Amtrac

Morehead, then the festival stages

Caleb Cornett was born on 19 May 1987 in Morehead, a small town in eastern Kentucky. Promoters date the start of the Amtrac project to 2008, and the job description they use has stayed unusually wide ever since: producer, DJ, musician and occasional vocalist. The first piece of wider attention arrived in October 2011, when the video for "Came Along" went out on MTV's Clubland.

The lift came in 2013 and 2014, when he began working festival stages — the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, Forecastle in Louisville, Osheaga in Montreal. The remix that changed the scale of the bookings was his version of Kaskade's "Atmosphere", which carried him onto that tour and into rooms the size of Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the Shrine Expo Hall in Los Angeles. Early singles and remix work went out through labels including Ultra and Toolroom, and over the following years he remixed Kygo, Gorgon City, Bob Moses and Ellie Goulding.

The genre tags that follow him around — house, indie dance, indietronica, progressive house — are the tidiest explanation of why he is difficult to book as one thing. His records have leaned on classic rock and disco as readily as on club music, and have pulled vocal samples from Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye.

A label named after the opening DJ

In 2017 Cornett set up his own imprint, Openers, and used it to release the 1987 EP, titled for his birth year. The name is a deliberate tribute to the opening DJ — the slot he has described as his favourite, and the craft he thinks gets least credit. At launch the label was mostly a personal outlet, with stated plans to sign other artists and move into parties and events.

Openers also gave him a release schedule that answered to nobody else, which matters for an artist whose output swings between four-minute pop-shaped singles and seven-minute club tools.

Three albums, made in different weather

Oddyssey, his second album, came out on 3 April 2020 — straight into the first weeks of pandemic shutdown, with the tour that was meant to carry it cancelled. Most of it was written indoors during lockdown, and he has described the record as his outlet for what he was feeling at the time, adding that chaos brings on some of the best creativity.

The third album, Extra Time, followed in February 2023 after a long wait. It was framed around an indie-film aesthetic, moving between retro synth work, warm nostalgia and straight house, with ambient passages used as breathing room rather than filler. His own account of the method is consistent across interviews: constant experiment with new equipment, no deliberate limits, and synthesiser pads as the one element he expects to keep. Scoring a film remains high on his list of things he has not yet done.

The Anjunadeep turn

The most consequential recent development is a label move. On 18 February 2025 Amtrac released the five-track Generator EP on Anjunadeep — "Digital Response", "Pursuit", "Generator", "Everyone" and an extended mix of "Pursuit". The lead track had already picked up support from WhoMadeWho and Adriatique and rotation on SiriusXM Chill. Label copy at the time put his career at three albums and more than 130 million streams. "Ode to Downtown" followed later in 2025.

The relationship deepened through 2026. The title track of Civilian World arrived on 13 March 2026, a seven-minute piece built around synths that are allowed to evolve rather than drop, and the full Civilian World EP landed on Anjunadeep on 29 May 2026 — "High Speed Ring", "Civilian World", "Same Team", "Love Always Had A Way", "Anulpha Pass" and "Identical", plus an extended mix.

The reception treated it as a record about restraint. One review called the production immaculate, arguing that every percussion layer felt intentional and every bass movement measured, and summed up the balance as emotion that never becomes melodramatic and club energy that never descends into formula. The EP's interest is in slow emotional movement rather than explosive moments, which is a notable position for a producer who spent the mid-2010s on main stages.

Where things stand in October 2026

Singles have kept coming at a steady clip since the EP: "Hummingbird" on 26 June 2026, a remix package for it shortly after, the double A-side "Have a Good One / Believe" on 4 September 2026, and "Go Again" on 2 October 2026, which is the most recent release.

The touring is the busiest part of the picture. The Civilian World DJ Tour played a daytime Brooklyn show at LoHI on 11 July 2026, doors at 4pm, 21-and-over, with Charles Meyer opening. The autumn and winter run is substantially larger: seventeen dates across the United States and Canada, opening at ZeyZey in Miami on 6 November and Lincoln Factory in Detroit on 7 November, then Summit in Denver on 13 November, Soundwell in Salt Lake City on 14 November, Process PDX in Portland on 19 November, Fortune Sound Club in Vancouver on 21 November, Neumos in Seattle on 22 November, Pacific Electric in Los Angeles on 25 November, the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco on 27 November and Music Box in San Diego on 28 November.

December continues east: Kingdom in Austin on 5 December, Fine Line in Minneapolis on 10 December, Outset in Chicago on 11 December, Webster Hall in New York on 12 December, The Sinclair in Cambridge on 17 December, Culture in Washington DC on 18 December and the Mod Club in Toronto on 19 December. Alongside the tour proper he has been taking open-to-close bookings — a full night at SILO in Brooklyn on 4 October 2025, and another at Spybar in Chicago — which is where the breadth of the catalogue gets room to work.

The rig, and who sets it up

The detail that recurs in first-hand accounts of his shows is how little apparatus surrounds them. At a two-hour Atlanta date in late April 2023 he loaded in and tore down his own rig, including a lighting set-up he had programmed himself, without a tour manager. The set drew on Oddyssey and Extra Time, and the encore — demanded by a chanting room — consisted of two unreleased tracks, one of them his remix of Panda Bear and Alan Braxe's "Step By Step".

Asked what to expect from a performance, his own phrasing is modest and fairly accurate: a journey of sorts, something a bit different, perhaps thought provoking. Audiences at the smaller end of the current run are the ones most likely to get that.