In every crooked groove, low-down bass lick and honey-coated chord, WheelUP’s vital new twist on broken beat brings a fresh energy to the quintessential West London sound. As a producer, DJ and band leader, Danny Wheeler has shaped out WheelUP as the next logical step on his journey through underground Black British music. 

It’s a journey that started as a young teenager knocking around Ladbroke Grove in West London in the breakthrough era of jungle. Wheeler was picking up on the sped-up breaks and otherworldly atmospheres spilling out of studios into raves and onto pirate radio airwaves. Soon, he was actively swept up in the clandestine culture, bagging his first sets on local pirates long before he could legally step inside the clubs.  

As the sound evolved, Wheeler naturally pursued his passion into the D&B community centred around Movement’s legendary Thursday nights at Bar Rumba in Brixton. The deeper he got into the scene, the more he valued the multi-cultural quest for uncompromising innovation and unapologetic expression. Managing Infrared for J. Majik, honing his craft as a DJ and eventually progressing to production with a then-unknown Sub Focus, Wheeler’s life was totally immersed in the music.  

By the time he set up W10 Records in 2002, Wheeler had arrived at a richly melodic, soulful D&B sound which stood apart from the rougher stuff he’d come up on. His neighbours in his West London studio space were the likes of Seiji, Kaidi Tatham, IG Culture and Daz-I-Kue — some of the key architects of Bugz In The Attic and the legendary West London broken beat sound. At the time, Wheeler was resolutely focused on D&B, but he felt a great affinity with the next-level rhythms and soul-quenching musicality spilling out of the studios around him. Broken beat was a logical by-product of the West London ends he holds so dear — an area which proudly displayed unity and solidarity in the wake of the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, and later pulsed to reggae and dub in the blues dances, all set to shape Wheeler as a young man with half-Zimbabwean, half-British heritage.  

Wheeler’s Ndebele name is Mapendla, which means pathfinder. At every turn, he’s struck ahead on his own trajectory, and when he started to miss the unity and originality that first drew him to D&B, around 2019 he found himself steering towards broken beat. When lockdown hit, he was fully primed to go in deep on this new direction, quickly signing to Tru Thoughts for his first record as WheelUP,  Good Love. Across the record and its 2023 follow-up We Are The Magic, Wheeler demonstrated the depth of his history in the scene with a heavyweight roll-call of collaborating musicians and vocalists. In time for Tru Thoughts’ 20th anniversary celebrations he took up the challenge to pull a live band together, featuring Nathan ‘Tugg’ Curran on drums, Tom Mason on bass and Bugz In The Attic veteran Toya Delazy on vocals. Once the world opened back up, he brought the WheelUP live show to festivals including Worldwide, We Out Here and Shambala, all while maintaining his life-long dedication to DJing.  

Wheeler’s love letter to broken beat is a deeply felt expression of self — a joint celebration of his Ndebele heritage and the UK soundsystem lineage he’s been bedded in since those first, formative adventures onto pirate radio. The possibilities feel limitless as WheelUP continually expands into more releases, projects, schemes and dreams, and yet the soulful, uplifting core of the music holds true to the artist he’s always been.