Phetsta

Phetsta is the recording name of Whetu Kay, a bass music producer raised in Perth after moving from New Zealand as a teenager. Drum and bass provided his starting point, before his recordings expanded into dubstep, electro house, and trap. His own artist biography emphasises melody as the thread connecting those changes in tempo.

In a 2014 Xpress interview, Kay recalled discovering drum and bass at Perth’s Drum Club when he was 16. Seeing DJs behind their equipment, he initially assumed they were making the music live and decided to try producing himself. He credited local figures including Greg Packer with helping sustain the city’s close musical community.

His long-running collaboration with ShockOne included Crucify Me, released by Viper Recordings in 2011 in separate drum and bass and dubstep versions. Describing their working relationship to Xpress, Phetsta said their division of drums and synthesiser work had gradually reversed, with ideas exchanged remotely through files and video calls.

The 2013 Drop That Down EP explored trap through Klub Kids. One track began as a dubstep experiment before a change of bass sound suggested a different direction. By January 2014, Kay was writing drum and bass again after a deliberate break, explaining that renewed excitement about other producers’ music had brought him back to it.