Jamie Stevens has been a leading figure in Australian dance music throughout this decade, both as part of Infusion and as a standalone producer. His recent releases on the likes of Chameleon Records have revealed a heady tech-house bent, squarely aimed at deep-in-the-night dancefloors.

For the second part of our Hometown Heroes series, inthemix asked Jamie to chart the last ten years through the acts that have inspired and influenced him. After some serious deliberation, here’s what he came back with.

Matthew Dear, in all guises

“He’s not a purist. I really admire the way he constructs his music. He’s so prolific, and all his stuff is just incredible. I remember hearing Leave Luck To Heaven in 2003 and being blown away by this collision of styles, and he made it sound so right and cool. He’s a bit of a genius. His personality definitely comes through in the music.”

Pezzner

“He’s really stood out for me recently. In a way, he reignited the love I had for the hypnotic elements from when I first started listening to acid house. Hypnotics made a lot of sense to me, and Pezzner reminded me of that. He didn’t invent anything new, but his sense of musicality really inspired me a lot recently. In all genres of music, the hypnotic parts make sense to me – in contemporary classical or rock. Pezzner really pushes my buttons with that.”

Apparat

“A lot of these people aren’t incredibly unique necessarily. Apparat has foundations in something that James Holden might’ve done, but musically it’s just so, so beautiful. The way he fuses together a lot of instrumentation I hadn’t really heard before; it’s similar to Telefon Tel Aviv actually. That melding of machine-like sounds with instrumentations influenced me quite a bit. Walls is just a genius album.”

Ewan Pearson

“He’s made a really successful career out of producing other artists, and what’s he has brought to them…you can hear him in there, but not overbearingly. There’s something that I hear in his productions and remixes – there’s always a musicality there, and for me, a real sincerity. He’s never been one to follow trends, I like that he doesn’t immediately copy what’s going on at the time. He knows what he wants. Musically and stylistically, it’s just him.”

James Holden

“Originally, he had this understanding of musicality, but not in a traditional sense. He really embraced the computer as an instrument and never made any apologies about that. For me, he introduced that chance, chaotic element when things were getting a little stagnant. There’s a juxtaposition of aching musicality with raw, cut-up, strange randomness that he incorporated digitally. He’s never really copied himself. I admire him for that.”

Pharell Williams & Chad Hugo

“They reignited my love of pop music back then. I never hid the fact that I was a fan of the Britney stuff. There was a funk to it that was fairly unique for that time. With them and Timbaland and Missy Elliot, there was more experimentation in the pop field than in house. That definitely had an impact on us as Infusion. I can maybe hear some influence in things like Tiefschwarz, where producers started introducing these atonal elements in their music. It took a leaf out of hip hop’s book. After about 2005 that gradually became electro-house crap, but back then atonal noises with very little musicality was quite new.”

David Sitek

“Like a lot of these guys, I like the way he juxtaposes elements. For me, TV On The Radio is the quintessential band that has put together so many disparate elements. You’ve got barber-shop quartet vocals, African drum elements, drum machines, rock bass – and they make it work. A big part of that is the way Dave Sitek pieces it together.”

Oliver Huntemann

“I was trying to decide whether to include Huntemann or Bodzin. They were quite similar there for a while, it was sometimes hard to know who did what. This sound was quite unique – almost that rock ‘n roll element to their tracks. It’s raw and in your face; really exciting music that makes no apologies for wanting to rock out. They were treating synths almost like guitars and I liked that.”

Deepchild

“I absolutely adore his attitude as a person, and he has a real grasp of funk in his music. I don’t know whether it’s ‘cause he comes from a dub foundation, but he has funk and an element of fun. There’s a very humorous element to his stuff. Like Matthew Dear, it kind of has this looseness, which really inspired me to try new things. A lightness has definitely come through of late as people embrace the original house elements, rather than a kick-drum and white noise for ten minutes.”

Jamie Stevens plays Loosekaboose at the Civic Underground this Friday 16 July.