Strict Face

Having championed emerging and underground club sounds around the world from his hometown of Adelaide since first appearing on the scene in 2012, the music of producer/DJ Strict Face has gone through somewhat of a ‘rebirth’ over the years. First gaining notoriety for his early grime-influenced productions, he quickly established ties with the instrumental grime scene in the UK and Europe (most notably through influential club night Boxed), leading to releases with prestigious London-based labels Gobstopper and Local Action and a UK/EU tour in 2016.

Through his long-standing membership with the NLV Records label (run by Nina Las Vegas), he has bore witness to an ever-growing wave of Australian club music in the wake of the label’s inception in 2015. The like-minded approach of filtering global sounds into an exciting strain of club music within the country is evident on his five projects with the label to date, most notably 2019’s Urgency EP and 2021’s Pulsers EP, which gained a second wind when lead track ‘Tasteflash’ found itself on the soundtrack for the Netflix reboot of Heartbreak High, netting him more potential ears to plunder.

The tail end of 2022 and start of 2023 saw the release of his 9th and 10th EP, Focus, Explode (on NLV) and Steps Twice Tumbled (on Melbourne imprint Ilio Records), respectively, with both EPs showing a more confident, melodic layer of the producer that had only been hinted at in previous releases, whilst also refining the rambunctious nature that his productions have grown to embrace as a trademark, earning him more fans as a result of this new-found direction.

His deft ear for kinetic, percussive production and sound design has garnered him support from DJs as diverse as Jubilee and A-Trak to Jamz Supernova and Hipsters Don’t Dance, support slots alongside Pearson Sound, SOPHIE, DJ Plead and MikeQ (amongst many others), sets at Laneway Festival, Vivid Festival and Paradise Music Festival, and guest mixes/radio shows for NTS, Triple J, Rinse FM, FACT Mag and Crack Magazine.