Josh Baker on why workflow, AI tools and delegation are as important as the music

Josh Baker has just had one of those years all DJs dream about. Bigger rooms conquered, more tickets sold, and stages shut down, all while piling on the Avios. It’s enough to leave the supremely confident house DJ, producer, and entrepreneur in a daze. But standing on the Amnesia Ibiza Terrace at nine in the morning, about to go back-to-back with Luciano, he wasn’t contemplating milestones or momentum. He’d slept properly. He’d been to the gym. He’d had a coffee and even a beer. Then he walked into one of the most mythologised arenas in electronic music to play alongside someone he calls “one of the greatest to ever do it”. READ MORE: “Everything will die”: How music gear is harming the environment “It was insane. I was really nervous, and the first half an hour went quite slowly because I was overthinking each selection, but once I got into it, it was one of those sets where we really gelled,” says Baker via video call. It’s a moment that captures the contradiction at the centre of the 30-year-old’s current phase. On the surface, everything looks rosy: chart records, headline slots, festival chaos. But in Baker’s Upside Down, he’s busily rebuilding how he works before the machine outruns him. “I always knew this crazy moment would come, but to this scale, I didn’t even think it was possible a few years ago; it’s just the way the scene has grown over the past 12 months.” A Parklife 2025 appearance should have been the Mancunian’s victorious home-city set, but instead became a flashpoint as overcrowding forced the stage to be shut down. “Too many people came. It was the right thing to do, but it felt so surreal,” acknowledges Baker. The comeback came weeks later at Creamfields, where he faced a different kind of pressure. For the first time, Baker wasn’t just turning up with USBs. He was bringing time-coded visuals, a custom intro, and production demanding absolute precision. Image: Press “I spent a lot of time and money on that show, but never thought about things like someone pressing play for the first song when there’s nobody on stage,” recalls Baker. “We were backstage having a few beers, and I’d had this special intro made for an extended version of my track Come Closer. We asked the sound guy to press play, but without going into my USB on the deck, I couldn’t remember what the folder was called with the file in… Bearing in mind you have ‘version 1’, ‘version 8’, ‘version 54’ of every single track you’ve ever made. In the end, my mate Seb had to crouch down to do it for me.” For Baker, it forced a deeper shift. The visuals were linked directly to his music, which meant he had to play his own tracks. A lot of them. “I wasn’t used to playing so many, and you get nervous for whatever reason. We’d had perhaps six custom visuals made, and I could play them any time during the set, but it meant that unless I played them, we’d wasted money.” The result was a set that’s now passed 1.6 million YouTube streams, and a DJ no longer solely reliant on other people’s records. For years, Baker resisted certain production shortcuts. Not out of purism, but habit. He had his samples, his methods, his way of working but that changed in a single studio session. “I was under no desire to use tools like Splice, and then I did a session with Prospa, and they just pulled it up,” says Baker. “I was like, ‘What, you guys use Splice?’ Is this where it’s at?” Suddenly, dragging years-old sample folders between laptops felt like friction. The same applied to AI-assisted tools and on-trend hardware. “I’m now using LANDR for mastering, which I wasn’t before, and I’ve just bought this piece of kit…” Baker swivels his camera and proudly holds a Telepathic Instruments Orchid aloft. Image: Press “I barely go to the actual studio anymore because I’m usually travelling, but the sickest bassline I’ve ever written was on a Minimoog Model D Reissue for Dr Feel Right, so over Christmas, I put together a little setup at my parents’ house with the Orchid and a few synths to keep that essence of hardware in my production.” For someone used to the studio environment, admitting “the conditions had to be perfect”, it’s Baker’s way of remote working to fit around his hectic schedule – create ideas on the fly and bank them until he’s found the right hardware and vocalist to lay the finishing touches.” As alluded to, Baker is adamant electronic music is in a healthy state right now, adding: “Every Friday, I keep saying to people there’s a new release which would have been tune of the year five years ago.” No pressure, then, on new single, Feel This Way, out January 16 with Silva Bumpa and vocalist Paige Cavell, which sees Baker sidestep from house into a slightly different dance music genre. “I’ve always liked UK garage and Silva Bumpa’s from that world, but I was playing a lot of his songs” says Baker. “If you’re playing someone’s tracks a lot, it makes sense to get in the studio, and I feel with this one, with such experienced vocalists and songwrit