Bontan's Advice Is Three Lines Long. Most Producers Skip All Three.

In a 2022 interview with Radio Intense, Bontan was asked what advice he'd give to producers trying to break through. His answer was three sentences. Most people read it, nod, and go back to tweaking their compressors.

Here it is in full:

This isn't motivational filler. It's a sequence. And the order matters.

Step One: Be Part Of The Scene

Not online. In the room. Bontan's first instruction is to go to your favourite events — regularly, not occasionally. This is a discipline, not a social suggestion.

There's something your ears learn from a proper soundsystem at 2am that no amount of studio time replicates. You hear how a kick lands in a room. You feel what a bassline does at volume. You understand intuitively why the DJ chose that track at that moment, why it works after this one and before that one. You calibrate.

Bontan is from Liverpool — not Ibiza, not Berlin, not London. He built his sound coming up through a regional scene, going to the events that mattered to him, absorbing what he heard and letting it inform what he made. By the time he sent Jamie Jones a track called “The First Time” in 2017, it landed immediately. Hot Creations signed it quickly. It went on to rack up millions of streams. That relationship didn't start with a cold email — it was built over years of being present in the same world.

You cannot connect with people you never see. You cannot understand a dancefloor you never stand on.

Step Two: Connect With The DJs You Admire

Note what Bontan does not say. He does not say “pitch to A&R managers” or “send demos to labels.” He says connect with your favourite DJs. People whose taste you respect. People playing the music you want to be making.

This kind of connection is built in person, slowly, and it only works if you're actually at the events in the first place — which is why step one comes before step two. You don't manufacture it. You turn up consistently enough that it becomes natural.

And crucially, Bontan adds a condition to when you start sending music around: “once you have built your own unique sound.” Not before. The music has to be ready to represent you. Sending tracks prematurely — before your sound is distinct enough to be memorable — is worse than not sending them at all. You get one first impression.

Step Three: Always Lean Away From What's Popular

This is the one most producers intellectually agree with and practically ignore.

When a sound is everywhere — when you hear the same synth stab on every release, when a particular groove is flooding every new label playlist — the instinct is to chase it. It's working for everyone else. The logic feels sound. But what you're actually doing is entering a race you're already behind in, chasing a peak that's already passing.

Bontan's counterintuitive move is the opposite: if it's popular right now, that's the signal to move away from it. His cited influence is Masters At Work — artists who never chased a trend in their lives and whose catalogue holds up decades later precisely because of that refusal.

Uniqueness is not a personality trait. It's a commitment. It requires you to actively resist the gravity of what's already working for other people and trust that what you're building — your thing, the sound that comes from your references and your ears and your taste — is worth more than another entry in an already-crowded lane.

The producers who do this are the ones who get signed to Hot Creations. The producers who chase what's popular now get ignored by Hot Creations, because by the time the track is done the moment has passed.

The Sequence Is The Strategy

Read it again in order: show up to the culture, build real connections inside it, develop something that sounds like nobody else, then send it to the people you've actually built relationships with.

None of these steps is optional and none of them can be skipped. The scene gives you your ears. The connections give you your access. The unique sound gives you something worth hearing. The leaning away from trends gives you longevity.

Bontan's advice is three lines long. It's also a complete roadmap.