UV Boi

“I wouldn’t really call it dance music,” he says. “I would call it electronic. Whatever idea comes to my head I try to make – I don’t really try to pigeonhole myself in one genre.”

John’s listening habits, which take in genres as distant as jazz and classical music, inspire his mixture of heavy 808s, hip hop influences and melodic sounds. “You don’t really hear it so much in my music, but I do listen to [those styles],” he says. “I try to use everything and put it together into what I am trying to express.”

‘Luv’ has been three or four months in the making – a decent stretch in the timeline of UV Boi’s career thus far. “I linked up with my friends from New York, from Brooklyn, Brasstracks, and they wrote the brass in there,” John explains. “And from there I fell in love with the whole track.”

Another collaborator’s vocals, those of Fionn Richards, were added later. “The song came together real nicely, it was real natural. I loved it all together,” says John.

UV Boi is currently on the road to launch the new track, and he’s been putting on a bigger and brighter live show to celebrate. “My first tour was more DJ-based, but through the Tkay [Maidza] tour I was able to try some different equipment,” John says. “I was able to bring my keyboard, my drum pad with me, to see how that [went]. Now with me going on my third tour I have this live show planned out and it is working very well.”

John first met breakout rap star Maidza after winning a spot at the Listen Out festival last year. “I am so glad she chose to tour with me,” he says. “It was a really good experience.” But it was more a matter of time before John’s contemporaries took notice, thanks to the attention surrounding his earlier self-released tracks, ‘Thank U’ and ‘Ghost’.

“Before triple j and Nina [Las Vegas] hopped on board with my sound and my music, I was getting a lot of love from online from places like America and Europe,” says John.

Indeed, Las Vegas has been a major supporter of UV Boi and his work, featuring him on the Mix Up Exclusives program as well as introducing his sound to her peers, including the Canadian production and DJ high-flyer, Hemsworth. An instant fan, Hemsworth started emailing John about UV Boi, and the connection led to their collaborative track, ‘Gods’.

“We were chatting and all of a sudden he was like, ‘Hey, do you want to make a song?’ says John. “I was ecstatic. I was like, ‘Holy crap, Ryan Hemsworth wants to make a song with me!’ But I had to play it cool, so I was like, ‘Yeah, cool, let’s make a song.’”