15 years after he first exploded on to the British dance music scene, Kissy Sell Out’s eclectic and vibrant career has been quite astonishing. Kicking-off 2022 with a fresh to-do list pinned to the wall, Kissy is currently working away in the studio with music icon Boy George, his time spent during the various lock-downs forever honing his signature production skills continuing to turn heads and catch the attention of the biggest names in the industry with as much feverish enthusiasm as ever.
With so much time spent touring the globe as a DJ and musician, dazzling huge crowds from Tomorrowland to Glastonbury, Ibiza to Japan, Australia to Los Angeles – and pretty much everywhere in between - there are few places on Earth where Kissy is a stranger. And yet, even with so much demand for his feverishly energetic DJ skills (including being hand-picked numerous times by Fatboy Slim, The Prodigy and LCD Soundsystem for some enormous shows), Kissy’s off-stage activities have spawned no less than six full-length artist albums, two influential record label imprints, credits as long-serving brand ambassador for Pioneer DJ, and a highly revered legacy as one of BBC Radio 1’s most outstanding specialst presenters to boot... he even had his own line of skinny jeans jumping off the shelves at one point!
Riding shot-gun with his reputation as a unique music personality status, Kissy’s adversity to finally giving journalists the opportunity to declare him as having finally “sold out” with respect to his musical output has defined him firmly as an alternative character amid the other house-hold names of British dance music. As easy as it is to shine a spotlight on his gleeful smile adorning the front covers of Mixmag, DJ Mag (and most of the other established dance music journals at one point or another), Kissy Sell Out’s credibility for being a bona fide innovator of the trade is peppered with a remarkable amount of more subtle (or just out-right brave) unexpected career highlights.
Afterall, the list of specialist BBC Radio 1 DJs who have released their own original artist albums, debated against Stephen Fry within the halls of Cambridge University and composed official music for the 2012 Olympics ceremonies contains only one name; Kissy Sell Out. The name which garnered so much attention back in the day for his extraordinary remix work for Mark Ronson, Calvin Harris, Gwen Stefani and The Human League, but also the name credited with discovering two young producers he’d met in the streets of Toronto – Zeds Dead – who would become one of the biggest breakthrough dubstep acts of the North American EDM scene.
So then, what’s next? Well, it’s never been particularly easy to predict the next wild adventure to be undertaken by this nomad of post-modern styles and passionate turntablism. Pre-pandemic, we saw Kissy returning to his electro roots after going in-deep with his critically-acclaimed and unashamedly bassline-focused album “Style From The Westside”, with a long-list of polished and sharply on-point new house records planned for release being indefinitely shelved as the nationwide lock-downs began. However, after using the unexpected free-time thrust upon so many of us to focus on his studio work as both a producer and DJ, news of his exciting plans for 2022 just go to prove that Kissy Sell Out is still artist you can bet you’ll be hearing more from very soon...
