KETTAMA

A Launchpad and a trial version

Evan Campbell was born in Galway on 30 May 1997. At 16 he bought a Launchpad that came with a trial of Ableton, and the first thing he did with it was rebuild the piano line from Tyga's "I'm Different". Six months later he moved to FL Studio and began putting tracks on SoundCloud. By 17 he was playing in clubs.

That sequence matters because almost nothing about the KETTAMA catalogue has since left the club. The records are made for a room and a sound system, and the ones that crossed over did so without being softened for radio first.

B O D Y, G-Town and the Steel City years

The turn came in 2018 with the Bucklyn Bridge EP, released on 16 September. Its lead cut "B O D Y" travelled through other people's sets — Mall Grab played it, Annie Mac put it on the radio — and the EP sold through.

In 2019 Campbell co-founded G-Town Records with his friend Shampain, naming it after the city both are from. The imprint gave him somewhere to put the harder, faster material; G-TOWN 001 arrived the same year. In 2021 he made his debut on Mall Grab's Steel City Dance Discs with "Higher (Steel City Power House)", followed by Steel City Dance Discs Volume 26. The label, founded in 2017 and named after Newcastle in New South Wales, has been his main home for the big records since.

The live side scaled in steps rather than a jump. A sold-out homecoming at the Galway International Arts Festival in 2023 was followed in 2024 by first appearances at Glastonbury, Coachella and Boomtown, and in 2025 by a BBC Radio 1 Dance residency.

Archangel

Archangel, his debut album, came out on 3 October 2025 on Steel City Dance Discs, running 59 minutes and 13 seconds. Seven singles went out ahead of it, among them "Yosemite" with Interplanetary Criminal, "Gotta Have It", "Air Maxes" and "It Gets Better (Forever Mix)", which reached No. 37 on the Irish singles chart in June 2025. The record also drew in Fred again.., DJ Heartstring and the vocalist Sølv.

It entered at No. 6 in Ireland, No. 10 in Australia and No. 43 in the UK, and topped both the UK dance albums chart and the Irish independent albums chart. A separate DJ Mix version followed on 17 October 2025.

Reviews were good rather than unanimous. Clash scored it 8/10 and called it "a genre-smashing, emotionally rich body of work". Katie Bain, writing for Billboard, described it as fresh and sophisticated. musicOMH gave three stars out of five, singling out "Take Me" while calling the title track an underwhelming opener and describing "Air Maxes" as one of the worst songs its reviewer had heard all year. It placed No. 40 on EARMILK's top 50 albums of 2025 and No. 50 on Hot Press's fifty best.

Comes and Goes

The 2026 release that moved the numbers was "Comes and Goes", out on 20 May through Steel City Dance Discs. It is a house track in E flat minor at 134 BPM, built on a dark bassline and rolling drums under synths, strings and pads, with vocals from Maurice Santiago — his second record with Campbell after "It Gets Better (Forever Mix)".

It entered the Irish singles chart at No. 19 on 29 May 2026 and topped the Irish homegrown chart, reached No. 54 in the UK, No. 14 on the US Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart and No. 4 on the New Zealand hot singles chart — his highest placings to date in several territories. Carl Smith of Official Charts called it a "euphoric, rave-ready romp" and a contender for song of the summer. A seven-minute extended version arrived on 12 June 2026, and Dom Dolla's remix on 17 July.

Nine Mondays on the Terrace

In summer 2025 Campbell played Mondays at Amnesia for sixteen weeks as part of a run shared with Ben Hemsley. For 2026 he was given the night outright, programming it under the Steel City Dance Discs banner as "9 Raves, 9 Lives" — nine Mondays from 1 June to 27 July 2026 on the club's Terrace, 23:30 to 06:00, in the year Amnesia marked its fiftieth anniversary.

He curated the bills himself and used the back-to-back as the format: Josh Baker on 8 June, Cloonee on 15 June, Silva Bumpa on 6 July. Guests across the run included Nia Archives on 22 June, DJ Heartstring with X-Coast back-to-back Tommy Holohan on 29 June, VTSS alongside Shampain on 13 July, Partiboi69 on 20 July, and Skin On Skin on the 27 July closing night. The opener on 1 June paired Bullet Tooth back-to-back Riordan with Dr. Dubplate and Angel Lee. Skiddle, which named him its artist of the year for 2025, treated the booking as the confirmation of that.

Running a weekly in his own name, with his own label's roster, is the clearest marker of where he now sits: the night is the product, not just the headline slot.

Standing in late 2026

In the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs poll published in October 2026 he placed 110th, up from 147th the previous year — still outside the hundred, but the largest move of his career so far in that particular measure.

At home he was billed as the sole Irish headliner at Forbidden Fruit, held at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in Dublin on 30 and 31 May 2026. In Britain he played the Steel Yard at Creamfields on 29 August. Autumn has been North American: A.i. Warehouse in Washington on 16 October, a 2:45am set at Mind Melt in Miami on 17 October, Suwannee Hulaween on 22 October, SILO in Dallas on 23 October and the Mission Ballroom in Denver on 24 October, with a two-night stand at History in Toronto on 30 and 31 October and LIV in Las Vegas on 1 November.

Then it turns back towards the label nights and the southern-hemisphere summer: a sold-out Steel City Dance Discs takeover of Depot Mayfield in Manchester on 6 November 2026, Spilt Milk at Carrara on 13 December and Claremont on 20 December, Rockwell in Salt Lake City on 2 January 2027 and Igloofest in Montreal on 22 January.