dj cosworth
As a DJ, producer, label boss, designer and online record store co-founder, Bristol-based DJ Cosworth has become an integral and multi-disciplined outlet for unfettered club culture. His music sounds like the amalgam of every white-label record shop find, connecting and mashing up any number of sounds heard in UK garage, organ house, speed garage, dembow and hardgroove into a bare-bones body workout. Spending years digging on YouTube and Discogs has resulted in club music that knowingly absorbs its history and drips with a dark, dubby vapour. Between his main alias and more wrist-wafting tunes as Vibes Kartel, Cosworth has released on Hot Haus, E-Beamz, Locked On Records and his own label Hardline.
As head honcho of Hardline and its sub-imprints which include Body High, Drum Workouts and more, his label traffics in “no-nonsense club music” and has platformed the likes of Interplanetary Criminal, Dylan Fogarty, Amor Satyr and Silva Bumpa. Not just a label, Hardline has also visually extended into a clothing line designed by Cosworth himself and part of a growing vinyl distribution empire, Untitled Distribution, in collaboration with fellow Bristol label ec2a.
Recently, DJ Cosworth’s name has been on the lineups of Glastonbury Festival, Warehouse Project, Argo16, Hidden and Corsica Studios. In 2024, he is looking forward to an appearance at Parklife Festival, more Hardline releases, a new self-release imprint titled ‘Horsepower’ and, in his words, “continued world domination”.