Unmissable Festival Acts

Main-stage mastery from the Swedish progressive house star

"I treat a one-hour festival slot like the last hour of a club set," says Jeremy Olander. "It should be an intense journey."

The Swedish producer's sound often sounds precision-tooled for the grandest festival stage. His expansive, Pryda-oiled progressive house is melodic without being salacious, deep without being unsettling, and just emotional enough to have even the most reserved raver thrusting hands into the air. His sound struts confidently in an area of progressive house that few have managed to locate: the narrow bridge between the mainstream and the underground.

In four short years the 27-year-old has gone from being a promising bedroom producer who played out the odd night, to an integral part of a crop of producers set on saving their often contentious genre from the commercial cul-de-sac. His deep, spacey tracks have found a natural home on influential imprints such as Pryda Friends, Spinnin' Deep and Drumcode (under his techno moniker Dhillon), and he boosted his profile enormously at the start of this year with a B2B Essential Mix with Prydz himself.

"That was insane," says Olander, who came up in the fertile Stockholm scene idolising Prydz, John Digweed and Steve Angello. "I've been listening to the Essential Mix for over 10 years and always dreamed of hearing Pete Tong introduce me! And to do it with Eric was unreal!"

Prydz has been the major influence on Olander's career, from picking up and releasing his deep, dancefloor-focused 'Evade' EP in 2011 to giving him the warm-up slot on his EPIC 3.0 show at Madison Square Gardens. Like his mentor, his music embodies the genuinely progressive elements of progressive house, favouring patient builds and driving groove over carpet-bombing the crowd with bangers. And it's this mature big-room sound that makes him an important guide for young ravers leaving the main stage to explore the darker corners of the festival.

Over the last couple of years Olander has started to become a regular feature on the international festival circuit. He's thrown down big sets at SW4, EDC Las Vegas, HARD, VH1 Supersonic and Mysteryland, and with his debut Essential Mix ringing around the eardrums of the festival promoters, this year is sure to be even bigger than the last. Though only a handful of spots have been announced for 2015, his opening set on the Pryda stage at Creamfields stands out as a particularly special one.

"I first heard about Creamfields years ago when I got into dance music," he says, "and I remember thinking, 'Fuck, that festival sounds so cool!'. And the first time I went was when I played there. It was amazing, but you really have to bring your A-game when you perform in front of a UK crowd. I can't wait to go back."

Catch Jeremy Olander at: Creamfields (UK, August 28), Happy Life Festival (Serbia, June 5-6)

[Words: Ross Gardiner]