Newcastle, UK · trance · house · dance

Ben Hemsley

1 festival played

Newcastle DJ who turned euphoric trance revival into arena business — big melodies, bigger drops, no irony anywhere.

Ben Hemsley grew up in North Shields, near Newcastle, and had an interest in music from the age of 12; by 14 he was DJing at under-18 events. His breakthrough single, "Caress Me" on the Repopulate Mars label, reached number 15 on the Beatport chart and was played on air by Radio 1's Danny Howard, though he was still considered a local DJ at that point.

His sets sit where big-room house meets vocal trance: long, rising breakdowns and melodies pitched to be sung back, mixing his own tracks and edits with older trance records. Music press has called the sound "nostalgic rave", resistant to easy categorising, though trance sits at the centre of his production.

In 2021, pandemic travel restrictions kept European artists from performing, and Hemsley was booked in front of 8,000 people at Creamfields; the set went down well, and he returned the following year to a considerably larger crowd. Clips of those packed rooms reacting to his drops helped build his audience, and in October 2022 he recorded a two-hour Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1.

Hemsley launched his own label, bebé, in 2022, opening it with his EP1. In 2023 he won the DJ Mag Best Producer award, voted by the public, and held a summer residency at Ibiza Rocks in San Antonio. He joined the BBC Radio 1 Residency series in 2024. Alongside this he programmes his own club and arena shows in the north east of England.

In September 2025 he released "If Your Girl", built around an interpolation of Aaliyah's 1996 single "If Your Girl Only Knew"; it debuted at number 12 on the UK Singles Downloads Chart. The following month he announced he was working on a debut album, expected in 2026.

Read more

trancehousedance