Duke Dumont- Duke Nukes Em

Having built a career as a renowned remixer, reworking songs for the likes of Missy Elliott, Lily Allen and Bat For Lashes, 31-year-old English dance producer Adam Dyment, aka Duke Dumont, has enjoyed considerable success with his own material over the past year, scoring two UK number ones with the catchy house tunes ‘Need U (100%)’ and ‘I Got U’ (the latter also topping the Irish charts).

A few days prior to our interview, house pioneer Frankie Knuckles passed away, and Dumont – who collaborated with the dance godfather in 2013 – is keen to pay his respects.
“Frankie Knuckles did a remix of ‘Need U’,” explains the softly spoken Dyment in his room at the Morrison Hotel, shortly before performing at the Academy and the Trinity Ball. “When it was released in America last year, I was asked who I’d like to remix it, and I wanted Frankie Knuckles. For me it was a box ticked; he made possibly the greatest house record of all time, ‘Your Love’. There are so many incarnations, but the first version of it is a perfect house record, and there aren’t many of those. It’s sad this week. He was 59, so it’s a little bit unexpected. But he left a legacy that can’t be tarnished – he set the blueprint for everyone.”
Achieving back-to-back number one records generally leads to a spike in celebrity interest. Has Dyment had any high profile figures declare themselves as fans?
“Well, there’s this,” he responds, reaching for his iPhone, where he shows me a private Twitter message from Liverpool striker Daniel Sturridge, asking if he’d be interested in doing England’s World Cup song. “I really like him. He takes time for the fans and he seems quite a humble guy. With regard to doing a World Cup song, you never know – maybe I’ll do a ‘World In A Motion’-type track! It would have to be good. I mean, ‘World In Motion’ is probably the best football song ever. Coincidentally, that was probably England’s best tournament. Maybe if I make a credible song for England, we might get to the semi-finals. Although I highly doubt it!
“If you do something like that, you set up yourself up for a fall, don’t you? It’s like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be bad.’ But if you can actually do it well, it’s fantastic. So we’ll see. I’m doing a US tour shortly and perhaps I’ll be able to make something while I’m over there. But if it’s not very good, no one’s ever going to hear it.”
Dyment reveals that he actually played football semi-professionally himself until the age of 18, before settling into his current career. He can scarcely regret the move, given that the enormous popularity of his two singles to date has led to feverish anticipation of his debut album.
“There’s stuff I’ve recorded for it two years ago that I’m updating now,” says Dyment. “It’s just been an ongoing thing. The way I work is that I record music all the time. I don’t stop and even after the album comes out I’ll be coming up with new material. I have around 300 demos on my computer at home, and it’s about taking the best of those and finishing them. The good thing is that if something’s two years old, and it still sounds exciting now, my thinking is that it’ll still stand up another two years down the line. The day you say you’re going to take a six-month break from music, and go and have a good time in LA, that’s when it stops. So I have a loose deadline for the album of some time around autumn. There’ll be house tunes, but I’m going to broaden it out as well.”

‘Need U (100%)’ and ‘I Got U’ are out now on Virgin EMI