About
Hector Plimmer is a producer, drummer, DJ and graphic artist from South London. He has steadily built a career bridging scenes and sounds, from beats to jazz, broken beat, house and techno, whilst at the same time honing a distinctive sound, balancing lovingly crafted low-end with precision engineered percussion and a knack for enticing melody and arrangements, and as Crack magazine complemented, “his spirit of exploration”.
Hector’s genre-busting music has been championed by the likes of Gilles Peterson, Benji B, Lauren Laverne and Tom Ravenscroft and supported by Mixmag, Resident Advisor, Crack, Hyponik, Fact and Stamp The Wax. Furthermore, the demand for his talents have turned him into a prolific remixer, reworking songs for household names such as Morcheeba and Red Snapper, and rising stars of the calibre of Oscar Jerome and Yazz Ahmed.
Following a stellar performance at London record mecca, Sounds Of The Universe, Hector was rapidly signed to Albert’s Favourites and his 2017 debut album, ‘Sunshine’, was named Gilles Peterson’s album of week on his BBC 6 Music show, and championed across the station, and by Jamie Cullum on BBC Radio 2, leading to top 50 spot on the Spotify US viral charts. Plimmer would go on to tour the album leading a quartet across both club and festival stages, such as Glastonbury, The Great Escape, Brainchild and the Jazz Cafe, and perform a live solo set for the Boiler Room x Worldwide FM x Nightdream ‘Streaming in Isolation’ series.
Follow up album, ‘Next To Nothing’ took matters to another level, recalling the sophistication of Flying Lotus, Theo Parrish, and the impact of vintage Massive Attack and Tricky, featuring electric collaborations with the likes of Ego Ella May, Andrew Ashong and Emma-Jean Thackray. Ashong collaboration, ‘Somebody Else’, held a place on BBC 6 Music’s Playlist B for no less than 4 weeks running, appearing on shows by Mary Anne Hobbs, Lauren Laverne, Shawn Keavney, Gilles Peterson, Tom Ravenscroft, Don Letts, Jamz Supernova and Benji B, who selected it for his “In Three Records”. What’s more, it featured prominently across Crack, Resident Advisor, Stamp the Wax, Music Is My Sanctuary and Mixmag, who described it as “drowsy, introspective and almost otherworldly”.
Whilst on the stage he has collaborated with Emma Jean Thackray and The London Symphony Orchestra, and more recently performed a special AI-centered show with Ben Hayes, closing a week-long residency at the Southbank’s Purcell Rooms. The latter was rated so highly by none-other-than Grace Jones, she has requested the show be repeated at her long-postponed ‘Meltdown Festival’.
Hector was selected by Google to test and compose the inaugural piece on their open source AI synth, the ‘N Synth Super’. His tracks have also been synced to date by the likes of WACOM, Nike, i-D, Zandra Rhodes & Kitty Joseph and most recently the Acute Art x Dazed ‘Unreal City’ VR exhibition. Furthermore, he has expanded into scoring and producing music for film, with Jackdaw Films’ animated short, ‘Stones’ and ‘LUNA’, directed by Radford Nicholls.
Meanwhile, as a DJ, Hector has been featured on ‘The Lab’ for Mixmag, and played for dancefloors alongside the likes of Gilles Peterson, Kutmah, Alexander Nut, MNDSGN, Onra, Dego, Kaidi Tatham, Andrew Ashong, Max Graef and Glenn Astro. As with his own music, his DJing style reflects his broad musical tastes, both old and new, from jazz to techno via instrumental hip hop. After eights years presenting on NTS throughout the internet radio station’s stratospheric ascendency, in 2020 Plimmer launched his well timed ‘Soothing Sounds’ show for Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide FM, before shifting gears to a broader range of sounds and renaming it ‘Circular Sounds’.