BEST BREAKTHROUGH PRODUCER: BEN PEARCE

Only three or fours years after first trying his hand at production, Ben Pearce has picked up the gong for Best Breakthrough Producer.

“I’m completely overwhelmed, I wasn’t quite sure it was real for a while. Even getting nominated was such an honour,” says the man who in fact grew up loving rock music and metal bands.

There are scant traces of that in his music now, though, which most notably came in the form of the massive hit single 'What I Might Do' in 2012.

So large was that Under the Shade-released lush deep house affair, complete with moody, heart-tingling vocals, that it even made it into the UK charts in 2013, earned Pearce a Gold Disc for its sales in Italy and appeared on a prominent ad for a certain massive UK supermarket chain. Fantastic as that might sound for what was ostensibly a debut release, there have been some less good side effects...

“I felt the pressure massively. The first half of this year it almost crippled me,” he offers candidly. “It’s only in the last few months I’ve started to really get into it and I’m in a place where I’m feeling positive about the music that I’m making.”

That music includes plenty of remixes this year, as well as a sultry, forward-facing garage house track on the latest Moda Black compilation. Rather than jump on any hardware trends as have many recently, Pearce says, “I truly believe the end product is the only thing that matters.

I’m slowly building up my studio but I’m not buying anything just for the sake of it,” before admitting his style is still in constant evolution as he continues to find his feet.

“[My sound] has changed dramatically, probably more so in the quality and the range. I’ve got a stupidly wide music taste; I can listen to heavy metal and then to soul or jazz, and that’s quite challenging when you’re making music, but it seems like it’s starting to come together now.”

Pearce’s roots lay in DJing, which he has done for years in and around the UK at the same time as promoting his own parties, but he is also Creative Director of his own label-cum-agency, Purp & Soul. That label will be the outlet for his next EP in 2014 and frankly, it's hard to think of a more anticipated release