Toman

Drums first, machines after

Toman is Dutch, and the route he took into electronic music started behind a drum kit rather than in front of a laptop. He picked up percussion in his early teens, and by his own account it was the limits of that instrument — one player, one set of hands, one groove at a time — that pushed him towards what he has described as the unrestrictive complexities of electronic production. The influences he names are not the obvious club reference points: Underworld, Minilogue and Terry Lee Brown Jr, three acts that share a taste for long arrangements and patience rather than the quick drop.

That background still explains most of what his records do. Rhythm carries the weight; melody is applied in thin coats. He builds from electronic drum kits and layered percussion, letting swing and small shifts in pressure do the work that other producers hand to a riff. The house he ends up with nods back at the golden era of UK tech house without copying its sound design.

He moved to Amsterdam in early 2018 and became part of the city's scene quickly. The move mattered: the network he joined there — the No Art circle, and the producers around it — became the structure of the next eight years of his career.

The Amsterdam sound and the desk behind it

Toman is not only an artist on No Art; he is the label's A&R, which makes him one of the people deciding what the so-called Amsterdam sound actually consists of. He is also a driving force behind No Art Red, the vinyl-only sub-imprint, a deliberately unhurried format at a time when most of the money in this style of house is made from download charts and streaming.

His closest studio partners are Chris Stussy and ANOTR, both of whom came out of the same Amsterdam bracket and both of whom have since scaled well beyond it. The three are regularly grouped together as the architects of a particular strain of stripped-back, percussion-forward house that travelled from Dutch clubs to Ibiza terraces and South American festivals over the past five years. Toman's position in that group is the technician's one: he is the name on the label paperwork as often as he is the name on the flyer.

The endorsement list around his records tells the same story of scene credibility rather than crossover: Raresh, The Martinez Brothers and Joseph Capriati have all supported his music.

The records

The first solo EP arrived in 2017 on Cyclic, the label run by the Romanian producer Mihai Popoviciu — a pedigree release for a debut, and a marker of where his head was at the time. The Broodrooster EP followed on Cinthie's we_r house, and from there the release schedule spread across most of the labels that matter in this corner of house: Cuttin' Headz, Eastenderz, PIV, META, Blind Vision, Inermu, Cécille, LOCUS, Solid Grooves, Microhertz and No Art itself.

The commercial return on that run has been unusual. He is billed as Beatport's best-selling Minimal / Deep Tech artist of all time, with seven number one releases across four different labels — a record built on consistency across imprints rather than on one breakout track being pushed by one home label.

There is still a signature record, though. Verano en NY went to the top of Beatport and has become the piece of his catalogue other DJs reach for: set logs show it turning up in 85 separate recorded sets by other artists. Aftercito and De Bongo Man are the other productions that circulate widely. His catalogue runs to around 66 tracks on the main set-tracking databases, which for a producer working at EP pace since 2017 is a steady, unglamorous output rate.

High Ceilings, from 2025

The obvious next move for a producer who already runs someone else's A&R desk was his own label, and it came in 2025. High Ceilings launched with Emotion, released on 28 February 2025 — a track built on a spiralling arpeggio, lifted vocal samples and a bassline doing the pushing, which he described as encapsulating his sound and vision.

He framed the launch as a long-deferred plan rather than an opportunistic one, saying that starting his own label had been a dream he had nurtured for years. The stated remit is broader than a vanity outlet: High Ceilings is meant to carry other artists' records as well as his own, positioned as a place where music breathes and creativity expands. The imprint has kept releasing since, with Toman's own material continuing to appear on it alongside his work for No Art.

Where he stands in 2026

The summer just gone put him back on home ground. Toman played the fifth edition of the No Art Closing Festival at Flevopark in Amsterdam on 25 July 2026, the event that shuts No Art Music Week, on a bill that included Seth Troxler, The Martinez Brothers, ANOTR, Mau P, Paramida and Ryan Elliott. The festival pairs the music with large-scale installations and built stage concepts rather than a single main-stage format, and for Toman it doubles as the label's own shop window.

The rest of the year is club work at distance. Listed dates put him at The Penthouse at Five Palm Jumeirah in Dubai on 10 October 2026 and at Culture in Washington, DC on 8 November 2026. Recent months have also taken in Lisbon and Jesolo. His gigography runs to 97 logged past events, with roughly 2,500 people signed up for concert alerts — a touring profile that is international and dense rather than arena-scaled.

The Ibiza seasons are part of the same pattern: he played Hï Ibiza on 2 July 2024, Amnesia on 7 August 2024 and Pacha on 16 August 2024, three of the island's main rooms inside six weeks. Elsewhere the venue list includes Watergate in Berlin, Distillery in Leipzig, fabric in London, Awakenings and Straf_werk in the Netherlands, plus dates in Uruguay, Argentina, Sydney, Zurich, Manchester and Bucharest.

In the booth

Despite the drumming background, Toman tours as a DJ rather than with any live rig, and the recorded evidence shows a player who prefers length to spectacle. The archived sets cover Club Space in Miami, Lofi in Amsterdam, HÖR in Berlin, S.A.S.H. in Sydney and an opening set at Pacha, alongside broadcast slots for BBC Radio 1 and Circoloco Radio — a spread that takes in the filmed-booth format, the after-hours marathon and the warm-up, which is a job most producers at his chart level have stopped taking.

That willingness to open matters to how the sets are built. The percussion-led material he writes is designed to accumulate rather than to peak early, which suits a three- or four-hour club slot far better than a 90-minute festival window.