Like turning up the radio to drown out the sound of a jackhammer, a lot of the dance music that is resonating right now is fast, loud and high-intensity, as if to distract from … well, everything. UK ravers in particular are reaching for speed garage (Salute, Sammy Virji), cheerily high-tempo pop-trance (DJ Heartstring, Kettama) or doof-centric hard dance (Hannah Laing) to crowd out the horror.
The fastest and most relentless of them all is Sherelle, the 31-year-old Londoner who can reliably be found DJing at the most twilit hours of festival season and the clubbing underground. She’s like the bus from Speed, always keeping above 140bpm (and generally about 160) with steely determination as she swerves between footwork, jungle and garage. After her legendary 2019 Boiler Room livestream, Sherelle goading the crowd with arms stretched wide as she delivered titanic bass-drops, she’s become a reliable defibrillator of vibes at any club night – but she also has a keen eye for the utopian potential of this joyous pandemonium. Her low-priced shows seek to quell the stress of the cost of living crisis – tickets for her current UK tour cost just £10 – and she founded Beautiful, a project that nurtures Black and queer artists with studio time, label releases and more.
