Felix Cartal

Like so many EDM producers in the 21st century, former punk Felix Cartal got his start by taking a chainsaw to dance music and carving out a new space for noisy thrills with irreverent gusto. But the Vancouver native, born Taelor Deitcher in 1987, didn’t remain tethered to the harder/faster/louder ethos of early aughts electro-house. After a string of bootleg remixes in the mid-aughts, he signed to Steve Aoki’s DIM MAK and worked out his aggressions on 2010’s Popular Music, which set the bar for dystopian rave anthems coloured with cartoonish excess. But by 2018’s Next Season, Cartal had swapped saw-toothed aggression for silky future house, sinking his teeth into voluminous basslines and effortless toplines. As his music has mellowed, his songwriting skills have come to the fore: his 2021 album, Expensive Sounds For Nice People, slowed the tempo to make room for wistful vocal melodies and intricate chord progressions.