Sidney Charles pres. HEAVY HOUSE SOCIETY OFF BCN

It’s not often a DJ can stamp their authority on a genre so much that it gets its own label, but Sidney Charles is one. His take on house music is known amongst fans as The Sidney Sound: it’s one built on heavy low ends, the immediate impact of chunky drums, cavernous low frequencies and hard hitting rhythms that connect directly with your body. Both as a DJ and a producer, Sidney favours rough, dirty sounds that defined the old school pioneers, but all with a modern, full and punchy approach. His signature tunes like ‘House Lessons’ and ‘Warehouse Romance’ established this early on, and since then the artist has homed in on ever more irresistible rhythms on key labels like Truesoul, Hot Creations and Saved. HIs upfront, dark, hard hitting take on house is about physicality and making your body move. He wants to get you jacked up on the dance floor and keep you there. He does so with a mixing technique drawn from his long standing love of hip hop and battle DJs: beat matching, subtle scratching and tight, quick, energetic mixes that move things along at a pace. His love of direct rhythms stems back to a A Tribe Called Quest’s seminal Low End Theory album, which was the first in hip hop to really focus on the power of the drums and placement of them in the mix. After initially being a hip hop DJ who peaked with a warm up set for the legendary Xzibit, house music really turned Sidney’s ear: he’d grown up with it all round him as his mother was a music journalist with Strictly Rhythm promos arriving on a regular basis, but only later did he grow to appreciate its more immediate sense of energy and drive, coupled with the funk he loved from hip hop. Over the years, he has played DC10 Circo Loco numerous times, Mute Beach in Argentina to 10,000 people with Hot Since 82, held a Do Not Sleep residency at Vista Club in 2015 and was resident of Tribal Sessions Sankeys at its peak in Manchester and Ibiza. His music, too, has achieved some real highs such as ‘Ruff Line’ making number 2 in Beatport’s chart, ‘All Night Long’ on Hot Creations being number 1 on Beatport, being RA’s most charted artist in 2013 and being nominated twice for Best Producer and Newcomer in the Ibiza DJs Awards. Charles is at home in a small and sweaty club like Circo Loco at DC10 in Ibiza, but also Italy’s largest open air warehouse, Social Music City, in Milan, as well as plenty in between. This year he heads back to South America, where they love his booty-shaking bottom ends, as well as to big gigs like Creamfields. For those who really like to feel house music in their chest, then, there is no one better than Sidney Charles