Andrew Bayer

Brooklyn-based electronic dance producer Andrew Bayer creates music aimed at headphones as well as the dancefloor. Influenced by Tiesto and Ferry Corsten, Bayer debuted in the late 2000s on his longtime home label, Anjunabeats. Early albums It's Artificial and If It Were You, We'd Never Leave incorporated multiple styles, including progressive house, downtempo, trip hop, and experimental ambient. In the 2010s, in addition to scoring multiple Grammy nominations, Bayer focused on solo singles and EPs, as well as Anjunabeats compilations. At the close of the decade, he returned to long-form releases with the pairing In My Last Life and In My Next Life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Bayer first became interested in electronic music thanks to big room DJs like Tiësto and Corsten. While attending the Berklee College of Music, Bayer’s diverse taste in music increased along with his music-making skills, but his favorite record label remained the same: Anjunabeats. He sent the label demo after demo, and in 2010 they signed him and released The Taxi Driver EP on Beatport. He moved on to Anjunabeats proper for his 2011 debut album It's Artificial. The equally diverse If It Were You, We'd Never Leave followed in 2013 and peaked in the Top 20 on the Billboard Dance chart. For the remainder of the decade, Bayer’s solo material wound up on EPs and much of his attention shifted toward production for Above & Beyond. His efforts were rewarded in 2015 and 2018 when that group’s We Are All We Need and Common Ground were nominated for Grammy Awards. He issued his third full-length, In My Last Life, in 2018; a remixed reworking, In My Next Life, arrived a year later. ~ Neil Z. Yeung & David Jeffries