Artist Profile: Heavee

Born Daryl Bunch Jr. and raised in Chicago, Heavee came up in the city that gave shape to footwork as a dancer and participant, practising with friends in the street before joining Ace Boogie’s Animosity crew in high school. He absorbed it from dancing and battle logic. When his music lands, it lands with that bodily memory still intact. On Thursday, April 23, 2026 Heavee brings the Chicago sound to Bucharest when aim+wall returns with their residency, teaming up with 160 UNITY.

Chicago is one of the few cities whose dance music remains inseparable from its streets and social codes. Footwork was functional, social, and competitive music for bodies testing one another. Heavee belongs to the generation that inherited this after it had already begun to be recognized globally.

Before his name appeared in club listings and label catalogues, Heavee was immersed in juke culture as a participant, practising in the street, joining the dance crew Animosity while still in high school, and developing his sensibility from the collective life of Chicago dance. The shift into production was driven by necessity. He wanted tracks at a pace that others couldn't match, so he started making them himself.

The other formative current in Heavee’s work came from screens. His imagination has long been shaped by cartoons and video games, which helps explain the bright synthetic charge in his music and the feeling that his tracks open onto entire environments. Heavee has said he first made music on the PlayStation title Digital Hitz Factory, with later inspiration also coming from Jet Set Radio Future. His tracks often feel like digital landscapes charged with kinetic energy, full of ricochets, pressure points, and tiny melodic flashes that flicker like motion graphics.

Encounters with DJ Rashad and DJ Spinn brought Heavee into the Teklife orbit. Teklife gave him context, community, and a larger stage, and the confidence to push his own instincts further. His 2018 debut album WFM, released through Teklife, featured collaborations with DJ Phil, Gant-Man, DJ Paypal, and Sirr Tmo, and included “It’s Wack,” a track tied to DJ Rashad that later found another life in Grand Theft Auto V.

Still, WFM now looks like the opening act in a longer story. Heavee has reflected on how collaborative that record was and how it left him wanting to make something with a clearer personal signature. That urge became visible with Audio Assault, the 2022 EP on Hyperdub. The release sharpened his profile outside footwork’s core audiences and announced his ability to work at its edge. The tracks were fast, luminous, and slightly surreal. Around the Audio Assault period, he was also working security in a hospital emergency room, a detail that gives his rise a sharper sense of labour and everyday discipline.

Released by Hyperdub in 2024, Unleash is the most expansive expression of Heavee’s musical world so far. Its sounds boot up, shimmer, ricochet, and mutate with a vivid sense of internal space. The pulse is tactile, and the movement remains local even if the imagery feels cosmic. An accompanying game project for Unleash also emerged from the aesthetics of Heavee's work at the time.

One of the strengths of Heavee's catalogue is the way his larger conceptual work exists alongside records aimed at dancers and DJs. The Charged Up series on Moveltraxx beautifully captures that side of his practice. These EPs carry Chicago footwork energy into a broader network of club play. Charged Up 2 helped sustain momentum across 2025. Charged Up 3 arrived April 10, 2026. His career also extends into collaboration, including co-productions with Sinjin Hawke and Zora Jones.

Alongside the releases, his mix work has become another vital part of the picture. Sets for Boiler Room, including a widely circulated appearance tied to Primavera, helped place him before larger international audiences. Further appearances on platforms such as Elevator Music, Pound and Yam, DJ Mag, and The Lot Radio reveal curation as part of his artistry.

In Heavee’s hands, footwork feels alive. Its Chicago roots stay audible. Yet, each track opens the form a little wider, finding new charge inside a form built for motion.