Death Disco: Foamo Party

“I started producing when I was about 14 years old. I used to make drum ‘n’ bass beats on my parents' computer with a pair of headphones. Then I started DJing soon afterwards. My mates and I used to DJ at these big, local raves for under 18s. They were actually really good. We got to DJ with some big name drum ‘n’ bass MCs on our sets, like Shabba, Det and Foxy. Those were good days.”

It’s hard to understand why Foamo is referring to his youth as the ‘good days’; it’s not as though it was the height of his success. On the contrary, at the age of only 22 he has already made a name for himself as an important producer and has received praise from the likes of Diplo and Rob Da Bank.

“I started listening to electronic music when I was 13, my mate got me into drum ‘n’ bass, and I was obsessed by it for years. I hardly listened to anything else. I got a bit bored of it though after a few years and lost touch with it so I began listening to a lot of garage, grime and dubstep type stuff. It wasn’t until about two years ago that I even started to listening to anything that could be classed as house or electro. But it was mad, as after I’d spent years and years experimenting and making drum ‘n’ bass and dubstep, I never really got anywhere. Then after my first attempt at making a house track, I suddenly got Radio 1 air-play and support from big DJs, so it was a massive surprise for me!”

Off the back of this success came a residency at Chew The Fat! in London, before the inevitable touring, with Foamo spending the past 18 months touring Europe, Canada and Australia.

With a background in DIY bedroom music production, what does Foamo make of the current rise of digital DJing?

“I just use CDJs. Nearly every track I play though, I do some kind of edit of it, to try and bring something different to my sets, instead of just plain mixing.

"I've been thinking about trying out some kind of laptop set with Serato or Ableton though.  I don’t think you should bash people who use Ableton for DJing, but as long as they’re using it to their advantage, doing stuff that you wouldn’t be able to do when just using CDJs.

"Traditional beat-matching seems to be becoming more and more irrelevant, with CDJs and laptops making it easier, so people are beginning to look at other ways of making sets exciting.”