Route 94

Barely out of his teens, Rowan Jones is already an old pro. Having first started making beats on a downloaded demo of FruityLoops at just 13, by 17 he was playing dubstep as Dream at places like Cable, Ministry of Sound and Fabric.

“I’ve been DJing in clubs since before I was old enough to be in clubs,” he admits. “I’ve never been out as a punter. I was either making tunes or I was locked in the green room, doing things I shouldn’t be doing.”

At the grand old age of 18 he realised he’d “kind of hit a wall”. Route 94 was born when he sent ‘Window’, a house track he’d been working on, to New York Transit Authority. “I didn’t think much of it,” he says. “But then he put it in a FACT mix. People started going mad for it and it dawned on me: ‘Shit, I’m actually quite good at this’.”

The deep house of ‘My Love’ shows the direction he’s heading under the tutelage of new manager Artwork. “Because I’m so young having people like him and Skream around is amazing,” he says. “I can take a leaf out of their books.”

This summer he’ll play “every festival”, but for now he’s home in Richmond with his mum, a music fanatic who plays everyone from Michael Jackson to Roy Davis Jr. “I love working in my bedroom,” he says. “I know people pay thousands of pounds for massive studios, but it’s pointless if you just make shit tunes.”

Originally published in Mixmag, April 2014.