Airwolf Paradise

Two names, one Melbourne bedroom

Justin Erougian grew up in Melbourne with a father who DJed, which meant there were decks in the house before he had any reason to buy a pair of his own. He started playing friends' parties while still at school. "I started playing at friends' house parties in high school. My dad DJs so I always had access to equipment and stuff," he told Attack Magazine in November 2013, in a piece that introduced him as a 21-year-old house producer.

At that point he was running two identities side by side. Airwolf was the music. Airwolf Paradise was a camera and a blog, documenting Australian club nights and party culture, and for a few years it was the better known of the pair — the photographs travelled further than the tracks did.

The records were moving all the same. A single called 'Believer' came out through the Sydney label Sweat It Out, with remix work for Modular and Central Station filling the space around it. Eventually the two identities collapsed into one, and the photographer's name was the one that survived. The producer has carried it ever since, which is why the discography and the old party pictures share a byline.

The record that opened the doors

The track that moved him out of the Australian circuit was 'Don't Hurt Me Baby', released through Trick, the label run by Patrick Topping. It was premiered as a Hottest Record on BBC Radio 1 and went on to collect more than sixty plays on the station, reaching number one on the UK club chart. Support came from Kiss FM in Britain, Capital Dance, and Diplo's Revolution show in the United States, and he followed it with a Radio 1 minimix for Danny Howard.

The live side caught up in 2023, when he played his first international show at a Trick party at DC-10 in Ibiza — an unusually steep first step for a DJ whose previous audiences had been largely domestic. A touring schedule across the UK, mainland Europe, Ibiza and Australia followed.

The DJ-side support has stayed consistent rather than spiking: Solomun, Jamie Jones, Patrick Topping and Danny Howard have all played his records, and his catalogue has been in regular rotation on Radio 1, triple j and SiriusXM. The cumulative streaming figure quoted by his own distributor listings sits above thirty million, spread across singles rather than concentrated in one hit.

A catalogue built one single at a time

There is no album. Airwolf Paradise has released almost entirely in singles and short EPs, at a pace of roughly one record every few months, placed across other people's labels rather than his own. 'Revolver' came through Higher Ground, the imprint attached to Diplo. 'Son Of A Gun' arrived in August 2024 and was the occasion for a guest mix on triple j's Friday Mix on 9 August that year. 'Everybody' and the 'Synthesizer' EP followed through 2025.

'Ready For Love', a collaboration with the Australian producer Loods, was released by Higher Ground on 29 October 2025, having been produced back in 2023 and sat unreleased in the interim. Relentless Beats described it as a house record built on bouncing basslines and shimmering synths, pairing his high-energy production with Loods's deeper disco leanings — a reasonable summary of where his records usually land.

2026 has been busier on record than on the road. January brought a reworking of 'Din Da Da' with Wolters, credited alongside Kevin Aviance and DJ Gomi, through Southern Fried. 'Concentrate' followed in late February on IN / Rotation, the label arm of Insomniac, a 130bpm tech-house cut aimed squarely at main-stage hours rather than small rooms. His most recent release, 'What You Talking 'Bout', came out on 2 October 2026.

The through-line is functional rather than conceptual: vocal hooks, a hard bassline, and arrangements short enough to work as tools in other DJs' sets. That is also why his own records show up in his own sets more than is usual, and why other people's charts keep carrying them.

Where things stand in October 2026

The most recent development is the 2 October single. Before that, the year's largest booking was Portola Festival in San Francisco on 26 September 2026, on the Pier 80 site — a bill topped by Robyn, Dog Blood and Swedish House Mafia, with Airwolf Paradise placed well down the running order on the opening day. It is his second consecutive year on major American festival bills.

The Australian touring base has not thinned. Listings through the first half of 2026 show a run of capital-city and regional dates — Geelong and Perth in early May, Wollongong, Adelaide and Bendigo later that month, Carriageworks in Sydney in June, Thredbo's Keller Bar in July — the sort of schedule that suggests club fees rather than festival fees are paying for the studio time. Melbourne shows at Revolver Upstairs on 5 July and the long-running I Hate Mondays party at the Smith St Hotel on 11 October kept him in front of a home crowd between trips.

Only two dates are currently on sale. The confirmed one is the POOF DOOF HalloQween Ball at ivy in Sydney on 31 October 2026, a club bill shared with Jimi The Kween. Nothing beyond that is publicly scheduled, which is consistent with how he has worked for three years: dates announced in short blocks, a few weeks out, rather than an annual tour.

The set itself

What a set looks like is well documented, because his performances are heavily tracked by DJ-set archivists. The Smith St Hotel set on 11 October 2026 ran one hour, twenty-three minutes, and covered twenty-nine records — a fast turnover of around three minutes a track, with very little extended mixing. It opened with 'House Party' by Ozzie Guven and Chris Gialanze and closed on Cajmere's 'Percolator' in Bontan's remix, a deliberately old reference point to finish on.

In between, the selections mix current tech house with his own productions and edits, including material made with Wolters and tracks by Eliza Rose. The 2024 triple j mix gives the same picture from a different angle: twenty records taking in Confidence Man, Ewan McVicar, Kettama, Marlon Hoffstadt, Partiboi69 and Destiny's Child, with three of his own among them.

There is no live band, no vocalists and no production element beyond the venue's own rig — this is a DJ booth act, and the festival slots are compressed versions of the club sets rather than different shows. He also works back-to-back fairly often, which changes the shape of a set considerably: the paired sets tend to run harder and lean more on tech house than his solo club sets, which make more room for vocal house and disco edits.