AYYBO

Drumline, a cheap controller, and a film degree

Bonnema grew up in Anaheim, California, and came to music sideways. He has said he has made visual work since the second grade, starting with his mother's VHS camera, and went on to study film in high school and at college — a training that still shows in how his releases are packaged. The music arrived through family car journeys: Outkast among his earliest memories, then Daft Punk as the door into dance music.

He played drumline at high school and began DJing at school with almost no experience behind him, buying an inexpensive deck and working through online tutorials. Production came first in trap and bass. In 2018 he signed to Zeds Dead's Deadbeats under an earlier project name, before moving towards what he has described as a more sophisticated, jazzy house sound.

The AYYBO alias was soft-launched in spring 2021, and it was launched on other people's records: edits of familiar tracks rebuilt as tech house with heavy basslines underneath. Originals followed once the edits had an audience.

Hypnosis, and the day Pitbull wrote a hook

The track that moved him out of the edits economy was "Hypnosis", made with ero808 and released in July 2022. It spread on TikTok and has since passed eleven million Spotify streams. The video took the song's premise literally, putting a working hypnotist in front of subjects who then danced to it — a cinematographer's idea rather than a label's.

The scale of that reach pulled in Pitbull's camp. By Bonnema's account, the producer Sermstyle asked him for the instrumental, and Pitbull liked it enough to start writing a hook to it the same day. The result, "Right Or Wrong (Hypnosis)", arrived in January 2023 and handed a producer barely a year into the alias the attention of a Grammy-winning pop catalogue.

Around the same stretch he put out "GDB" through Zeds Dead's Altered States imprint, alongside tracks including "Drench" with Preme. He writes his own lyrics and sings on some of his records, which is unusual in a scene where the vocal is normally a sample licensed in. Co-signs came from inside and outside dance music, John Summit and Shaquille O'Neal among them.

The edits are the argument

The bootlegs remain the clearest statement of what he does. A May 2023 survey of them picked out his reworks of Channel Tres's "Controller" from September 2022, ACRAZE and Cherish's "Do It To It", PinkPantheress's "Pain", Creeds' "Push Up" and TOKiMONSTA and Channel Tres's "Naked". The method is consistent: strip the original to its hook, put a thicker bassline under it, and let the familiar part do the recognition work in a dark room.

That writing describes the sound as dark-driving tech house carrying splashy, playful hooks, and makes the point that the material only fully lands on large speakers. It is dancefloor music written for the specific moment a crowd works out which record it is listening to — which is also why his sets lean so heavily on his own catalogue rather than other producers' promos.

GDB Records and where 2026 has taken him

GDB — his catchphrase before it was a company — became a label, and it is now the main outlet for his own records. "Rizz" came out through it and was subsequently remixed by Millero for the same imprint. The label has also started functioning as a first home for other producers: Dancing Astronaut's artists-to-watch piece, published in December 2025, noted that the Mexican producer Gabss had taken GDB Records' inaugural release, listing it alongside Nervous, CamelPhat's When Stars Align and Chris Lake's Black Book. The same feature flagged Soraya as an artist who has supported AYYBO on tour.

The 2026 release run has been collaborative rather than solo: "Don't Want None" with Dale Move, "I Don't Want To" with Ragie Ban, "4 Ya Mind" with Discip and "Dirty" with Blazey, all through GDB.

The booking that marks the step up came in Ibiza. John Summit's first residency at [UNVRS], run with his Experts Only label, took nine consecutive Mondays from 1 June to 27 July 2026, with Summit closing every night. AYYBO was billed across that run as part of its next-wave contingent, on a sheet that also carried Gorgon City, Cassian, Patrick Topping, MK, LP Giobbi, TSHA and SG Lewis. Festival work has widened too: he played EDC México in 2025, EDC Orlando the same year, and the third edition of EDC Korea at Incheon's Inspire resort on 3 and 4 October 2026.

Seventy-three minutes at Tinker Field

The best documented recent performance is his EDC Orlando set at Tinker Field, recorded at seventy-three minutes across twelve tracks. He opened on someone else's record — Bonafique and Yuvee's "WHAT!" in its extended mix — then turned the second half over almost entirely to his own catalogue, including "I Don't Want To", "Don't Want None" and "4 Ya Mind". It is a festival-length set built as one continuous climb rather than a series of peaks and resets.

Club shows run considerably longer. His Spring 2026 North America tour stop at The Vanguard in Orlando, presented with Insomniac, was scheduled from 10pm to 2.30am on Saturday 14 March 2026, the kind of window that lets the edits breathe between originals.

The autumn 2026 run has taken in Vivid Music Hall in Gainesville on 11 September and Cargo Concert Hall in Reno on 19 September, with Aura in Raleigh on Friday 23 October and Dock5 in Washington, DC the following night. Festival slots follow at Hocus Pocus in Miami over 30 October to 1 November and EDC Orlando from 6 to 8 November. Two larger rooms are already on sale for the new year: Shrine Expo Hall in Los Angeles on Friday 29 January 2027 and Radius in Chicago the night after. Of his stated ambitions from a 2022 interview — more records, more videos, collaborations with the producers he admires — only a booking at Electric Forest is still outstanding.