New York, NY · melodic-bass · electronic

Au5

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Melodic bass with genuine harmonic sophistication under the drops — a producer's producer whose sound design gets studied as much as danced to.

Au5 is the recording name of Austin Michael Collins, born in 1992 and raised in New Jersey. He started classical piano lessons at four, began sequencing music on early Mac software as a child, picked up bass guitar and Logic Pro at thirteen, and played in rock and metal bands before turning to trance production around age fifteen.

He works in the melodic side of bass music, pairing dubstep and drum-and-bass structures with dense, harmonically detailed writing: layered chord progressions, extended arrangements and heavily processed synthesis that gives his drops a distinct, often orchestral character.

His first releases were self-issued albums, Minimality in 2010 and Anchus Definy in 2011, before he dropped out of college to focus on music. After winning a Seven Lions remix contest, he joined the Canadian label Monstercat in 2013, where tracks such as "Halcyon" and "Snowblind" topped Beatport's dubstep chart.

He left Monstercat in 2015, toured with Liquid Stranger and Infected Mushroom, and released material through NoCopyrightSounds before rejoining Monstercat in 2018. He built part of his audience through the wider melodic dubstep scene that grew online in the 2010s, and has released five albums to date, including Divinorum (2019) and Bridges Between (2023).

Alongside his own releases, he has collaborated with producers including BT, Fractal and Seven Lions, and taken on remix work. His sound design is frequently dissected in production communities, giving him a reputation among other producers as a meticulous, detail-driven engineer of melodic dubstep.

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