Speaking to us over Zoom from his home studio, freshly returned from gigging in The Netherlands, DJ, producer and trance evangelist Ben Hemsley is feeling pretty good about his DJ Mag Best Producer win. "To win the award is another achievement I'll have to somehow give back to the people who support me and follow me," he says. "They already do enough by showing up to my sets, showing love and energy and listening to my music. To be fan-voted for the award is so mint. “It’s an absolute dream,” he continues. “I’ve been buying the magazine since I was 14, and being on the cover, it’s a really high accolade. It’s amazing mate, I’m buzzin’!”

The win perfectly rounded off a year in which Hemsley had a triumphant summer Ibiza Rocks residency, and every date on his Connection tour sold out, including massive venues like Warehouse Project and Newcastle Arena. “I watched WWE and Disney On Ice at Newcastle Arena with my grandma when I was younger!” he tells us with glee. And he also found time in 2023 to swell his bebé Recordings label’s small-but-perfectly-formed catalogue with big releases from Klubbheads, Cody Wong and his own summer release ‘IBIZA’. He’s a producer whose tunes have appeared on labels like Trick, Sola and Repopulate Mars, and which have picked up support from DJs ranging from Michael Bibi and Jamie Jones to Annie Mac and Fatboy Slim, and his international DJ profile is rapidly rising too. Clearly, dance music is having something of a Ben Hemsley moment. But while his recent success may appear to have happened overnight, it was actually, as is so often the case, preceded by several years of low-level DJing and production graft.

Hemsley started early, making music at his home in North Shields, just outside Newcastle, when he was 13, and by 14 he was putting on under-18s events. “I just asked for money on my 13th birthday,” he tells us, “and my grandma took us into town to this music shop in Newcastle,” where he got his first copy of music production sof...