Bare Up

Back when Daniel Harwood was 13, he haphazardly downloaded an Fl Studio demo, to understand how electronic music was made. Within 5 minutes, he closed the programme and continued with his evening. It wasn't until one year later that Dan and his friends were listening to a Muse – Knights of Cydonia Dubstep Remix, full blast, with the bass creating a feeling that Dan had never felt before. He wanted to understand more about how this sound was created and immediately googled a variety of Youtube tutorials. Dan quickly realised that the software that featured in these Youtube videos, was the exact same demo software that he had downloaded a year ago, and to his surprise, the software was still available in his laptop's downloads folder. So, ignoring his friends around him, Dan plugged his ear phones in and went on to dedicate the rest of his evening to producing the most amateur bass lines and drum beats imaginable, and this wasn't good enough for Dan. This sparked an addictive journey to attempt to master any genre or sound that has inspired Dan over the last 8 years. Starting with Dubstep, dabbling with House, creating "avant-garde" film scores and producing the most cliché pop/commercial music you could think of. Throughout all of this time, Dan would frequently be drawn back to one genre in particular. Inspired by his spontaneous Drum & Bass beat box ideas, he would immediately record his beat box rhythms on his phone and go on to replicate it in Fl studio as soon as he had the opportunity.

This is what Dan, now also known as Bare Up, continues to do to this day. He concedes that hardly anyone has known about his musical productions over the past 8 years, even though he has won DJ/Producer of the month on BBC Radio Devon, spent two months in Iceland working at Green House Studio with Valgier Sigurdson and networked with a variety of broad music industry professionals. Dan hasn't had many opportunities to play out his creations and this was because he didn't like to promote himself. He has frequently explained to his friends and family that he would "prefer to just be discovered" than "sell" himself. Dan says, "if someone comes across my music and goes out of their way to interact with me, or provide me with an offer. That would mean more to me than bangin' on at someone until they cave and decide to give me a set or release my music on their label. If your music, or anything for that matter, is worth something, that's what will create the demand (to an extent)".

However, friends continued to encourage Dan to promote his music and luckily for him, an old friend introduced him to a private Drum & Bass Facebook group, called 'DnB Talk'. It was in this group that Dan quickly went on to develop relationships with Pick 'n' Mix Owner TJ Campbell and Just Jump Records/Corey Evans. But it was one of Dan's earliest posts that caught the attention of Rampage CEO and renowned Drum & Bass Producer, Hans Machiels, aka Murdock, that has now led Dan into an exclusive relationship with Rampage/Radar Records and Hans. Time will only tell what Bare Up will bring to the scene.