It’s been long in the making, but DJ Hazard’s Far Fetched EP has finally arrived, and it doesn’t disappoint. Featuring all the hallmarks that fans have come to love from the Birmingham-based producer, the release is all frantic drums rattling over rumbling bass, tied together by the ominous vocal cuts and movie samples that have become his trademark.

His first release since 2014’s anthem Bricks Don’t Roll, the EP is the culmination of five years in which Hazard’s focus was often away from the studio. “Life gets in the way – I’ve got kids, I wanted to do other things. You can’t be in the studio every day of your life,” Hazard explains. “But over the last five years, I went to the studio every now and then, and this EP is the best of the stuff that I made in that time.”

As it turns out, we’ve caught Hazard the day after a marathon stint in the studio, and it’s safe to say that the writer’s block that has plagued him since 2014 has vanished. “This EP was never gonna come out. I was never gonna let those tunes go. But because I did, it’s fired me back up again. And it’s worked – I’ve been in the studio every single day for the last four weeks. That fire that I had when I first started is back again.”

To celebrate the release of Far Fetched, we asked Hazard to pick five tracks from across his career that shaped his sound and made him the producer he is today.

Over to Hazard.