26-year old producer Duskus is a DJ, producer and multi-instrumentalist fast on-the-rise. Born in Farnham in Surrey, he spent over a decade playing both piano and the guitar – first classical and later acoustic – after picking up his first at just seven years old; training that helped foster a life-long passion for music-making. After playing in school bands as a young teenager – an experience he credits with shaping how he hears and understands music – Duskus stumbled across dubstep at 14; a moment that’d re-shape the rest of his musical education. Although still a scene in its infancy at the time, he was inspired by producers like Skrillex and Deadmau5 and Disclosure and how they made music using just their laptops. It was a notion that sparked something in Duskus; “I downloaded FL studio and ended up making a song in one, massive MIDI clip. I didn’t know what I was doing but I remember thinking it was really sick that you could make something on a computer, bring it into school and show it to your mates.” Having gone onto studio music and music theory at university, Duskus never looked back. Heavily influenced by visual outdoor elements – “it could be just a view from a field or a photo of a plant I’ve seen on Instagram” – as much as he is musical contemporaries, Duskus’ vision is grounded in the world around him; the here and now. He credits electronic artists like Floating Points, Overmono, Ross From Friends, Fred Again..., Prospa, Four Tet, Tom VR and Joy Orbison with playing into those ideas, but also looks further afield to folk and country music, too. “I listen to an artist called Arthur Russell religiously”, he says. “It’s nothing to do with electronic music, but it’s nice to listen to music outside of the lane I’m working in sometimes.” His own sound, which meshes together elements of classic 4x4 house, blood-and-thunder kicks and rich melodies is now a far cry from the crunching, big-room styles he first made his name with while he was still piecing together his musical identity. A series of releases across various indie dance labels checked his progress up until early 2021, before after having spent chunks of time in both and Manchester over the last eight years, Duskus relocated to rural Leicestershire. “it’s nice to just be out in the middle of nowhere and just focus on music”, he surmises. With new six-track EP, ‘Healers Vol.1’, slated for released in November – music inspired by the outdoors that he hopes will “help take people away from their four walls” and into nature – Duskus feels on the cusp of something big. “It’s a concept that’s gonna take time to fully figure out”, he explains, “but I feel like it’ll be at the heart of the evolution of each EP, and how I connect those dots.”