louisiana, where I was born and raised,” she explains. “The calmness you feel in those areas heavily influences my approach to structuring the textures in my music”. As a bassoonist and performance artist, Joy’s music at its crux is a tale of spirituality, said to call upon “a rich history of Black performance” in homage to late, great Black artists and poets. “The music and culture found in the American South, such as gospel music, the blues, chopped and screwed, and zydeco, all fascinate me,” she says. “In each project, especially live shows, I like to incorporate elements from various Southern Black American styles of music in some way.”

On her hauntingly delicate new album ‘Five Prayers’, Joy walks us through a story of overcoming grief and finding beauty in religion – each of its five tracks from a different perspective on her mental health journey. “Up next for me are a couple of exciting moments,” she says. “I'll be playing a duo set with my dear friend Niecy Blues at King Britt's Blacktronika Festival in August at the Harlem Summer Stage, and I’ll then continue touring my new project, ‘Five Prayers’, in the US and Europe this fall,” she explains. “I'm so excited to continue to play this project that has brought so much healing to my mental health and overall life.”

Recommended work: Joy Guidry ‘Five Prayers’ 

“This album tells a story of how I’ve faced some challenging moments with my health, and grieving a family member that I lost over the last year. The music flows in a way that brings me peace and reassurance that, in the end, everything will always be okay, and to keep my faith in God close to my heart. That's how I like to live my life, just keeping an overall positive and grounding mindset, even though it feels like my mental health is on a constant decline. As a musician, this album pushed me to experiment with my bassoon and production techniques in ways that I hadn't explored in previous projects before.”

On her monthly Noods Radio residency, Singapore-born, London-based DJ and producer yingtuitive explores leftfield electronic music from post-punk to gamelan, ambient to half time. Her Dream Theories show is the “best representation” of her artistry, she says – an “attempt for me to make sense of the sounds, energies, and genres that are thematically important for me”. With a music taste built on her time working in The Analog Vault, a record store in Singapore, yingtuitive’s sonic palette encapsulates a wide range of styles, noting that she might not even acknowledge the varied expanse of styles that she was exposed to during that time. “I also previously worked at NTS, and my time there was perhaps some of the best musical education for me – listening to so much music all the time,” she says. 

“The diasporic experience of being a born and bred Singaporean, now living in the UK, has made an imprint on me. It’s really interesting seeing how growing up Southeast Asia on a tiny island exposed to lots of different international influences (think rock, gamelan, and ‘70s Chinese ballads all rolled into one), intersects with formative musical encounters in the UK with its strong soundsystem culture – all of which owe a lot to the Black and POC communities in the UK,” she says. On her debut album, ‘Letters To Self 寫情書’, yingtuitive gets deep into ambient and improvised sounds with the help of her classical music training, with the use of her childhood piano. “This album also contains a lot of samples recorded in both urban and natural environments in Singapore and the UK, which are sounds I find a lot of inspiration from too.”

Recommended work: Dream Theories w/ yingtuitive on Noods Radio

“Apart from ‘Letters To Self 寫情書’ in its entirety, I’d pick this episode of my monthly show, Dream Theories, on Noods Radio. I don’t really consider myself a DJ or producer of any one genre – I draw inspiration from a lot of different genres. Dream Theories is based on the idea of ‘sonically wandering through the genreverse that makes all, and none of, the sense of dream logic’. I think this episode really encapsulates that spirit.

This mix goes through experimental electronica and ambient, gamelan music, leftfield bass and dub-heavy club cuts – I really love exploring the liminal interstices within genres that people might not think belong together. The music also nods to the really diverse influences I have the privilege of drawing inspiration from, whether that’s from being in the UK, or me growing up in Southeast Asia. For example, the first track, Dijit’s ‘Tub’, is off an album by one of my favourite DIY UK labels, Accidental Meetings, but there’s also elements of gamelan in tracks like Asa Tone’s ‘River At Work’, or Darma Santi Gong Kebyar’s ‘Gesuri’.”