Having spent less than three years chalking up widely-played, increasingly anticipated releases on superior electronic imprints such as Rhythm Section, CWPT & Studio Barnhus, not to mention a blissfully deep album on Mule Musiq, it might be easy to conspire that Wallace simply came from nowhere to inspire dancefloors and DJs. 

Unlike Wallace’s music - bright, versatile, diverse and increasingly inescapable - the truth is much less exotic, instead a simple reverberation of honesty and commitment emanating from his hometown of Shrewsbury. Having become passionately immersed in electronic music and club culture while studying in Edinburgh, Wallace returned from his ancestral Scotland to the green plains and cosmic ley lines of the West of England to commit himself to the studio. In the spirit of the tartan stitching of his ubiquitous family crest, here he endeavored to weave something familiar, yet new. 

A decade later, far removed from clubbing’s indulgent epicenters, Wallace’s finely-tuned productions quickly gained satellite support from the likes of Bradley Zero, Moxie and Ruf Dug, torchbearers of British dance culture with whom his studious yet highly individual first records found instant support. Initially anonymously impressing with a series of edits on his own Tartan imprint, a switch to original productions came both quickly and naturally, with Bradley Zero in particular predicting “the onset of Wallace mania.”

Following the release of 2024’s ‘Papertrip’, the second release of Wallace’s on Zero’s much-coveted Rhythm Section, the modest Yorkshireman was keen to observe that “the prophecy had come to pass”. And yet, mania does not feel like the right terms for Wallace. Certainly, he can inspire it. Just witness a video of Palms Trax previewing ‘Breathe’ for the first time, seemingly levitating the entirety of a mid-sized Croatian dancefloor with the sort of momentous energy that leaves ravers wondering just who has conjured such ecstatic magic (and DJs keen to get a taste, too)

More likely to be found programming his own drums, rather than beating them on social media, Wallace offers a reminder of what club music can do in its simplest, most purely musical forms. A strain of naturalism runs deep, borne of a love of nature and the great outdoors, inherited from a father involved working as a producer creating nature programmes for television. On his 2023 debut album ‘Red, Yellow, Black’, released on Mule Musiq, Wallace’s rich sound shifted boldly away from dancefloor-defining moments, forging an organic link with time spent in Asia and a childhood on the Welsh border.

Perhaps his most versatile record to date, ‘Tanzanite’ for Moxie’s On Loop imprint easily juxtaposes the sounds of a traditional African ‘M’Bira’ on one side, first encountered on a childhood trip to Africa, with the insistent acid throb of a club on the other, as heard on the hypnotic single, ‘Red Velvet’. Whatever the influence, Wallace’s careful understanding makes itself audible, both in and out of the dance.

Returning to Panorama Bar for an eight-hour closing set mere months after his Berlin debut in 2023, Wallace’s diverse, exploratory DJ sets present a neat parallel to his shape shifting journey as a producer, the celebratory payoff to a decade immersed in the studio. Whether solo or back-to-back with his contemporaries and label bosses at Fabric, La Cheetah in Glasgow, or forthcoming shows at Glastonbury, Pikes, Corsica Studios, Panorama Bar & Badaboum, each appearance demonstrates his complimentary golden touch as a selector, as refreshingly keen to represent his diverse collection of records as his own carefully-honed productions.