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Netsky announces full autumn 2012 UK tour

Posted: 11 years ago
Belgian drum 'n' dubstep producer follows up second album with several shows, tickets on sale now/Friday 6th July
Netsky

This week, the Guardian's culture section attempted to pick 10 Belgian luminaries from the world of pop and dance. Correctly they included Front 242, Telex and The Honeymoon Killers, cruelly so far they have ignored Deus, The Names, Benjamin Schoos and this bloke. Netsky is perhaps the country's biggest export since beer, chocolate and Tintin and has gradually put the cool and hip back into a country often unjustifiably derided by us Brits. The thing is - they keep all the best things for themselves usually but Boris Daenen, on the other hand, seems to be revelling in his new-found acclaim in the UK and the rest of Europe for that matter.

Not surprisingly, Netsky hails from the Antwerp province, an area known for its flamboyance, hedonism, clubs and week-long party events. What is a budding DJ and producer to do when he has that reputation coursing through his veins? After a short time, Netsky's molten liquid-funk style was noticed by UK's Hospital Records, a label with most of the drum 'n' bass hoi-polloi on its roster including High Contrast, London Elektricity, Danny Byrd and Logistics. They signed him in 2009 and had his debut album, simply entitled 'Netsky', on the shelves within 12 months. He won Best Upcoming Producer at the annual Drum & Bass Arena Awards and became a regular on the label's podcast.

But these days, the measure of a producer like Netsky are his live sets, something he's obviously been working on judging by the live footage on the embedded video, 'Come Alive', a minor hit last month. There's 'owt wrong with surfing the audience. There's also little wrong with Netsky's new album '2' - it reached #29 on the UK Album Charts last week, no mean feat for a relative unknown. Which all translate into big demand for this d 'n' b-cum-dubstep maestro tearing up a few clubs later this year, as well as Global Gathering 2012.

His UK tour begins with a preceding monster of a party at Brixton's Electric on 28th September (Early Birds already sold out), followed by November shows in Norwich, Sheffield, Coventry and lots more regional venues until Brighton on 2nd December and (to be confirmed) Exeter on the 3rd. We will have tickets for the tour from 9am on Friday 6th July. Keep checking back for further announcements about added shows.

Paul Pledger