SHERELLE on depression, pressure and normalising moody DJing
SHERELLE is one of the best DJs in the UK, if not the world, a dynamo of energy and innovation, combined with a love for music that goes beyond mere sonics and into its cultural significance. She’s also a brilliant producer: her debut album WITH A VENGEANCE, which landed in April 2025, is a genre-agnostic romp through the funkier, harder and more extreme sides of the dance music spectrum.
I first interviewed SHERELLE for the Line Noise podcast at Primavera Sound Los Angeles in 2022 and she was thoughtful charm personified. And I got to speak to her again when she came to Primavera Sound in Barcelona this summer. I was expecting to talk to SHERELLE about jungle, footwork, dance music history and DJing excellence. Instead, the interview took an unexpected but fascinating turn and we ended up speaking about depression and the pressure of being a working DJ at the centre of other people’s fun.
I released the podcast this week and I would encourage you to listen to it; but I wanted to publish the transcription too as I know there are many people who prefer words on a screen and I think that what SHERELLE said was important. (Obviously, there has been a small amount of editing and tidying of the words.)
My thanks go out to SHERELLE for being so open and honest - and let’s do as she says and normalise moody DJing.
Line Noise: One of the really big things that has happened since we last spoke is your debut album, WITH A VENGEANCE, which you surprise released. Why did you do that?
SHERELLE: I've got an amazing team, we spoke about stuff and wanted to do something different. And originally I didn't mind going through the usual album thing of releasing a single and then building up to it but it just didn't fit in with the general ethos of what I am about. I feel like everything I've done has been very much… It feels very much like my career has been quite a big anomaly. I don't know how to describe it.
LN: A beautiful anomaly.
S: A beautiful anomaly. From the Boiler Room in 2019, which still to this day I have to think about and go, ‘Wow’. That really catapulted me into so many different spaces, to so many different places that I’ve played, being here [Primavera] for the second time, now doing a solo set. It's just weirdly, strangely enough, in the SHERELLE universe / SHERELLE land, it makes sense to drop an album by surprise. I really wanted to do something so different. I'm not trying to pretend as if I'm the only person to do a surprise drop. Obviously not. But it was nice to drop something and for people to just take it as it was. And had just listened to it. I hadn’t released music for quite a while by that point, so it just made sense.
LN: One of the many things I loved about the album was, if you look at it, it's like ‘SHERELLE WITH A VENGEANCE!’, which is like saying ‘More SHERELLE than you can handle,’ right? Was that the idea?
S: Yeah, somewhat. It’s quite a strange one. I'm very much known for these sets in which I've always been quite fast paced, like full-blown turbo. I just want people to have fun. DJing has always been a form of release for me, and I've always really enjoyed it.
WITH A VENGEANCE, however, the space that that came about in, was that from 2022 / 2023 I was in a very strange space, DJing loads. In 2022 I did about 90 plus gigs. It's giving Carl Cox level of just being absolutely everywhere. And you don't have the time to reflect. If you were to do that on a standard basis, of actually how much time that is, you’ve got two weeks in the year to yourself. I was out every week DJing somewhere.
And because of that lack of reflection, you do things, get involved in things, hang out with maybe the wrong people, who are essentially guiding you down a path whereby it was very focused around money. Getting somewhere: ‘We need to get you here. We need to get you there.’ And there was a lack of, I guess, appreciation or understanding for my own mental health.
So by the time it came to 2023, in the beginning, I kind of had a big depressive moment. It's a strange one because you reflect back on something, you go, ‘Thank God that happened.’ But then in the moment of when you have depression, which would have been the first time of having it, it's a really consuming space. And I completely understand when people are going through it, why they feel like they are so helpless in getting out of it.
That's what I felt at the time. The album, WITH A VENGEANCE … by that time I felt like I had got out of it, sort of, and worked around a lot of feelings around betrayal, especially when it came to friends that I had worked with and I thought had my back in a lot of instances and situations, and then found out a bunch of stuff around them and about things and realised they f*cked over other friends of mine. I just had to channel that in a good space to try and create something good.
You grieve a lot if you’ve got friends that you once had and then you grieve the process of like, ‘Oh, f*ck. I’m not friends with these lot anymore.’ And I have to grieve about that. But then I also feel betrayed and I also feel like I need to grow from it. And I've grown a lot from this process of the album and putting stuff out.
And the surprise [release] element was also good because then it felt like, it's out there in the world and people can just take it for what it is; that makes it so much nicer as an artist. That's also what I want to basically be now, is more artist-led; still very much a DJ, but make music and try and give something that's very different, like I've always done in the DJing sphere but now as an artist.
LN: Talking about depression: the world you operate in is a world of dance music, a world of fast beats, it's a world of people having a really good time. Is that almost more difficult. Because if you were making, I don't know, mopey indie rock or something…
S: [Laughs] Yeah! You can kind of get into it!
LN: But people expect SHERELLE. They expect 160 BPM.
S: Yeah, 100%. I think I touched on this before with other interviews. There's a false sense of happiness that you have to have as a DJ, regardless of whatever genre you're in. You have to go out there and have a good time.
Little did people know when I was here [Primavera], the first time that I had a panic attack before I played with Tim [Reaper]. I was hanging out with my homegirl and babes Naina and our friends and with also Tygapaw, who was also playing the same year as well. And I had a full-blown panic attack in front of them. Everyone was speaking and it all just slowed down. Do you know how crazy it is? Imagine everyone is normal pace, like normal motion, and then what they're saying though is really slow. I had to drop to the floor. And then was like, ‘Guys, I don't know what's happening but can you get a medic?’
So then Tygapaw ran off, got someone. They took me to a van. Luckily, the people here at Primavera were so lovely. They gave me a valium [laughs] to look after myself and made sure that I didn't drink or anything like that. I had a great set. However, it was quite a lot to deal with and, annoyingly, I didn't take that as a sign of, like, slowing down. Because that was an obvious sign of, ‘Are you good?’ The fact that you're having a massive panic attack in such an amazing festival and there's all these amazing things going on, like, ‘Are you good, sis, what's going on?’
You have to change a lot of things that you do in order to survive in the industry. And this false sense of happiness is not good to have… It's good to be in that space, but we push ourselves and we force ourselves into trying to be happy all the time. And we're not sometimes. That's normal. Normalise DJing very moodily! Rather than - no shade at all - but rather than us doing back flips or various different other stuff.
My Boiler Room was a prime example of [something] I didn't think was going anywhere. So I just had a great time. I drank all the rum I could during the 50 minutes that I was on because I was like, ‘Yes, I've got a Boiler Room! Sick! I can go back to my intern job at Mixmag.’ I was an intern at Mixmag and a bunch of the Mixmag lot had come down, so it's like a meeting of the minds, Boiler Room and Mixmag in one room together. I was doing lots of video stuff for them [Mixmag] and I wasn't expecting that to go anywhere. So therefore you have a good time.
DJs have a false sense of they have to be always happy all the time, otherwise the set’s really bad and people can't relate. Because everyone looks at the DJs. And that's kind of unheard of in comparison to what it was like before. So there's a lot to think about, a lot to take away from what I'm saying there. But hopefully people can find a way of normalising being completely authentic in front of people when playing and not having to feel so happy all the time.
LN. Are you good at the moment?
S: Oh, 100%. Yeah, good. Because it's about having the self awareness of understanding that it's good to stay inside sometimes; it's good to not drink and take yourself into a space in which you're drinking too much or you're not eating good. I changed my diet, became vegan, because I found myself - and this is almost like in a economical sense - going to fancy places, eating really strange meats, like octopus, and that was supposed to give opulence.
LN: The pre-gig meal…
S: … at a fancy restaurant, drinking fancy wine, drinking and eating fancy meat. It's kind of strange in that sense.
LN: I’m glad you mentioned money because you did what I think was a wonderful thing. You did the Cheap and Cheerful tour recently, with cheap tickets, about £10? Which I thought was great because people don't have money. Was that hard to put together? Was there any kind of pushback from venues?
S: No, every single venue that did it was completely in understanding of why we were doing it. We lost the Wire Club in Leeds and they were really accommodating to having this tour, even though they were about to go under. And I think every show that I did in Europe understood the concept of it.
I'm very much from a community mindset. I'm very much from community radio, playing at places, and they host footwork nights, jungle nights, the niche and full-blown underground music. I've entered into a space, however, which is unfortunately quite capitalistic and knows and understands what the music lover wants and needs and then sells that back to them. So I think for me, it was apparent, especially pre-depression, that something needed to be done and changed. Because otherwise we're entering into a space where people don't care for people's circumstances. Bills are expensive. You're spending more than half of your wage on rent, if you like, say, for instance, live in London or a big city.
Clubbing has become a luxury. How is that possible and how is that normal? It's not fair for you not to have a release. It's not fair for you to feel that you have to stay inside to save money and make sure that you're okay. I remember what it was like as an intern, pretty much 80% of my wage going into my rent, and then being left with £200, £300 pounds for the month, still finding ways to DJ or go out. But I was lucky. I knew people in the clubs to go there for free. So imagine, if you don't know anyone in the club.
LN: One last thing: what was the hardest track to make on the album. And why?
S: I can easily tell you that. XTC SUSP9ND3D was the hardest track because I found it really hard to make, something felt very off. Came back to the project of XTC SUSP9ND3D; created XTC, which is the fourth tune, and then realised that I was making two tunes which were the juxtaposition of how I felt in life. So XTC was a liberation and an amazing thing in which I was like, ‘Post-depression, wow, I'm back. Yeah, sick. I'm happy.’ XTC SUSP9ND3D is actually how I felt in depression. I purposely made it so compact and gritty and a lot of distortion and this kind of stuff because that’s exactly the feeling I felt during depression.
When playing it back in the listening party that I did at FOLD I nearly cried, and Loraine James was like, ‘You good?’ So obviously, we're good friends. I was like, ‘Yeah, I'm fine. This one’s is about my depression.’ She was like, ‘Say no more.’ And then stepped back. But yeah, that was like the hardest one.
Also strangely, the project got lost - I lost the project out of nowhere. I don't know what happened. There was a bad save. And I also named it after a mix that I saw of Sophie's, which is HEAV3N SUSPENDED. And I've named it similarly to that mix. That mix meant a lot to me during COVID because that's actually when I was learning how to produce. And she is someone who means a lot to me as a producer - also Virgo - and I think the way that her instrumentation, as a producer, cultural icon, we’re not gonna have anyone like that ever again. But it's good that her legacy has been something we've been able to experience and been in the same timeline. I saw her a long time ago at another festival. And it felt good and nice to name something which was in relation to her as well.
Some listening
The KLF - Chill Out and Jimmy Cauty - Space SIMULTANEOUSLY
The KLF’s 1990 album Chill Out is widely acclaimed as one of the best ambient albums of all time; Jimmy Cauty’s Space, which was released in the same year, is lesser known but similarly stunning. Space was apparently intended to be The Orb’s debut album, until Cauty left the group taking Space with him, whereupon he may or may not have wiped all of Alex Paterson’s contributions to the record and released it under his own name.
Anyway, both are utterly brilliant - but did you know they can be played simultaneously? Neither did I, until last Friday, when the good people at Music Ally mentioned it in their The Knowledge newsletter. It sounds a bit like one of those play-Dark-Side-of-the-Moon-and-watch-The-Wizard-of-Oz-at-the-same-time types of amiable nonsense. But Music Ally thoughtfully provided us with a link to a site that allows you to listen to the two albums at the same time and damn it, it works!
And, OK, you could say that if you take any two fundamentally abstract records and play them at the same time they will sync up. (And, yes, Chill Out is six minutes longer than Space.) But Chill Out and Space have structure, they ride through definite peaks and troughs as well as distinct musical sections and they seem to sync perfectly, not only not getting in each other’s way but actually enhancing the other record’s charm. For example, I love the way the synth tickles of Space sync up to Chill Out’s pedal steel, which occurs around the 12-minute mark; the subtle build up around the 22-minute mark on both records also sounds perfectly timed, too.
A little further investigation shows that the revelation came from djopm on the Space Discogs page. He wrote, “if you play Chill Out and Space simultaneously, they SYNC! Alex Paterson did it live before the opening act. Then he went to his booth where he sold his own t-shirts etc, and I asked him about it, and he confirmed it.”
So there we go. History made. Do go and try it. And thanks to Rich Walker for tipping me off to the Music Ally story.
Colombia’s Rainmaker and his Artificio label are new to me but, on the evidence of his forthcoming Exótica EP, the Medellin producer has nailed the skill of producing a brilliantly psychedelic and ever-so-slightly silly electronic noise and building a track out of it. Which might sound like faint praise but absolutely is not: see, for example, Joy Orbison’s flight fm or Mr. Oizo’s Flat Beat for prior offenders.
Histérica, the EP’s lead track, has a wobbling, flagellating synth lead that sounds like being told off by a malfunctioning android headmaster after not enough hours of sleep, while a rock-hard beat tries to inspire you to do more mischief. The EP’s third track, Erótica - you see where they’re going with the titles there? - is the absolute standout on the record, with a bass line so unruly it should come wrapped in a brown paper bag. But you’ll have to wait until August 1 to hear that.
Cloudborne is the perfect title for this song from Seoul’s Closet Yi. The tune’s various elements don’t so much march in a tightly gridded line as amble into attention then blow away on the wind; the breakbeat that runs under the second half of the song is ever so slightly spongey and elastic, as if teasing the notion of going out of time without ever quite doing it. Cloud-like, in this case, doesn’t mean soft though: Cloudborne is heavy as all hell, full of thundering industrial beats and distorted synth bass. It’s lovely. In an actually quite horrible kind of way.
Rarely has a record sounded as itchy as Iris, the new one from Olof Dreijer, who had an absolutely stellar 2024 thanks to his collaboration with Diva Cruz and tune-of-the-summer remix for Björk and Rosalía. Iris sounds as annoyingly funky as a rave mosquito buzzing around your brow, Beltram’s hoover sound reinvented for the terminally annoyed; and yet you’d dance the hell out of it, given the chance.
Justice - Mannequin Love (Alan Braxe and DJ Falcon remix)
Older readers may remember that eminently sweet spot in the early 2000s when Alan Braxe and Fred Falke were remixing everyone - from Test Icicles to Kylie - and making an absolute house banger every time. Well that era is back! - sort of - with Braxe and Falcon’s remix of Justice’s Mannequin Love. OK, there’s no Falke but this is precisely the sort of melodic, Miami-Vice tough-guy strut that Braxe was coming out with in the 2000s and the result is an immaculate house anthem that I want to hear again and again.
Rian Treanor and Cara Tolmie - My Little Loophole
How can something sound this perverted and this pure at the same time? My Little Loophole is the first fruit of the collaboration between asymmetrical beat specialist Rian Treanor and Cara Tolmie, a Glasgow-born, Stockholm-based vocalist and performance artist who specialises in “internal singing”, using breath, movement and touch to explore the connections between voice and body. And it is as far out as you might expect, the exquisite tone of Tolmie’s voice being fractured and scattered into mind-bending stutters, without ever losing its melodic power, as the duo explore the ever fruitful space between art, nonchalance and all-out rave power.
Lood (feat. Donell Rush) - Shout-N-Out (Dennis Quin remix)
This storming 1996 track combines the exceptional talents of Masters at Work AND Mood 2 Swing on production and the silky but tough vocals of the late Donnell Rush, in a sleek percussive rush of vitality. So why the hell would you remix it? I don’t know - but Amsterdam’s Dennis Quin did and against the odds he has produced a very worthy update, one that leans slightly towards the more metallic sound of UK garage without losing the original’s nervous New York energy, tough in a way that tedious hard techno merchants will never understand. If you’re in a club and you hear this, stay, because you’re in the right place.
DJ Q - It’s You (Octo Octa’s Slammin’ With U remix)
I’ve come quite shockingly late to Local Action’s excellent compilation of remixes, which is part of the label’s much merited 15th birthday celebrations. But I’ve also come to the record at precisely the right time, stumbling over Octo Octa’s fabulous remix of DJ Q’s It’s You in the week that I published my third guide to Pepe Bradock’s best tunes.
Maybe it’s just my Pepe monomania but both Octoa Octa’s remix of DJ Q and Wawa’s Stoned Out take on Baltra’s Like a Butterfly, which follows it, remind me of Bradock’s work. Like a Butterfly is agreeably squishy, somewhere between deep house and more abstract forms, while Octo Octa’s version of It’s You sounds like Pepe Bradock, if Pepe had discovered Jersey Club, all springy, bleep, weird and soulful.
clipping - Night of Heaven (feat. Counterfeit Madison and Kid Koala)
I went to see Beth Gibbons in Barcelona last week and she was utterly fabulous, encoring with Glory Box (!!!!!!) of all damn songs. Two days later clipping turned up with Night of Heaven, which has distinctively classic Portishead vibes, hip hop beats meeting cinematic strings, night-piercing scratches and an astoundingly emotive vocal from Counterfeit Madison, a vocalist who was inspired by Nina Simone in the very best way. Obviously, sounding like Portishead is no bad thing but clipping do give things their own, slightly wonky take on matters. This really is fabulous.
Rockers Hi-Fi - Now I Deliver (Biggabush version)
From Lovers rock to dubstep, the influence of reggae on British music is as long as it is tangled up in bass. Birmingham’s Rockers Hi-Fi are a brilliant example of the long tendrils of reggae; the duo are best know for Push Push and What A Life, two 90s singles that bridged the gaps between dub, house and hip hop, without ever really belonging to any of those genres, gloriously original but entirely accessible. Their catalogue is getting a well-earned reissue, with the searing, stirring BiggaBush remix of Now I Deliver, originally taken from the group’s 1996 album Mish Mash, first out of the traps for summer.
Epod - Who's Ready To Get High?
Progressive-ish house from 1992 with vocals from pre-Broadcast Trish Keenan? It would be rude not to. And she sounds absolutely lovely. Someone remix it, please.
Things I’ve done
Line Noise podcast - Tectonic special with Pinch
I spoke to Rob Ellis, aka Pinch, about 20 years of his Tectonic label for the Line Noise podcast. In a wide-ranging discussion, wew talked about dubstep and the dubstep name, Bristol, the influence of reggae, running a label in 2025, Adrian Sherwood, Trim, Croydon, Forward>> and more.
Radio Primavera Sound - Interview with Alan Sparhawk
At Primavera Sound 2025 one of my most moving interviews was with Alan Sparhawk, formerly of Low, who was - like SHERELLE - very honest and articulate, the whole thing turning out particularly cathartic on a Saturday afternoon after not a great deal of sleep. You can now watch it on YouTube.
The playlists
I have two: The newest and bestest 2025; and The newest and the bestest. They are both on Spotify, in the name of reaching the largest amount of people. Does that justify it? Maybe not. Funnily enough, I personally use Apple Music, so maybe I should shift to there, although the functionality isn’t as good. I don’t know. What do you think?