Duke Dumont

“There are two sides to what I do,” Duke Dumont tells Apple Music. On the one hand, there’s “the more dance-floor-orientated stuff”—hands-in-the-air house bangers like “Need U (100%)”, his 2013 breakout hit—and on the other, what he humbly terms “more musical stuff”, like 2015’s funk-infused, ’80s-indebted “Ocean Drive”. In truth, the UK producer is a lot more multifaceted than that. Few musicians have done more to revive the sound of classic house for contemporary radio, while at the same time opening up club music to all the joyful possibilities of pop. Born Adam George Dyment in Harrow, England, in 1982, he got his start in the fidget-house scene of the mid-2000s, remixing EPMD and Bat for Lashes and releasing slyly kinetic club anthems on labels like Turbo and Dubsided. Perhaps it was his remixing know-how that made him such a skillful musical alchemist. Following “Need U (100%)”, Dumont scored another massive crossover hit with 2014’s Whitney Houston-sampling “I Got U”, as jubilant a piano-house barnstormer as a sunset dance party could hope for. Then he took things deeper underground with “Won’t Look Back” and flexed his freestyle chops for “Ocean Drive”. In the years since, Dumont has kept testing the boundaries of his sound. For every retro-soaked “Therapy”, there’s a resolutely modern song like “The Power”, which pairs Zak Abel’s yearning topline with irresistible future-house bounce. Whatever the style, Dumont unfailingly dishes it out with muscle, charm and panache.