Ron Trent

Ron Trent is a DJ, producer and multi-instrumentalist raised on Chicago's South Side. He learned much of what he knows from his father, a disco DJ who ran a record pool, moving from percussion to drums to keyboards, and grew up inside Chicago's early underground scene in the 80s as it shifted from disco into house. He was DJing at local parties by his early teens, drawing on the example of Larry Heard, Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy.

Still in high school, he recorded "Altered States," released on Armando's Warehouse Records in 1990. Rough-hewn but full of invention, a simple beat sprinkled with science-fiction synths across its thirteen-plus minutes, it became a coveted underground record when Frankie Knuckles began playing it several times in a single set. Its influence spread well beyond Chicago, and nowhere more than Detroit, where Trent and Chez Damier struck up one of the great house partnerships of the 90s. Recording in Kevin Saunderson's studio, the pair co-founded Prescription in 1993, a label now widely regarded as one of the most influential deep house imprints of its era, introducing artists like Glen Underground, Moodymann, Peven Everett and Luke Solomon.

Later in the decade he moved to Brooklyn, where his sound grew grander and more live-feeling, finding a home on his own Future Vision label in the 2000s before he returned to Chicago. Over the years he has run a string of imprints, among them Prescription, Future Vision, Electric Blue and Music And Power, alongside club nights of his own.

A master of the sweet spot where machine music meets organic instrumentation, Trent is known for a beatific, atmospheric house sound that is as richly musical as it is soulful, informed by disco, jazz-funk, dub and electro. In recent years he has drawn in collaborators like Gigi Masin, Khruangbin and Jean-Luc Ponty for albums of deep, unhurried grooves built around real musicianship, with releases on labels including Night Time Stories and Rush Hour. He often points back to spaces like Paradise Garage and The Warehouse as the places that shaped his sense of what a dancefloor could be.