Douvelle19 has always operated between a myriad of sonic worlds. The Newport-based producer’s interest in the fluidity of genres and bridging disparate sounds stretches back to his childhood. Growing up in the mid-90s with separated parents he would hear a wide range of genres from 1930s jazz and blues, anthemic trance and trip hop to early electronic forerunners like New Order & Leftfield. Faithless and Madonna were in heavy rotation in the kitchen and his sister’s passion for Arabic pop music (Nancy Ajram, Sabah) inspired a love of drum-driven beats.
Encountering such a melting pot of audial influences rendered his own pre-teenage taste as equally eclectic: obsessions veered between Missy Elliott & Timbaland to Limp Bizkit & Sum 41. The first albums his dad bought him – Eminem’s ‘The Marshall Mathers’ LP and Marilyn Manson’s’ ‘Antichrist Superstar’ – also foreshadowed the genre-fusing artist he would go on to become. “It’s always been about bringing sounds together in my mind,” Douvelle19 summarises. “I spent time identifying the sonics that evoked something within me, and then tried to understand the choices that led the artist to get there”.