Utrecht, NL · halftime · experimental-bass

Imanu

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Dutch producer whose restless, genre-agnostic bass music keeps mutating between releases — precision sound design with zero brand loyalty.

IMANU is the Dutch-Surinamese producer Jonathan Immanuel Kievit, born November 14, 1998, in Saint-Denis, Réunion. A friend introduced him to trance and progressive house at ten, and he started making house music himself at fourteen, before discovering the Dutch trio Noisia and turning toward drum and bass.

Working under the name Signal, he was still a teenager when fellow producer Fre4knc passed one of his tracks to Noisia, who signed him to their label Invisible Recordings at sixteen. In 2018 he co-founded the label Dividid with Mark McCann, known as Abis, and Rotterdam promoter Lars Dingeman.

He rebranded as IMANU in 2019 and widened his scope considerably, moving between halftime, experimental bass, club rhythms and quieter electronic pieces, sometimes across a single release, describing the approach as "future breaks" and citing Flume, Sophie, Cashmere Cat and Arca as reference points.

The through-line is sound design: dense, precisely edited textures and drums that sit somewhere between organic and synthetic. He has released on labels including Zeds Dead's Deadbeats, Vision Recordings and UKF Music, and has collaborated with Noisia, What So Not, Kučka, Josh Pan and Pham.

Beatport named him one of six Beatport NEXT artists in 2021, the same year he recorded a mix for BBC Radio 1. His debut album, Unfold, arrived on Deadbeats in September 2022, followed the next year by a remix compilation featuring reworkings by Zeds Dead, Machinedrum and What So Not.

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halftimeexperimental-bass