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I’ve always been a fan of artists having a signature sound. When people are consuming new music on Spotify playlists, there’s a chance that the listener might not even glance at their device to see who the song is by. But when they hear a song from Dropgun, High ‘N’ Rich, RudeLies, Brooks, or SaberZ for example, they’ll likely recognize who made it if they’ve heard their music before. The reason I chose to talk about Steff Da Campo instead of someone like Dropgun or Brooks, who have also arguably run their signature sounds into the ground, is because his songs are the most glaringly similar to each other as shown in the mix above.

On January 12th, 2018, Steff Da Campo released “Make Me Feel” with Siks on Hexagon. This track introduced the synth that we would hear in about EIGHTEEN originals and remixes up until the summer of 2019.There’s the well-known saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. This seems to be the guiding principle behind Steff’s releases. It was a fresh, exciting, and effective sound, especially when used to remix pop songs. The formula for making his track seems to be an abundance of syncopation and swing, specifically putting notes on the second and fourth sixteenth notes in a bar. Nowadays, you can see his style pop up in other songs like “Hello TK8” by Laurent Wolf, “Believer” by MELO.KIDS and DNF, and most blatantly, Mizmo’s remix of “Say What You Wanna” by Tujamo. A handful of remakes on YouTube show that the process behind the sound is somewhat easy to replicate.

When you get to the point where others can emulate your style, I think that means it’s time to move on and evolve to stay on top of the industry.

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In between those eighteen similar releases, there have been some collaborations with NEVERGLOW, Magnificence, Tommy Jayden, G-Pol, and Snoop Dogg which deviated from his melodic take on future house. For his collaborations with other producers, the drops took on the other’s style rather than evolving Steff’s. One exception is the stellar collaboration with David Puentez which combined both of their signature styles in a very exciting way. His latest track, “Why Boy” with Dave Crusher, is also a notable evolution of the sound which builds off their last collaboration, “September.” I think that having these other releases have increased people’s tolerance for Steff’s sound. Had he released all eighteen of these tracks consecutively, I think it more people would have caught on by now.

In his defense, Steff’s signature style has propelled him into a staple of the future house community. His remixes took great songs and put them in a format for future house and club DJs to play out. Now, having his name on a track could be a great value for a mainstream artist looking to cash in on the EDM hype. I always tell producers that it’s important to have their own sound and Steff Da Campo is living proof of that.

The reason I wanted to bring this into the light is because I find it so strange that the future house community doesn’t rise up revolt like the big room community does whenever they hear a track that sounds similar to their favorite producer. Looking through the comments on YouTube and Soundcloud for Steff’s releases, there doesn’t seem to be a significant backlash for his reused assets. The second major release from VINAI, “Bounce Generation” was already receiving hate and “copy-paste” comments long before they retired that sound. If we’re keeping count here, VINAI used their melodic bounce sound in approximately thirteen tracks and one-note bounce in four or five songs, depending on your definition of similar. My point is that Steff Da Campo has gotten much further with nowhere near the amount of resistance that VINAI faced. Than means it’s up to us, the listeners and fans, to hold these producers accountable and demand fresher releases in the future. Hopefully, this article and video will push these producers and their ghost producers, if they have them, to new heights and bring interesting new tracks to the community in the future.

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