Growing up on the exact spot where Oxfordshire meets Buckinghamshire contained all of the usual suspects. Small town mundanity, endless sparse countryside and scattered industrial estates lead to hours experimenting with tunes in his room. These sessions consisted of a steady diet of forward thinking old school D&B (Ed Rush & Optical, Goldie etc), 80’s electro, early Ninja Tune artists and his dad’s jazz and classical records. Before the apathy of small town life grasped him he went to study at university in Leeds. After years of playing out at various styles of nights, even at fashionable city centre bars to pay his rent and probably one of the biggest drives in terms of wanting to create aggressive music. Soon he started Room 237 with a friend and his ambition and passion were instantly recognisable as he brought some of the biggest names in electronic music to the open arms of Leeds forward thinking music heads. Being the resident at your own night seems like a dream but the challenge of having to complement some of the biggest and experimental names in leftfield music would make most producers or dj’s stick to the specific genre they know best and sacrifice development for stability. ANXST did the opposite... not resting on his laurels and continuing to produce new music using a number of different effects, techniques and software and continuously pushing himself to develop his range of styles to complement these differing eclectic artists. Throughout the years he has supported the likes of Squarepusher, LFO, Modeselektor,The Locust,Venetian Snares, Battles, Plaid, Four Tet and many more. ANXST’s genre transcending dexterity takes in the experimental dubstep trip of Vex’d, industrial techno of Surgeon, the future glitch of Flying Lotus and the scattered experimental drum and bass of Amon Tobin. His true strength, though, lies in the crescendos of layered texture, noise and re-sampled sampling. In a time where people like Mary Anne Hobbs are championing the similarities and crossover between anything electronic, dubstep, techno and the industrial avant-garde ANXST is your man. Tom Hammond (Rock-A-Rolla / Ex Southern Records)
