London, UK · uk-garage

DJ EZ

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UK garage's greatest technician — decades of two-step mixing done at a speed that still looks impossible, four decks deep and never missing.

DJ EZ, born Otis Roberts, grew up in Tottenham, North London, drawn to house, hip hop and electro through pirate radio. He first mixed under the name Easy O on the station Dance 93FM, later running his own short-lived outlet, Dimension FM. In 1994 he joined Freek FM 101.8, a leading London garage pirate station, and adopted the name EZ.

His Kiss 100 tenure began in 1999, initially covering a graveyard slot for Tuff Jam before moving into prime-time shows such as Saturday Satisfaction and The Hour of Power. The residency ran for fourteen years, ending in 2014. He also mixed the long-running Pure Garage compilation series, which introduced the sound to a wide audience beyond London clubs, and later launched the online show Nuvolve Radio in 2020.

DJ EZ ran his own weekly night, Club Z, at the Gass Club in Leicester Square, and became a fixture at raves including Twice As Nice, Garage Nation, Pure Silk and Sun City as the genre broke into the mainstream. His work earned him Best DJ titles at both the UK Garage Awards and the Underground Garage Awards.

His reputation rests largely on technique: rapid-fire two-step mixing, heavy use of cutting and doubling, and sets often played across three or four decks. He still tours and records mixes decades after garage's first commercial peak, remaining a reference point for DJs working in the style. He has also released his own productions, notably a remix of B-15 Project's "Feels So Good," and in 2016 played a 24-hour set streamed on Boiler Room to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

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