Jakub 'Urbik' Urbanec

Beyond programming, music has always been one of the most important parts of my life. I perform under the name Urbik and have been collecting electronic music and DJing for well over a decade.

What started as an obsession with discovering new records gradually developed into regular club performances, radio appearances, DJ competitions, guest mixes and eventually my own event series.

My musical roots are primarily in drum and bass. I discovered the genre during the period when drum and bass was becoming increasingly visible in Prague, and over time I became much more interested in its less conventional edges than in its mainstream forms. That gradually led me towards deeper drum and bass, autonomic, halftime, modern jungle, experimental bass music and other sounds built around broken rhythms.

I am especially interested in music that has a strong individual character: unusual rhythm, atmosphere, sound design or structure. I do not approach DJing as simply playing a sequence of recognizable tracks. For me, selection is the most important part of the process. I enjoy finding music that is overlooked, connecting records from different scenes and periods, and building sets that have their own identity.

A major turning point came around 2022, when I started performing regularly in Prague clubs and became much more involved in the local scene. During that period I won several DJ contests, started receiving more bookings and eventually founded my own club nights, Dark Atmo Breaks and BrainStorm.

Although drum and bass remains the center of my musical identity, I do not want my sets to be limited by genre labels. Depending on the context, I can move through 170 BPM jungle, halftime, autonomic, broken beat, bass music, techno-influenced material and slower experimental electronics. The common element is usually rhythm, atmosphere and music that does not immediately reveal everything about itself.

My sets are usually rooted in bass and breaks, but I am more interested in a particular feeling than in maintaining a strict genre definition. I tend to look for music that sits somewhere between functional club music and more detailed listening music.

Within drum and bass, I am particularly drawn to the space around halftime, autonomic and modern jungle: music where rhythm can breathe, where silence and space matter, and where the relationship between percussion, sub-bass and atmosphere is often more important than constant intensity.

At 170 BPM, I like sets that can move between stripped-down rhythmic tracks, abstract sound design, deeper rollers, modern jungle and atmospheric material without becoming either relentlessly dark or overly smooth. Contrast is important to me. A set can be heavy without being aggressive all the time, and experimental without losing its physical impact.

• Drum and bass
• Halftime
• Autonomic
• Modern jungle
• Experimental bass music
• Breaks and broken rhythms
• Occasional excursions into techno and slower electronic music

My involvement in music eventually moved beyond DJing. I founded Dark Atmo Breaks and later BrainStorm as event concepts focused on music that I felt was underrepresented in the regular Prague club program.

Through these events I had the opportunity to perform together with friends, local DJs and artists such as Last Life, Heatwave and Fuj. The nights also gave me experience on the other side of club culture: programming lineups, communicating with artists and venues, promoting events and trying to create a coherent identity around a particular musical idea.

Organizing events significantly influenced how I think about DJing. A successful night is not simply a collection of individual sets. The sequence of artists, changes in energy and the relationship between different sounds can create a much larger musical narrative. That way of thinking also carries over into how I construct my own recorded and live sets.

At present, I am focusing primarily on DJing, recording mixes and developing my own musical direction rather than actively promoting regular club nights.

Most of my performances have taken place in Prague and the Czech underground electronic scene, although I have also played outside Prague and been selected for international opportunities.

I have also performed at smaller club nights, independent events and underground venues that are difficult to summarize in a single list. These smaller events have often been equally important to me because they provide more freedom for unusual selections and longer musical journeys.

Recorded mixes are an important part of my DJ work. A club set is influenced by the room, the time of night and the audience, while a recorded mix offers much more freedom to construct a specific musical idea from beginning to end.

I enjoy preparing mixes that can function almost like self-contained pieces. Selection, sequencing and transitions are used to create a progression rather than simply demonstrating a collection of tracks. Some mixes stay tightly focused on one sound, while others deliberately connect several related styles.

Over the years I have recorded guest mixes for a number of collectives, radio projects and platforms:

The Dark Atmo Breaks mix series extends the philosophy of the club night into recorded form. It gives me a place to present music I particularly value without having to adapt the selection to a specific dancefloor or event.

My mixes often contain music from producers and labels occupying the more experimental sides of drum and bass and jungle. Depending on the particular recording, this can include sparse halftime, modern jungle, atmospheric 170 BPM material, autonomic-influenced tracks and more abstract forms of bass music.

I see DJing primarily as curation. Technical mixing matters, but technique alone cannot make a set interesting. The most important decisions happen before and during the selection of the music itself: what to include, what to leave out, what should follow what, and how long a particular mood should be allowed to develop.

I spend a lot of time searching for music and following artists, labels and smaller scenes. Digging is therefore almost inseparable from DJing for me. I enjoy finding tracks before they become familiar, discovering older music that still sounds unusual today, and hearing relationships between records that were never necessarily intended to belong together.

I generally prefer long transitions and gradual changes when the material allows it, but I do not try to force every record into the same mixing style. Some tracks benefit from blending, others from contrast or an abrupt shift. The musical idea should determine the technique, not the other way around.

I am also interested in working outside the limitations of a traditional two-deck setup. For some recorded sets I have used VirtualDJ with four virtual decks, allowing additional layers, extended transitions and more control over how individual pieces of music interact.

Ultimately, I want a set to feel deliberate without sounding over-planned. The goal is to create a coherent world for an hour or two while still leaving enough room for surprise.

A large part of my taste developed around producers and labels that expanded the vocabulary of drum and bass rather than simply refining an established formula. I have always been attracted to scenes where drum and bass meets sound design, techno, ambient music, dub and experimental electronics.

Samurai Music and the wider musical world around it have been an especially important reference point for me, together with the autonomic movement and the later development of halftime drum and bass. I am interested in the line that connects those earlier experiments with contemporary producers pushing 170 BPM music in new directions.

Producers such as Last Life, gyrofield, Quartz, Overlook, Mako and Rainforest represent different parts of that spectrum and have all appeared in or influenced selections I have worked with. What connects them for me is not one specific sound, but the willingness to treat drum and bass as an open format rather than a fixed genre template.

At the moment I am concentrating more on DJing and recorded mixes than on organizing events. This gives me more time to dig for music, develop new sets and explore the part of drum and bass that interests me most.

Modern jungle and experimental 170 BPM music are currently especially important to me. I am interested in sets that combine the physical energy of drum and bass with the detail and freedom usually associated with more experimental electronic music.

I do not want Urbik to become associated with one narrowly defined subgenre. The project is ultimately about selection: finding original music, placing it in the right context and creating sets that offer something different from what can be heard on an average night out.