Dusky

London house duo Dusky built momentum during the early 2010s house resurgence after releasing their 2011 debut album Stick by This, which earned endorsements from tastemakers Pete Tong and Loefah. Following releases across multiple imprints and a 2016 major-label episode that produced the full-length Outer, the pair established their own label and assembled an extensive, steadily expanding body of work that featured EPs such as 2017’s Cold Heart and 2019’s Imagine What. Dusky marked their first ten years with the uplifting Joy in 2021 and revisited early-2000s inspirations on the 2022 album Pressure.

Nick Harriman and Alfie Granger-Howell absorbed the pirate-radio sounds of happy hardcore, U.K. garage, jungle, and drum’n’bass while growing up, then met during sixth form and connected through a mutual interest in electronic production and DJ’ing. After years of refinement they began issuing music in 2009 as Solarity, delivering funky, tribal deep house. Their fruitful relationship with Above & Beyond’s Anjunadeep imprint soon followed, generating numerous singles that gradually shifted toward trance and tech textures and attracted a growing audience.

The duo introduced the Dusky name in 2011 with the Anjunadeep album Stick by This. Polished and meticulously assembled, the record represented a decisive step forward, allowing them to pursue a personal style shaped equally by longstanding affinities for soul, classical, and jazz and by electronic dance traditions. Deep-house foundations remained, yet traces of their formative listening now surfaced clearly. Pete Tong declared Stick by This his album of the year, and wider recognition arrived in 2012 when dubstep figure Loefah aired the single “Flo Jam” on his Rinse FM program. Additional tracks appeared on Aus Music, and the 2013 release “Careless” reached the top of the Beatport Top 100 for three weeks. In 2014 they founded 17 Steps; sustained touring and a regular flow of singles raised their profile until they secured a Polydor contract in 2016. The singles “Ingrid Is a Hybrid” and the Wiley collaboration “Sort It Out Sharon” appeared on the eagerly awaited major-label album Outer, which folded in techno and prog-house elements. Over subsequent years Dusky kept developing, issuing a succession of singles and EPs including Cold Heart (2017), Aset Forever (2018), and Imagine What (2019), all on 17 Steps, plus the pair of Life Signs EPs for Running Back.

Dusky recorded their third album, Joy, amid the global pandemic and issued it in 2021. The project emphasized euphoric breakbeats to mark the duo’s tenth anniversary and to salute the dancefloor’s post-lockdown return. They carried that celebratory spirit into 2022’s Pressure, which paid homage to early-2000s U.K. garage and 2-step.