Artist profile · Drum & bass
Dieselboy
Deep in the music.
Closer to the artist.
Dieselboy is American drum and bass DJ and producer Damian Higgins, connecting detailed cinematic mixes, Human Imprint, and collaborative studio recordings.
Behind the music
About Dieselboy.
Dieselboy is American drum and bass DJ and producer Damian Higgins. His career has been especially closely associated with the art of the mix: layered selections, dramatic pacing, and transitions conceived as part of a larger listening experience.
He founded Human Imprint in 2002 as a drum and bass outlet and co-founded Subhuman, which also released dubstep and electro. His production work includes collaborations with Mark The Beast, including the 2017 release Angel Dust. That broader bass-music catalogue sits alongside, rather than replaces, his long connection with drum and bass.
In a 2017 UKF interview, Higgins described treating tracks as different colours in a composition instead of simply playing them back to back. His Destroyer 2 mix used 138 tracks, selected and arranged over several weeks to create an experience that would keep revealing details on repeat listens. He also recalled the importance of British rave tapes and the challenges American drum and bass artists faced in gaining recognition overseas. For visitors, his recorded mixes are therefore as important an entry point as individual productions: they document his choices as a DJ and his particular sense of musical storytelling.
Artist styles
Source-reviewed associations with parts of this artist’s work. Individual releases may differ.
Drumstep
Moderate confidence · Beyond Thunderdome, discussed by Dieselboy in 2017.