Steve Porter

Steve Porter calls his brand of dance music Porterhouse, and if you'll forgive the terrible pun, it is indeed pretty meaty. His mixes are full of thick, dense progressive tracks that meld the airy, sweet tendencies of trance with earthy, ass-shaking bass lines. By injecting a healthy dose of funk into his slick soundscapes, Porter manages to make the cheesier elements of the trance and progressive genres more tolerable, much in the way that Sander Kleinenberg did early in his career. And just when you think you know what he's all about, he'll throw in a bit of Latin soul or a twisted breakbeat track to mix things up. The resultant DJ sets are high-energy, relentlessly propulsive affairs spiked with the kind of shiver-inducing builds the E-tards love, but laced with enough tribal percussion and groovy bass to make it palatable to more seasoned audiences. Porter (due at Beta on Thursday, June 19) has toured with progressive heavyweights Sasha and Kleinenberg, and, given a few years, he has a shot at ascending to the same level.