KinAhau

Genre: House

Origin: Mexico

Disguised as a trash collector, eighteen-year-old KinAhau ran up behind Michael Bibi and handed him a letter and a USB. The songs from that USB within days echoed across every major festival, a momentum that soon carried into Michael Bibi’s proposal to collaborate on one of them — Different Side.

Although KinAhau was totally unknown in every electronic music scene, Different Side gained rapid popularity and amassed several million streams within a few months. This sudden breakthrough led to his first solo live sets at DC-10, Fabric London, and Space Miami, three of the world’s foremost electronic music institutions, as well as solo appearances at Mayan Warrior in Istanbul and Mexico. At those shows, KinAhau appeared alongside some of the most singular names in contemporary electronic music, from Luciano and Dennis Cruz to Damian Lazarus and DJ Tennis.

A generation ago, KinAhau might have cooed over a drum machine, but today his medium is confessional sound creation. His 2024 mixtape, old demos and ripoffs — a stream of near-expressive observations and genre blend focused on his own youth discomfort and production in the vernacular of Beatport charts — drew enough attention in the United States to support his first nationwide tour that same year.

KinAhau has been releasing music since the age of seventeen, appearing on projects alongside underground pioneers such as Guti and K’Alexi Shelby, but his trajectory so far is, by a long shot, the least interesting part of his music. As his work matured, KinAhau has ditched the novelty of profane club culture, reaching for something more honest and introspective.

When remix culture has rendered most electronic music today as confining to each artist’s own identity, you need only look at KinAhau to understand his music isn’t so much a distinct sound as it is a community of youth coming of age in the same online spheres. KinAhau is less a single figure than a mirror held up to a generation finding its voice in sound.

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