The ‘island boy with internet’ is back, armed with a sampler and thousands of kilometres of fibre-optic cable. 

As dembow courses through the circuitry of club culture in the global North, who better to help us make sense of it.

That’s why Dominican artist DJ SOSA RD has returned with a second set of sample-heavy, genre-blurring collisions based around the island’s current signature rhythm. He’s here to educate as well as stimulate, with four tracks that pay explicit tribute to dembow’s originators. 

Sounding like LFO on a ragga tip, ‘i don’t even smoke’ pays dues to dembow’s spiritual godfather Monkey Black as well as innovator El Lapiz (whose work with DJ Scuff helped shape the genre’s early sound). Monkey gets a second shout out on ‘is lit’, alongside La Delfy, the scene’s first openly gay artist, which adds a shot of UK hardcore to the mix, while one of dembow’s new radicals Angel Dior inspires the wild, ruff’n’tuff dub of ‘uptown girl’.

And to throw in something different, dj g2g and PZZS take us back to the first edition of ‘island boy with internet’ turning ‘gamo aqui sin’ into a baile funk rave belter. Fidgety and hyper-present, it’s an underground EDM wet dream that just can’t be ignored. 

This EP is a testament to sampling as an art form and as a living, breathing archive of musical and cultural history. It also reminds us that however different they seem, rave culture and dembow share a pair of essential ingredients: that built from scratch DIY spirit, that restless creativity that won’t stand still.


is lit

i dont even smoke

gamo aqui sin (PZZS, dj g2g remix)

uptown girl

Dominican in (S)pain
Bookings: booking@isotopia.org

New tracks tagged #Dembow Hardcore