DJ Plead^AU

If ever on a dance floor setting you find yourself thinking, “This sounds just like traditional Lebanese wedding music but with a tough, stripped-back, clubby twist of sorts,” you may just be listening to the work of DJ Plead. The half-Lebanese, half-Swiss, Melbourne-born, and Berlin-based artist has had no shortage of rich cultural inspirations, rather evident in his productions that frequently reference Lebanese pop and Middle Eastern drum rhythms, scales, and timbres, blended with contemporary RnB, club, and other dance styles. His unique sound - perhaps proprietary - came about through a succession of aliases: initially a high-energy trio BV, subsequently a percussive dance duo Poison, and finally solo as DJ Plead himself with a 2018 debut EP Get in Circle. Whatever the medium, his music has been consistently played by the likes of Four Tet, Madam X, Anthony Naples, Joy O, Batu, amongst others, and has gone on to release via Air Max 97’s Decisions label, as well as through Nervous Horizon, Levity Sound, and his self-founded Sumac label, co-run with T.Morimoto and Jon Watts. Pre-pandemic, DJ Plead was beginning to break through the international scene with appearances at De School, Corsica Studios, and Panorama Bar, and more.

Set to be DJ Plead’s MUTEK Montréal debut, expect dominantly percussive palettes of Lebanese flutes, Mijwiz, vocal samples, subtle pads, and stark, skeletal, snare heavy tracks—a mix that is frenetic, yet emotively refined. Experimental, in short, and shaped by the mid-‘10s Melbourne scene; a period when genres would fuse seamlessly, and bands and DJs occupied mutual spaces.