Julio Bashmore es el bajo música padrino.
Originally appeared in The Winter Warm Up Issue.
The first masculine child of the house mafia music scene, Julio is the batty knee dancin’ badman-cum-DJ with bare flare. Imprisoning audiences with his progressive riddims, he is the tantalising Don Juan of low frequency production. Matt Walker is the man behind the music. Modest when it comes to chatting about his eminent acclaim, he describes his comeuppance dead simply, “I accidentally fell into the scene. I was basically just trying to copy Justin Martin from dirtybird, making house records, but I didn’t know how so it kind of just ended up as UK funky.” Posting mp3s up on grime and dubstep forums back in the day, Matt/ Julio’s material quickly got picked up on and he was then signed to dirtybird. Laying claim to one of the hottest tracks of this year, Julio’s ‘Battle For Middle You‘ mix killed it on the international clubland scene, commanding dance-floors in venues from Miami to Ibiza. In person Matt gives little away with regards to what he’s all about, he has no need to, so insatiable are his techniques; the beats spread like wildfire. Explaining why he’s committed to keeping Bashmore productions house-bound at South-West HQ he explains, “Since I’ve been making house music I’ve always wanted Bristol to have a scene similar to other places in the UK where house is really popular, such as Leeds where they’ve had 2020. Last year I felt really isolated, as if I was the only guy in Bristol serious about making music, but I’ve realised that that’s not the case at all and there are so many people on house music here right now. It just seems like a lot of producers have just come out of the woodwork this year. It’s exciting.” Matt knows what we want and Julio isn’t afraid to give it to you. Viva la fiesta.
Text: Milly McMahon
Photography: Willem Jaspert
