Oguz

On the main stage of Tomorrowland, OGUZ's Hard Techno stopped being a rumor from spaceships and became a leap with chest exposed, with the 808 logo tattooed on skins that are not his own.

Dam Square, the dancefloor that refuses to fit into a genre

Amsterdam showed him the night through the back door. In 2016 he crossed illegal raves in the city; in 2017 he DJed for the first time. He learned to DJ on a phone app, entered talent contests, and jumped from Utrecht to Belgium, France, Italy, London, Istanbul, and Glasgow. 2022 changed everything: GOLDEN SZN, with Nyctonian, and FC Horsepower, with Vieze Asbak, crossed several million streams and established a signature—aggressive kicks, euphoric vocals, a sound design he calls simulation—impossible to reduce to a label. He insists on not being just Hard Techno: dirty Dutch, EDM, harder styles, house groove, and hip-hop remain inside the kick. DAM SQUARE DANCE TRAX LV.1 brought Hard Groove back to the forefront and sat Deborah De Luca and Marcel Fengler at the same table as emerging names.

808 STUDIOS, a house without walls

In 2023 he founded 808 STUDIOS, a label and collective designed for diverse voices, not for inflated lineups. PLATINUM SZN, with GRAVEDGR, opened the Summer Series; I AM NOT A WHORE and Summer Anthem turned the catalog into a dancefloor diary. The album ENTER MY SIMULATION (2024) brought together dancefloor anthems with more intimate pieces—Ayse, dedicated to his mother—and an ambient closing. The Battle Arena at ADE 2024 in Hemkade48—twelve hours of face-to-face—was the staging of that family: a format, not a simple label session. Boiler Room x Teletech in Manchester, Verknipt, Kappa Futur, Exit, Dour, CRSSD, or EDC have been stops on the same tour. With 1616 FOR YOU he took on his own booking and turned the agency into a network of mentors, not an office that charges and disappears.

Turkish in the Netherlands, Dutch in Turkey

He grew up between two homes. In the Netherlands he was the Turkish boy; in Turkey, the Dutchman. Amsterdam is home; Istanbul, his mother's land. That tension—melody and narrative of one culture, experimentation of another—runs through the booth. On stage, tattooed torso and a leap into the void; off stage, the refusal to be pigeonholed. 808 promises a club, shop, and gallery; meanwhile, it is already an identity worn on the skin. The SECRET WEAPON with Paramod, the remix of Amazing by INNA, or Euphoria for Bootshaus Music confirm that the simulation does not stop: it keeps pushing the tempo and refusing to be predictable.