John B

John B is drum & bass’s glorious eccentric — the wild-haired English producer and DJ who has spent nearly thirty years refusing to let the genre sit still. Born John Bryn Williams in Maidenhead, Berkshire, he started producing at thirteen and now runs Beta Recordings, the label that has been his laboratory for everything from trance-infused rollers to ’80s-electroclash “electrostep.” Seven albums deep, with releases on Metalheadz, Prototype, Moving Shadow, and Hospital Records, he’s also one of electronic music’s great streaming-era adapters — a Twitch Partner broadcasting DJ sets and studio sessions to a global faithful.

The career started early and the education was formal: Williams studied at Durham University while already deep in production, and by 1997 — still a teenager — he was releasing records. The trademark sound evolved constantly, but the signatures stayed: catchy female vocals, trance-like synths, an instinct for melody in a genre that often treats it as optional. Listeners dubbed the style “trance and bass”; the purists raised eyebrows; the dancefloors filled anyway.

The ’80s turn was the masterstroke. Around the turn of the millennium, John B began fusing electroclash and synthwave aesthetics with drum & bass velocity — a sound dubbed “electrostep” that initially struck some in the scene as odd, even comical. Time has been kind to it: the neon-noir, retro-futurist D&B he pioneered now reads as prophecy, the sound of a genre’s future arriving wearing the past’s clothes. Tracks like “Up All Night” and the Electrostep era material built a catalogue that still sounds like tomorrow, and his remix CV reads like a tour through modern music history: Pendulum, High Contrast, Bloc Party, DJ Fresh, Adam F, Dusky, Howard Jones, Visage — and, by his own account, a Nicki Minaj sample of his track “Red Sky” on her debut album Pink Friday. The DJ Mag Top 100 took notice, ranking him #76 in 2010.

Beta Recordings is the institution. As label head — with sub-labels Nu Electro, Tangent, and Chihuahua catering to the genre’s wilder sub-strains — John B has spent decades as a curator and talent-spotter as well as an artist, giving the stranger corners of drum & bass a home. The John B Podcast, running to nearly two hundred episodes, became one of the scene’s essential listening posts: new music, classics, and the personality of a man who treats the airwaves like his own pirate station.

The streaming pivot was characteristically early and characteristically generous. On Twitch as johnbbeta, he streams DJ sets and production sessions several days a week — “Furloughed International Superstar DJ,” as his bio puts it — building a community that watches him build tracks in real time. When the 2020 DMCA wave put streamers’ channels at risk, he assembled a Twitch-safe playlist of Beta Recordings material and gave it away, telling fellow creators he wouldn’t issue a single strike. It was the act of a label boss who remembers what the underground is for.

The live reputation is the other half of the legend. John B has toured the world as a drum & bass DJ for the better part of three decades — everywhere the circuit goes, the hair and the showmanship have been — and his sets are famous for their fearlessness: drum & bass bleeding into electro house, disco, rock, whatever the room needs, stitched together with a showman’s timing. He was part of the genre’s development from the early days, and he carries that history lightly: the veteran who still plays like he has something to prove. Between the label, the podcast, the streams, and the road, there is no corner of the culture he hasn’t touched.

The persona is inseparable from the music: the towering hair, the flamboyant stage gear, the showmanship that treats every set like theatre. In a genre that can take itself very seriously, John B has always understood that joy is a production technique. Three decades in, still touring, still releasing, still streaming, still shredding rules — the flagrant rule-shredder of Beta Recordings remains one of electronic music’s great originals, proof that the weird kids win if they just keep going.

Previously covers John B because he’s the living link between drum & bass’s pirate-radio past and its streaming future — and because nobody else makes the future sound this fun. For more electronic originals, see Jonathan Ong.