The Top 25 DJs Who Defined The Year 2024

CCL’s dedication to thoughtfully crafted sets and DIY organising has been a defining feature of their output over the years, named among the qualities that sparked our fandom when they featured in our Breakthrough DJs of the Year back in 2019. This year it feels like they’ve really come into their own as a leading light of dance music. As we declared in a profile earlier this year, CCL is the type of DJ that the scene needs, working to subvert homogenisation, support worthy causes and make a distinct artistic mark.

CCL began the year with their first tour Down Under, after a 2020 scheduled trip was cancelled by the pandemic, playing show across New Zealand and Australia, as well as through Asia, and ends it heading out on their longest tour to date, with debuts in India and Thailand just ticked off to launch the four-month stretch. In between, they’ve been consistently contributing to culture in inspiring and thrilling ways. Their party subglow has brought a queer-oriented, bass-loaded energy to Berlin, serving up singular experiences that challenge four-to-the-floor tyranny with sets from the likes of DJ Marcelle and DJ Storm, as well as helming their own marathon open-to-close solo set to mark the two-year anniversary in May. They’ve also been a regular at festivals that push the envelope with their curation and production, appearing at the likes of Draaimolen, Butik, Unsound, Making Time, Elevate, Freerotation and Honcho Campout, where they were invited to guest curate two “Hemlock Nights”, serving up flawless, psychedelic dancefloor experiences from fellow DJs who stand for community values and offer something unique, which available set recordings attest to.

That level of conscientiousness is a constant throughline of CCL’s ouevre. The mixes of their liquidtime radio residency on Refuge Worldwide explore themes such as ‘Rock Pools’ and ‘Mist’, translating these into deeply felt aural experiences, while their first physical mixtape released at the top of the year, ‘A Night At The Skull Discotechque’, channeled proto-dubstep sounds to evoke their imagining of a fantastical nightclub. That release also raised money for Palestinian relief charities, with CCL using their platform regularly to vocalise support for activism, including raising money for Palestinian solidarity via subglow with donation boxes at the door and their own financial contributions. On top of all that, they also put out their debut solo EP ‘Plot Twist’ via !K7, serving up an energising blend of sounds spanning speed garage to dreamlike house, as well as a cyberpunk-inspired collab EP of groovers and club-shakers with Ciel.

“In the context of this moment in time, I believe more than ever artists, have a responsibility to share truth, to push ideas forward, to challenge and experiment (on many levels), and to share (music, knowledge and more!)” CCL said earlier this year. They’ve undoubtedly led by example.