Silverlining

Silverlining is Asad Rizvi, a London producer and DJ who has been part of house music's underground since the early 90s. He started out DJing on a London pirate radio station at sixteen, and began producing around the same time, making his own Warp-inspired electronica, some of it picked up by Colin Dale on his Outer Limits show. From there his sound settled into a blend of shuffling US house grooves and the abstract energy of Detroit and deep techno, and that mix still runs through his music today.

Over more than twenty-five years he has turned out a huge body of work, both as Silverlining and under a spread of aliases, with well over a hundred vinyl titles to his name. Records from that early era, on labels like Wiggle, Wrong, Neotropiq and Furthur Electronix, have become collectors' pieces, which is part of why he set up his own Silverlining Dubs, making some of those sought-after tracks available again alongside newer productions. The label was also home to his album "Simulacra," which drew a warm response in 2021.

More recently he has been exploring a more techno-leaning direction with a new label, Forgotten Chorus, while keeping the same production standards he has always held to. XLR8R once described him as a "master of groove," and it is a fair summary of what he does behind the decks: reading a room and moving through his collection with a real feel for a dancefloor.

He remains humble about all of it. Decades in, his sets have taken him to venues across more than forty countries, from Berlin to Buenos Aires and Tokyo to Vancouver, and he still sounds like someone more interested in where the music goes next than in anything already behind him.