London-based DJ and producer Steven Julien’s career has always been about contrasts. Across a decade’s worth of releases on labels including Eglo and his own Apron Records, as well as club sets around the world, he’s consistently mixed light and dark, soft and heavy, yin and yang. From rough-edged house and techno to laid-back soul and boogie, or meditations on his familial and musical heritage with 2018’s Bloodline LP – Julien’s music has always moved between moods, styles and emotions.
That eclecticism also defines Julien’s upcoming instalment in !K7’s iconic DJ-Kicks mix series. Featuring a broad spectrum of artists including Ryuichi Sakamoto, DāM-FunK and Todd Edwards, alongside a selection of his own exclusive productions, Julien’s contribution to the series is a journey from day to night, guiding the listener from a bucolic afternoon in nature to heady domestic vibes before a big night out, eventually ending in the euphoric embrace of the dancefloor itself.
This narrative flow from day to night, or home to club, is a recurring theme of Julien’s music and is partly a reflection of his deeper personality: reserved and laid-back at first, but intense and passionate the more you get to know him. It also speaks to Julien’s broader life experiences, with the first half of his DJ-Kicks mix an extended love letter to an upbringing steeped in UK dance music history.
This influence stems in part from Julien’s family. Their culture and identity continues to influence Julien’s music, from the aesthetics of his label and his blending of modern and vintage sounds to his broader approach to creativity: remaining true to his artistic vision, rather being pushed in different directions by outside pressures. His latest EP Wraap’t is a perfect example of this. Inspired by Julien’s teenage experiences working in a barber shop, it takes classic sounds from R&B and new jack swing, but blends them with more modern production flourishes: a nostalgic tribute to his communal and familial links to West London hair salons, brought sharply up to date.
As his DJ-Kicks mix progresses, it’s Julien’s more recent experiences as a club DJ which come to the fore, bringing a different perspective to that same interplay between lightness and intensity. Julien describes his creative approach to DJing in general, and this mix in particular, as letting his energy and intuition guide him. That instinctive approach, where seamless mixing becomes second nature, speaks to Julien’s decade of appearances in DJ booths around the world: he cites sets at Ormside Projects in London, Doka and De School in Amsterdam, or Mitsuki in Tokyo as specific inspirations for this mix.
Julien describes the feeling he’s tried to capture on tape as an out-of-body energy: just letting loose, and being yourself. “When you get in that position of doing what’s true to you, playing what’s true to you” he says, “people just resonate with that.”
