Utility man: Kowton

“I don’t think the DJ is the most fun dude at the party,” says Joe Cowton over a pre-club cup of tea in a Leeds hotel room. The TV is on and David Cameron is delivering news from his Brexit talks. Ninety minutes later, wide-eyed boys and girls lean over the DJ booth in the city’s Wire club, pulling bass-faces and shifting serious shapes. Joe remains rooted to the spot and focused on his mix. “It’s starting to get going now,” says the 32-year-old matter of factly, as a back to back-to-back set with the smilier half of Bristol bass heads Tessela & Pariah turns the dark, intimate basement increasingly sweaty.

In six years, this slightly stubbled character with cropped reddish-brown hair has come a long way. Back in 2010, to the chagrin of his parents, he was working split shifts in a hotel in his scenic Lake District home town of Grasmere having dropped out of a
“kind of pointless” sociology degree in Manchester (chosen, mainly, for the city’s party scene), only to then “buy time” by completing a music technology course at SSR in the same city. Being a classic stoner, though, Joe “didn’t really learn anything,” didn’t chase a music career, and went back home. “I’m very good at quitting things,” he jokes, before saying he used to win prizes for achievements at school then realised, “if you fucked about, you were more popular.”

“In the Lake District,” he continues in his low, grounded voice, “the idea of putting a record out is so far-fetched.” Yet now, in 2016, he’s released on influential labels like Hessle Audio, Keysound Recordings and Idle Hands, has played all across America and at the hallowed Berghain five times. It means that with his Livity Sound co-founders Peverelist and Asusu, he is right at the vanguard of the UK underground scene. Previously associated with the dubstep explosion, he says his music is “techno, but broken.” Everyone else struggles for a name for it.

Truth is, Kowton’s debut album ‘Utility’ is as powerful and groove-driven as techno, but comes with the wide-open sense of space that made dubstep so powerful. Tracks are underpinned with an echoing urban menace and detailed with distant sirens and flashes of street light for a late-night metropolitan feel that’s visceral and atmospheric. On a mission to make music as reduced yet impactful as possible, Cowton – a Yorkshire surname to which he added a K because “it was 2008, everyone was doing it” – happily admits to be being a boring music obsessive. When quizzed about his hobbies, the only ones he – or the friends he plays with later – come up with are going to the pub and reading. He used to skateboard quite a lot too.

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Nowadays Kowton still channels the same singlemindedness that he had as a youth when watching records go round on one deck in his room. Having got into dance through older friends in the sleepy tourist hotspot of his home town, music was mainly something young Joe read about until he finally left for his doomed sociology degree aged 18. Those years brought pilgrimages to parties in Manchester and bass-heavy events at the West Indian Centre in Leeds. Giving lots of credit to an employee at Boomkat’s now-defunct physical store, it was then that Kowton first got into techno, jungle, Basic Channel’s dub, Four Tet’s Text label and “pretty maudlin stuff like that,” before grime and dubstep exploded.

After that time in Manchester and the spell of hotel employment back home, during which he managed to have some early Fruity Loops experiments played on Mary Ann Hobbs’ 6 Music show, he moved to Bristol, mindful of the city’s skateboard and music scene, but also thanks to a friendly shove from his mother. It was an unofficial centre of dubstep at the time, was where he met and formed close friendships with Peverelist and Pariah and began working in Rooted Records, then for Chris Farrell at Idle Hands once Rooted closed. Again keen to credit others, Kowton reckons that “these music pedants par excellence showed me the way and told me what to like.” Add into that a first in his music technology MA in Bristol, his own belief that dance music should be visceral and direct and “not too ponderous but make people move,” and you have one of the most interesting producers of recent years.

“Watching these guys mix music is like magic,” says one fresh-faced raver at Wire as another corrugated bassline barrels out of the crisp Funktion-Ones. It’s one of many high tempo, high-impact techno-cum-bass tracks the close-knit DJ trio seamless weave together, despite little interaction and no forward planning. Mixmag’s new friend is one of a hardcore crew of fanboys pressed down the front, and the now London-based Kowton earlier admits the sound he and his Livity label mates are known does bring the geeks out of the woodwork.

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Kowton himself is one of them. His Twitter presence is minimal, his press pictures are moody and his music is serious. He talks about it intensely, about how it swirls around his brain from the second he wakes up (around 7.30am with his girlfriend, who is “a lot more fun than me” and is a graphic designer who does stuff for Livity) to the moment he goes back to sleep and how, for him, the music is why he does this; not the fame, the travel, the perks or anything else.

But he laughs often, too, a dirty belly laugh that is mischievous and infectious. He does so when discussing politics and the new Alan Partridge, his E honeymoon in Manchester and how he competes with his older brothers’ Cambridge doctorates by telling his parents about his worldly travels and the air miles he’s clocked up. When not sculpting devastating techno or “drinking a little too much,” he can be found reading books on post-war European fiscal policies, the cult of the football manager and classic Russian literature.

Leaning back on the roomy hotel sofa, cradling his brew, Kowton admits to having an obsessive personality and says he lives his life with the same utilitarian approach he has to his music: today he wears plain black skate trainers and a loose print jumper with black jeans, but the same is true most days. “I’m a bit weird, I buy three of the same thing then just wear them to death,” he says.

It’s that sense of obsession, attention to detail and single-mindedness that might, to the outside world, make him seem moody and shut off. Spend time with him, though, and Kowton is quiet but warm, and clearly serious about what he does. “You have a responsibility,” he says as the crowd in the club thins

in the early morning hours. “Even if there was just one person here I’ve got to make sure he has the best night possible.” He might not be the most fun dude at the party, then, but Kowton makes sure you will be.

'Utility' is out on April 15 on Livity Sound