Riordon knew he was on to something when he was first asked to play Coachella 2023. But the request didn’t come through an agent or manager, and the performance wasn’t actually at the festival.
“I had this millionaire reach out to me on TikTok” Riordon says. “He was like, ‘Yo, I throw the craziest Coachella afters every year. I’ll fly you out if you want to come be the resident DJ for the weekend.”
It was the U.K. producer’s first big gig. “I hadn’t even put out any like full sets at that point,” he recalls. “He just told me that he likes seeing young people grinding, and he could see I was trying to make something of myself, and he saw some potential.”
For the then 19-year-old artist, the offer was a clear sign that the efforts he’d been making — producing and posting tracks, along with remixes, photos, videos and other assorted social content — were breaking through. While “you can imagine how my mum felt when I told her this random guy with an NFT as his profile picture was gonna fly me out to America,” says Riordon, he accepted the gig. Out in the SoCal desert, he spent the weekend playing for a crowd that included Wiz Khalifa and Logan Paul.
Two years later, Riordon returned to Coachella as part of the actual lineup, playing the festival’s beloved Do Lab stage in April of 2025. This past April, he returned to play its Yuma Tent club space. This year he even secured one of the famous billboards located on the side of the interstate near the fest, with his jokingly proclaiming “Pronounced Riordon, Not Riordon.” (The proper pronunciation of his name rhymes with “Jordan.”)
These shows are among the many highlights of Riordon’s current rise, which also includes getting signed to Darkroom Records, home to artists including Billie Eilish and John Summit, a series of highly streamed releases including a Beatport No. 1 and a Boiler Room set premiering tomorrow, Aug. 28, the same day as the release of his latest track “Friction,” a house/UKG collab with London producer Locky.
Riordon’s Boiler Room set in London
Sandra Nagel
Riordon grew up on the South Coast of England, with performance always part of his life. As a kid he had roles in traveling productions of shows including Oliver! and planned to attend drama school with the goal of working in film and television. But when the pandemic hit and schools went virtual, his plans shifted too. Recalling a glorious party moment when he’d grabbed the aux cord, played MK’s 1993 track “Burning” and watched the room go crazy, he was interested in making dance music. As the world shut down during COVID, “I ended up going all-in,” he says. “With acting, it’s hard to sit at home during COVID and take career steps, whereas with music I could actually make something happen for myself just from being at home and making tunes.”
He was simultaneously working at an influencer marketing company that works with musicians and record labels to get their music on TikTok. The gig was serendipitous, “Because I was essentially studying TikTok for my job every day,” he says. “I would search for musicians that we could try and get on the platform, and I saw how influencers were using music and going viral. Understanding social media was so crucial for my growth early on.” Still living with his parents, he did this job by day and taught himself to DJ and produce at night.
In February of 2022, he quit the job to fully focus on music. His mom was supportive, his dad was less enthusiastic, but both could see that he treated his goal like a real career, living off his savings and working 9-to-5 and into the evenings to make something happen. Up until that point, Riordon had been releasing a lot of Latin house songs, finding them “easy to make.” While these tracks were streaming fairly well, “it wasn’t the sound I wanted to be pursuing.”
His life during this period “was basically rinse and repeat,” he says, “making music, promoting it on TikTok and on socials, putting it out and trying to grow each record from the next.” Then, the person who’d become his manager reached out via TikTok, and they made an inspiring trip to Miami Music Week 2023. Then came the Coachella afterparty gig. A voyage to Chicago’s ARC Music Festival in September of 2023 confirmed that he wanted to pursue house and tech house, an instinct that proved correct when his November 2023 track “Needle on the Record” got signed to Gorgon City’s Realm Records, got rinsed by “DJs I looked up to,” and hit No. 1 on Beatport’s overall chart.
“I remember going out for a walk and calling my mom and my dad,” he says of getting the news of this Beatport No. 1. “That was the day when I felt like, ‘I think I can actually do this for a career.’”
Why Riordon Is an Up-and-Coming Dance Artist
From here, the momentum ramped up significantly. In November of 2024, Riordon appeared with Gorgon City during their set at the U.K.’s hallowed Drumsheds to play “Needle on the Record,” toured and released music consistently during 2025 and continued putting numbers on the board this year. He says his February Raw Cuts performance with Silva Bumpa in New York felt particularly massive — and last month, he sold out the city’s Knockdown Center. “I love the New York crowd,” he says.
With a few Coachella sets already under belt, his goal now is to secure “a big spot in the Sahara tent, hopefully maybe in a year or two.” In the meantime, he plays the fashionable Solid Grooves party at DC10 in Ibiza tonight (Aug. 27) ,the U.K.’s Reading Festival (where he had one of his early formative raving experiences as a teenager) tomorrow and the esteemed Creamfields festival on Saturday, with additional festival and headlining sets across Europe, the U.S. and New Zealand booked through the end of the year.
Given that both of his parents grew up raving, they’ve been in the front row for many recent Riordon shows, with his dad flying to Chicago for his set at Lollapalooza earlier this month and his mom making at least one trip to Ibiza with him every summer. He says one of the major perks of playing out is just that it gives him and his family and friends a reason to get together.
“I’ve actually been seeing my cousins and stuff a lot more,”he says. “We may not have seen each other for a few months otherwise, but because I’m playing something like Boiler Room and they all live around London, it’s just an excuse for us to hang out and go get some food afterward.”
Best Songs to Start With
Riordon’s breakthrough song, released by Gorgon City’s Realm Records in November of 2023.
Released by Insomniac Records in April of 2025, “TWOSTEP” is Riordon’s highest-streaming song to date.
Made with Aluna, Danny P and Caleb Laurenson, Riordon’s most recent release is a fresh take on AlunaGeorge’s “Best Be Believing.”
What’s Next for Riordon
As his shows get bigger, Riordon and his team are building out a bigger live show to match. “Going into the new year, we’re looking at the cities and venues where we can bring a proper Riordon party — production, lights, we’re getting visuals made. We’re really thinking about the show as a whole and trying to put on an experience for people that’s more than just me plugging in in a dark room.”
While he flirts with the idea of making an album at some point down the line, he says right now he’s “not in any rush to do it,” with his current focus being just to “put out singles and write stuff as I feel inspired.” (He and his team recently got a sample from a big ’90s song cleared, with the release of his track that uses it on the horizon.) Long-term, he says he’s “definitely interested” in diving back into acting — but more than anything, right now it’s about maintaining the dedication and passion that brought him from making music in his childhood bedroom to some of the world’s most esteemed stages for dance music.
“I want to be growing this as big as I possibly can, but keeping that spark and making sure the people listening and coming to the shows are there for the right reasons, because they genuinely love the music and share my passion for it.”
Past Billboard Up-and-Coming Dance Artists of the Month
