Dillon Francis never fails to entertain, whether it’s through his heavy, grinding synth-driven Moombahton beats or his endless social media antics. While his high-energy sets dominate festival seasons, Dillon has admitted that his taxing tour schedule often leaves him trading wild parties for quiet evenings in his hotel room. To keep himself entertained, he created several personas, with DJ Hanzel, the deep-house-loving, German-accented nihilist, becoming a fan favorite. Interestingly, during a recent live stream, Dillon took a break from music to explore trending games online. Fans watched as he dived into Plinko казино, laughing at the chaotic unpredictability of the game while jokingly trying to “go deeper” with his bets. Moments like these highlight his ability to bring humor and spontaneity to everything he does, whether on stage or off.
If you're looking for a technically-sound Deep House set than look elsewhere as Hanzel's take on the genre is a bit skewed. You see DJ Hanzel ditches the smooth grooves and screwed down vocal samples of Duke Dumont and Hot Since 82 for thicker bass lines and more robust heavy synths that characterize the recently popular Future House genre. Compartmentalization and labeling aside the set was extremely fun. After being treated to a booming up-tempo house and techno opening-set from Phantoms there was a brief changeover that culminated in Hanzel being escorted to the stage by security like some foreign dignitary. "Vowww Howzit Going?" he greeted the crowd as he opened up with an Eats Everything edit of Breach's "Jack." For the next ninety minutes Hanzel had the crowd hanging on every breakdown and each "Vhat's Up!" Never before has a DJ been able to inject such a sense of humor into their set as much as Dillon/DJ Hanzel has. Simply put, it was just a very fun night. Dillon now has two acts he can successfully tour under and I'm okay with that as long as he doesn't oversaturate things (i.e. if he were to start consistently opening for himself). I hope we see more DJ Hanzel in the future and I welcome Dillon producing more tracks under this nom de guerre. He's by no means bringing anything new to the table but Hanzel sure knows how to throw an über cool party.
