“My music has always been about building friendships and real connections. All the artists I collaborate with are not just people I go to work with, they’re people I want to share food with and share stories of life and experience.”
“My music has always been about building friendships and real connections. All the artists I collaborate with are not just people I go to work with, they’re people I want to share food with and share stories of life and experience.”
Busy Twist is one of the leading lights of the new global dance underground, effortlessly hotwiring vibrant sounds from across the continents and teasing them into thrilling new shapes. His upfront rhythmic workouts join the dots between Afro, Latin and UK bass. A fun, fresh and sophisticated fusion that has taken him to play everywhere from Glastonbury to Nyege Nyege in Uganda, to the Barranquilla carnival on the Colombian coast, as well as releasing music on international labels like Jamz Supernova’s Future Bounce, Sony Colombia and Soundway Records.
The DJ and producer, otherwise known as Ollie Williams, has spent over a decade immersed in emerging musical scenes from around the world and his recent productions are fast-establishing him as an in-demand force in the studio: see the nocturnal afro-house of London-based artist Alewya’s breakthrough single ‘Sweating’ or his recent carnival track, ‘Romantica Champeta’, a dayglo carnival anthem with national treasures Bomba Estéreo and Kevin Flores, which was a runaway smash in Colombia this year.
Now one of the newest signings at Because London Records, Ollie continues to build the bridge between Colombia and the UK capital, where he grew up, with the lead single from his forthcoming solo EP. ‘LDN Palenque’ is a bold artistic blend, as raw and rootsy as it is futuristic. The track is named for San Basilio de Palenque, a northern village with a distinct Afro-Colombian culture and music, which was founded by the first free slaves of the Americas in the 17th century. It features local Palenquero hip-hop superstars Kombilesa Mí atop a sultry, kwaito-inspired beat and euphoric synths that call to UK house and London’s club scene.
Kombilesa Mí front man Afronetto and Ollie connected and became friends after the producer visited San Basilio de Palenque in 2016 and he eventually remixed the group’s 2021 single ‘I Apiya Bó’. They found common ground in the music that inspired them, and Ollie saw links between the originality and rawness of traditional Afro-Colombian folklore rhythms and the rhythms he had discovered during his time in West Africa. “There aren’t many Afro-Colombian groups who uphold folklore traditions in this way,” says Ollie. “They don’t have any instruments other than the drums and percussion they play, and their voices – but they mix it up with rap. Kombilesa Mí are the epitome of bringing together old and new.”
The group is one of key voices that Ollie has brought into his cabal of global collaborators, alongside the likes of Ghana’s Bryte, Congolese singer Tres and Blackboy from St Lucia. “My music has always been about building friendships and real connections,” Ollie says. “All the artists I collaborate with are not just people I go to work with, they’re people I want to share food with and share stories of life and experience.”
It was Ollie’s frequent trips to St Lucia in the Caribbean as a young boy, to visit his godfather, that sparked a lifelong interest in rhythms from tropical climates. “The first music that I heard growing up was soca, reggae and dancehall,” says Ollie. “I knew that before knowing any English music.” In particular, he remembers being there during carnival season at the age of 10 years old, “and hearing the soundsystems come alive with all this amazing high-energy music.”
That sense of discovery made a mark, as did the breakbeat, jungle and drum’n’bass sounds specific to London’s vibrant nightlife. Ollie started making music in his teens, bringing together these elements with his love of classic rap and hip-hop. As a university student studying music production, he self-funded his first trip to Ghana, where he encountered the classic highlife and afrobeat sounds of West Africa, as well as then-contemporary sounds like hip-life. It led to Ollie making his first project, released in 2012 – an EP called Floor Excitement that was supported by artists like Jamie XX. “It’s very much an organic exploration,” says Ollie of his approach to global music discovery. “I go somewhere, immerse myself in the culture and forge relationships, and I always have a curiosity to learn and understand more.”
It’s this authenticity and total immersion in other cultures that sets Ollie apart from his peers – but also his deep relationship with Colombia, which he has gone back and forth to for the past few years. He first visited in 2017, to play at a festival hosted by Bomba Estéreo, and got to know the Caribbean coastal towns near where the band is based. And he has since returned to the country numerous times to work with homegrown talent like Afro-Colombian electronic-roots trio Ghetto Kumbé, co-producing their 2017 release Soy Selva and their debut album, Ghetto Kumbé, released on ZZK and Colombian legend Nidia Góngora.
One visit in spring 2020 was particularly life-changing, though, when the country went into national lockdown. “I thought I’d be there for a few weeks but it turned into eight months,” says Ollie. He holed up at Bomba Estéreo’s surf lodge and turned his room into a home studio, making music and playing the odd party live stream. “I just had my laptop with my music, and my friends,” he says “It was one of the best times of my life.”
Ollie plans to go back to Colombia this year, as well as to Nigeria, Ghana and Martinique, continuing to sketch out his own idiosyncratic musical map and taking his mobile recording studio with him wherever he goes. The most important thing, he says, is to enjoy the journey and be grateful for all the experiences – and it’s an ease you can certainly hear in his incredible creations. “That’s definitely something I live by,” he says.