ORIKLE makes melodic techno, progressive house and tech house in Manchester, and every record he has released is about a particular person.

It started with writing that was never meant to be heard by anyone. After losing his stepson Matthew in 2022, he began putting down what he was feeling, page after page, with no thought of music at either end of it. Those pages sat for four years. In 2026 his wife told him that some of it deserved to be heard.

He already had the means to do it. Dance music had been in the house since Playing with Knives, the Bizarre Inc rave record that reached number four in 1991 and came out of his sister's CD collection to be played to death. Years later he was behind the desk for someone else, producing his son's project Beepex and recording his vocals for Fortnite Squad at seven years old, tracks that have since passed 10 million streams. The craft was already there. What arrived in 2026 was something of his own to say.

The records came quickly after that. Other Side sets out how he sees this life and whatever comes after it: someone slipping away, then waiting on the far side for the people they love. Northern Soulmates goes the other way, written for his wife, about finding the one person who changes your world daily, and Manchester runs the length of it, the city he is from and the city where they met. It reached number one in Progressive House on the Spinnin' Records Talent Pool. Stars, still to come, returns to where the writing began and carries Matthew's name.

Not all of it is heavy. The melodic techno takes the emotion and the life behind it, while the tech house takes the opposite, the feeling of driving with the volume at eleven. The same split runs through where he goes. Ibiza is stamped in his passport more than anywhere else, visited as much for the quiet as for the clubs, and it is where he proposed to his wife, at Es Vedrà, the rock that runs through the artwork. He DJs occasionally alongside her, with live performance waiting until the catalogue is deep enough to carry a set.

Nothing is random. Every record is about someone.