Always choosing to walk the path that is less traveled, Justin Kruse aka Kruse Kontrol certainly heads in a new direction. From his early teenage years, he has always been a step aside from the rest. With years of fun tied up in the life of a skateboarder, pushing originality and self expression was nothing new for Justin. Thus, finding electronic music very diverse, Justin's DJ'ing began. Soon he was developing an eclectic library of records, feeding his collection from such shops as Record Time, Save the Vinyl, and Submerge.

Once he started playing out, things began to happen quickly. Over the next few years, Justin's DJ'ing, and his determination to do it, would be tested. "There were points in time [when] I felt I should just drop this entire thing and find something new again.", Justin says. "It seemed as if, from the few chances I would get to showcase this music which empowered me so much, very few people could and would hear it the way I felt I was hearing it."

Justin was soon playing gigs with the few other DJ's in Detroit that braved the crowds with drum & bass music. D&B was becoming more palatable to the masses, and the UK - driven wave hit home in Detroit. In 1997 Justin would be given his chance to show Detroiter's his progress, becoming one of the first pioneers to play the atmospheric variety of D&B in Detroit. This style, spawned by a group of UK artists led by LTJ Bukem (a.k.a Danny Williams) via his record label Good Looking Records (which later spawned sister labels 720, Looking Good, and Cookin’), is characterized by warm strings and keyboard melodies, tempered with crisp drum work.

Justin was now playing gigs as often as they became available, at various club nights and parties around Detroit. In 1999, he landed a crucial residency at Motor Lounge in Hamtramck. As part of the jungle line-up of the long-running "Family" night on Tuesdays, this 16 month residency added much needed experience to Justin's background - and an opportunity to expand his musical horizons even further. Justin is perfectly at home with fusing together the sounds of atmospheric D&B, downtempo, hip-hop and breakbeat music. On this night, however, we've asked for him to play his long, sweeping, and well-layered mixes of the beautiful, melodic atmospheric D&B. Look out for consistently seamless mixes, and tracks from labels like Focuz, Cadence, Omni Trio, Solid State, and Nu Directions.

One-third of Breakbeat Etiquette, along with Legal Alien and Ronin Selekta, Justin is now a core influential member at the forefront of a respected subculture of electronic music in Detroit - though he's too modest to admit it. "This is a music that at one point I knew nothing about, but feel as though I couldn't do without. As for where this takes me, I leave it to the music and to the people who enjoy it as much as I do."

...and we do, Justin - we do.

Listen / DL a DJ mix of Kruse Kontrol (courtesy of Frequency Detroit) here.
After he blows you away at our party, you can email him to tell him!