Fifteen tracks and not a single label repeated: the chart D Stone signs for Beatport Next 2026 doesn't portray a catalogue, it sketches a constellation. Stuck in Time, Dansu Discs, Batty Bass, Poontin Muzik: every cut arrives from a different house, and that spread is precisely the point. Label identity here has to be read backwards: what do fifteen imprints share for one selector to thread them together seamlessly?
The selector has the biography for it. Daan Steenman, Amsterdam-born and London-based, is a multi-instrumentalist —piano since eight, guitar since twelve— whose house draws on proto-disco, funk and deep percussion. He is part of Beatport Next's class of 2026, the dozen artists the platform is backing this year, with releases on Semi, on SMIILE —Chloé Caillet's label— and on his own Stone Series. It's no accident that Cuba (PT)'s 'K-Spank' comes from Smiile: when an artist charts the very house he has released on, he is drawing his own family tree.
The spine is house between 124 and 133 BPM, with the deliberate exception of Big Miz's 'Wanna Get Down', which drops to 101 and breathes funk. At the edges, history: 'Savior', Aaron-Carl's voice over Rennie Foster's production, arrives in Cromby's remix from Rebirth 20, the compilation marking two decades of Rebirth alongside names like Red Axes and Glenn Underground. And 'Re-Bokk Robot', reworked by Hannah Holland for Batty Bass, is the lot's only detour into electro.
His own 'Envision', in Julya Karma's hands, sits in the list with no hierarchy, one cut among fifteen. That gesture sums up the selection: D Stone doesn't place himself at the centre of the map, he places himself inside it. Identity here isn't stamped by a label; it's drawn by the judgment that links them.
Sources: Beatportal · DUBIKS · Bandcamp
