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Ah, the Internet. A global network of communication and connectivity. With every answer at your fingertips, the World Wide Web has far exceeded her initial potential, allowing for instantaneous message sending, one-day delivery, and the rise of next-gen creative mavens. Enter Mura Masa.

Hailing from a small British Isle, Guernsey, Mura (real name: Alexander Crossan) has fi red up electronic charts in recent years with his distinctive flair of category crossing, and synesthesia-inducing bops. Unlike the immediacy of our ever-digital generation, his producing prowess has been polished over many years of trial and error.

“I grew up around a lot of music. My dad was a musician through his youth and my mum briefly managed a band in the U.S. They went on to have normal day jobs, but they were both really big music heads.” Before Spotify, there was Soundcloud. And before SoundCloud, there was the humble small-town music venue. “I started playing in various bands when I was a teenager, doing all sorts of odd jobs because I come from a really small place, so it’s quite hard to find every member of a band. It’d be like, ‘We need a drummer, somebody learn to play the drums.’ I was that guy who was like, ‘Yeah, I could probably do it,’” he laughs, noting how he made the natural transition from band member to one-man show when he moved to a new city for university, armed with Sony headphones and a laptop—the quintessential gear of a bedroom music producer.

And with the aid of a little Internet virality, Mura catapulted from dorm room dreamer to festival main stage performer. Fast-forward to today with a discography featuring top-name talent like A$AP Rocky and Charli XCX, the London-based producer has solidified his name as one of the industry’s greatest masterminds of the Roaring 2020s. His star: rising. His genre: undefined, interweaving tales of teenage angst and unrequited love into eccentric soundscapes of electro-R&B-pop fusion. As we look ahead toward a post-pandemic future, Mura is looking to the past (namely, Y2K) for answers to the jigsaw that is his upcoming album, dropping September 16. “At that time, if you thought about the future, it was something exciting. Now, when you think about the future, it’s very boring. Zuckerberg. Bitcoin. I think people are thirsting for optimistic futurism which was rife in the early millennium.”

Here’s to making up for our socially distanced years. You heard it here first: Mura Masa will be soundtracking the collective ass-shaking-in-a-dark-club. Low-rise jeans recommended.