Mani Festo is an artist in high demand. In the last 12 months alone he’s put out six releases, all on different, well-respected labels and all on vinyl. 2020 saw him drop EPs via Club Glow — the DJ Mag Best Of British-nominated label he co-runs with Denham Audio, Borai and LMajor — Warehouse Rave, E-Beamz and Hooversound, before kicking off this year with another for WNCL Recordings, followed by a thundering two-tracker for Diffrent Music sister label SweetBox in April. Not bad for a year in which there weren’t even parties to play records at. Busy label release schedules and a logjam at vinyl manufacturing plants mean most of the music is one year old, if not more — but that’s proof that Mani Festo has grabbed the attention of the contemporary UK club scene. His discography is built around the kind of hybrid sound that’s come to dominate our age of connectedness; drawing on an immeasurable number of influences, yet still managing to sound like the future. Indebted to soundsystem culture, he pulls from the primordial energies of hardcore, jungle and dubstep — ritualistic breakbeat rhythms and earth-shattering bass are staples of many Mani Festo tracks. But there’s much more too: the incessant pulse of techno, the euphoria of trance and electro’s grubby futurism all play pivotal roles.