Daniel Fowler Drops Bass-Driven Heat with “Everybody On The Floor” on UFO Recordz. A cheeky, bass-loaded deep house cut built to pull every body into motion and keep the floor alive well past midnight.
There’s a spark in the atmosphere when a track doesn’t just play but takes control. UK-born DJ and producer Daniel Fowler channels exactly that feeling in his latest release, Everybody On The Floor, which dropped on UFO Recordz on March 20th.
From the opening beat, the message is unmistakable: this is deep bass house with attitude. Heavy, rolling low-end rhythms form the backbone, while lively, tongue-in-cheek details flicker in and out like city lights after midnight. It’s not a track that waits to be noticed, it grabs your attention and escorts you straight onto the dancefloor.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
“Everybody On The Floor” feels like a command rather than a suggestion—what moment or mindset inspired that energy?
To be totally transparent, ‘Everybody On The Floor’ is a Splice sample. The moment I heard the sample I thought ‘this is perfect!’, and a lot of how I produce my music generally comes from happy accidents or intuitively feeling what is the best for the track. I feel it captures what this song is really about, getting down on the dance floor and having a great time vibing to the music with total strangers and the people you love. It really is something to just put on and forget about your problems and living in the moment.
The track has this playful, almost cheeky personality baked into the basslines—how do you approach injecting humor or attitude into your sound?
I love humor, and I love to play. I feel ‘play’ is a very overlooked skill we have as artists or even as adults, it’s essential that we play in order to acknowledge ourselves, our inner child, it’s how ideas are made, how feelings are expressed, and how we bond with people. In any medium that we choose to express ourselves, we are ultimately ‘playing’. It’s something we do so naturally as children that we tend to forget its importance in our daily lives. So when I am injecting humour or attitude, it comes from being playful, and specifically being playful with what I find musically inspiring or interesting to me in that moment.
Your upbringing spans the UK, Malaysia, and Hong Kong—can you hear any of those cultural influences sneaking into this particular track?
Absolutely, my background is mixed, I am Eurasian and my cultural upbringing has influenced how I approach music. Hong Kong itself has been influenced by the west and the east and you can see how it’s shaped the city as this multicultural melting pot. This is something I believe in what makes every artist unique in their sonic identity. For me, it was about bringing all my musical influences together to package it neatly as I could without overwhelming the listener.
There’s a strong groove here, but also a lot of subtle detail—what was the most obsessive tweak you made while finishing this one?
For me, what I love to OBSESS over is pure ear candy! I cannot get enough of it. It’s something that I can get lost in for hours on end, and usually is something I try to provide to my listeners. I would say the detail I was most focused on creating was those 8 bit melodic arpeggiated highlights that support bass to give it that COLOUR that you hear in genres like Colour Bass, I had to layer different sounds together to really get those sounds to “sparkle” in the right way. Almost like a layer of glitter that compliments the driving bass in the low end. It was so satisfying compiling all those sounds together to make it sound as cohesive as possible.
You’ve cited artists like Daft Punk and JOYRYDE as inspirations—where do you think “Everybody On The Floor” sits on that spectrum of influence vs originality?
What a great question. I personally feel that we are all shaped by our influences and people are a collection of ideas gathered from our life experiences and how we choose to filter those ideas to create something both simultaneously, original and influenced. For ‘Everybody On The Floor’, it has been shaped by my musical influences, and because of that it’s made something unique in its own right.
This release leans into deep bass house—was that a deliberate lane choice, or did the track naturally evolve into that space?
Oftentimes I let the track dictate how I should approach it. I initially wanted to make a ‘Colour House’ track and as I was sketching and putting ideas together, I could hear other sounds and vibes influencing my decisions. I will always have a reference or anchor point and then find other sounds that compliment each other, sometimes this would result in happy accidents and think “oh yeah I love this!” and trust my intuition. I would also say that genres like Complextro/Electro House have had a big impact on my sound design choices and how every sound is part of a greater musical conversation, like how a painter might choose complementary colours.
There’s always some kind of call and response going on within the track and I wanted each sound to have its own space. Sometimes I don’t always know what specific genres or influences I am including in any given song. I just do my best to “trust the process” and then review it through my filters afterwards to see if it makes sense in the bigger scope of the track.
If you could drop this track in any setting in the world, where would it be and what would the crowd look like?
This is a hard one… There’s always a time and place for music. And I think this track is flexible enough to be in most party settings. It could be at a big festival/club, at a house party with friends, or on an old iphone in grandma’s basement. BUT if I had to choose my dream place, maybe something like Shambala music festival, a festival where bass music is appreciated. I feel that’s most likely where ‘Everybody On The Floor’ would find its audience.
The song would get blasted on these massive speakers and a big crowd of people are just lost in the music and dancing their asses off. But you never know where your music finds people and I just hope that my music finds the right audience and it resonates with them in some way.
Your music often blends genres like they’re ingredients in a sonic smoothie—what “unexpected ingredient” did you sneak into this one?
A sonic smoothie haha I love it! Well I would say… the halftime Dubstep moment that was absolutely inspired by Skrillex and Daft Punk vocoder elements. There’s already an established sound and vibe beforehand, but this part really stands out to me and offers such a sick contrast, it really is a marriage of all the elements I love about bass and electronic music encapsulated and distilled into this sonic smoothie….mmmmm DELICIOUS! If I do say so myself.
You’ve released across a range of labels before—what made UFO Recordz the right home for this track?
I always try to look at where my music is suited best, and for a track as diverse as this, I felt it was right at home with UFO Recordz. That, and how well I was welcomed by the label. I only work with labels I feel share the same goals as me, what their values are and what their mission is. It’s as though they could see what my music was about and by extension what I was about. I feel seen and understood and cared for here at UFO Recordz and that’s really important to me and ultimately why I felt compelled to work with the label.
Zooming out a bit—how does “Everybody On The Floor” reflect where you are right now, both musically and personally?
I always try to challenge myself, and the song represents an aspect of my identity and influences thus far in my career. Musically it’s actually pretty different from what I have been normally making for the past few releases, a departure from my usual Future Funk antics. But what is a shared approach, is the fusion of genres and sounds. I feel this release is also a revisiting of my roots in bass music. It’s an insight into what inspires me at the moment, and right now this is the sound that reflects me currently.
I also feel it represents a big milestone for my development as an artist, every song I make is an improvement on the last and is the best reflection of my accumulated skills over the past 10 years of making music. Ultimately I am extremely proud of this song and what it represents to me and I look forward to every new song that I have yet to create as my sound grows with me.
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