S.A.M.

Samuel Andre Madsen grew up in the Danish countryside playing drums and bass guitar in church, then moved to Copenhagen to study theology and found electronic music somewhere between lectures and shifts as a church keeper. As S.A.M., they have been releasing dubbed-out, classically minded house since 2007, with records on Defected and Up The Stuss and a long run on their own imprints Delaphine, Dahlia and Oscillat Music, the last shared with the Mandar trio they belong to. Those labels have also released work by Ricardo Villalobos, Butch and Matthew Dekay. The debut album, Dream State Of A Bellmaker, traded the dancefloor for jazz-tinged electronic-acoustic experiments built on analog techno hardware. DJ sets have taken S.A.M. to Fabric, Robert Johnson and Rex Club, and the sound that travels with them is usually described as cosmic, psychedelic and quietly spiritual. The recent The Drives series, assembled from finished tracks a self-confessed perfectionist had left to gather dust, suggests the archive runs deeper than the discography.