Leon Vynehall

For Leon Vynehall, dance music is a lens. While his lush, propulsive take on house music might well soundtrack a night out, it’s meant, above all, as a means of storytelling. Born in Pembury, England, Vynehall was into post-hardcore as a teen before moving to Brighton and discovering dance music. Part of a bumper crop of young UK producers in the early 2010s, he started out releasing punchy fusions of house and bass music, but as he graduated to longer-format releases, he began working with narrative themes. His 2014 release Music for the Uninvited paid tribute to the funk cassettes his mom played in the car when he was young; 2016’s celebratory Rojus (Designed to Dance) examined parallels between avian mating rituals and nightclubbing; and 2018’s more contemplative Nothing Is Still cast a fond glance back at his grandparents’ emigration from London to New York in the ‘60s. But not everything Vynehall makes is so conceptual: His 2021 album, Rare, Forever, flits between ambient atmospheres, jazzy miniatures, and experimental club jams, celebrating the power of sound in all its immersive immediacy.