Every once in a while a new producer just smashes their way through into the bigtime. That’s what’s happening with Riva Starr’s sneak-in-and-blow-the-place-up approach. An act whose influence comes from blogs, wild afterparties, music that works for the kids as well as the cool ubercoolische europeans, Riva seems to have sprung onto the scene fully formed - but in reality he’s been working his arse off for years. Riva Starr plunders the best in tech house and beeping, burping synth lines to create a dirty, messy dancefloor affair. His first appearance on Jesse Rose’s ubercool Frontroom label with the Thizzle EP led to a release on Claude Vonstroke’s pivotal Dirtybird label with the WTF?! EP - described by IDJ as “essential - 5/5”. Then there were two releases in quick succession on Southern Fried - a remix of Armand van Helden’s smash J’Taime, and his own EP, Scratch’n’Itch, which had raves from a stupidly wide variety of DJs… And the gigs have kept apace. Just in the last months there’s been a China tour, Glastonbury, Glade and Fusion Festivals, two slots at the Winter Music Conference - the Dirtybird party and a huge Lot49 event – an Australian and US tour on the pipeline and definitely more to come… A single mix offered to the influential Discobelle blog was downloaded TWELVE THOUSAND times, and a sneaky download of a DJ edit of La Conga, his followup single on Dirtybird, lead to that single going top 5 on Beatport through pure word of mouth - no ads, a secret release with no press, and it had gone top 10 in the tech-house chart before Beatport decided maybe the track should have some advertising…