Biography
Left-field DJ and producer Kutmah shaped his instrumental hip-hop around fractured rhythms, unsteady meters, and drifting samples. Records such as TROBBB! from 2017 drew equally on the bright textures of West Coast hip-hop beats and the distant glow of cosmic synthesizer textures.
Born Justin McNulty in Brighton, England, he relocated at twelve with his Egyptian mother and Scottish father to Hollywood, California. During the early 2000s he joined the Los Angeles nonprofit online radio group Dublab. His first abstract tracks appeared in 2006 on the Japanese anthology The Sound of L.A., assembled by Dublab’s Carlos Niño, alongside a nine-track 10" EP issued by Poo-Bah.
In May 2010 federal agents detained him at his residence over immigration issues; he spent two months inside a holding facility. During that period he produced thirty-nine drawings that later became the collection Two Soups & a Honeybun, exhibited after his release and return to the United Kingdom. In 2011 he put out a run of limited-edition mix CDs under the title The New Error, and the following year he curated the second installment of Brownswood’s Worldwide Family series, which included vintage and recent material by Tadd Mullinix, Dakim, Dibiase, Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke, and Kutmah himself.
Intent on rebuilding his presence in Britain, he immersed himself further in beat-making, yielding tape projects including the Black Waves Tape series, and moved his former Los Angeles club night Sketchbook to a monthly NTS radio program. His third album, BLK/SMR, surfaced in 2015 on Hit & Run Records. Over the next two years he performed only occasionally while maintaining a low profile. His fourth full-length, TROBBB!, arrived in 2017 via Big Dada, the sister label of Ninja Tune. Three years afterward he returned with the nine-track EP New Appliance, issued on 10" vinyl by All City in March 2020.
Born Justin McNulty in Brighton, England, he relocated at twelve with his Egyptian mother and Scottish father to Hollywood, California. During the early 2000s he joined the Los Angeles nonprofit online radio group Dublab. His first abstract tracks appeared in 2006 on the Japanese anthology The Sound of L.A., assembled by Dublab’s Carlos Niño, alongside a nine-track 10" EP issued by Poo-Bah.
In May 2010 federal agents detained him at his residence over immigration issues; he spent two months inside a holding facility. During that period he produced thirty-nine drawings that later became the collection Two Soups & a Honeybun, exhibited after his release and return to the United Kingdom. In 2011 he put out a run of limited-edition mix CDs under the title The New Error, and the following year he curated the second installment of Brownswood’s Worldwide Family series, which included vintage and recent material by Tadd Mullinix, Dakim, Dibiase, Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke, and Kutmah himself.
Intent on rebuilding his presence in Britain, he immersed himself further in beat-making, yielding tape projects including the Black Waves Tape series, and moved his former Los Angeles club night Sketchbook to a monthly NTS radio program. His third album, BLK/SMR, surfaced in 2015 on Hit & Run Records. Over the next two years he performed only occasionally while maintaining a low profile. His fourth full-length, TROBBB!, arrived in 2017 via Big Dada, the sister label of Ninja Tune. Three years afterward he returned with the nine-track EP New Appliance, issued on 10" vinyl by All City in March 2020.
Albums
Singles
