Cubicolor: Biography, Discography and More | EDM Encyclopedia

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Introduction

Cubicolor is a Netherlands-based electronic music project that first released music in 2014. Operating primarily through Anjunabeats, the British record label founded in 2000 by Jonathan “Jono” Grant and Paavo Siljamäki of Above & Beyond, the project has maintained a consistent presence in the melodic electronic music space for nearly a decade. The label, named after Anjuna beach in Goa, India, began as a trance-focused outlet before expanding into trance-edged house in 2011. This stylistic shift created a natural opening for artists like Cubicolor, whose melodic sensibilities aligned with the label’s evolving direction.

The project has remained active from their first release through 2023, the year of their most recent confirmed output. Over this period, Cubicolor issued four full-length albums and four extended plays, all through Anjunabeats. This sustained relationship with a single label reflects mutual aesthetic alignment: both artist and label prioritize melodic composition, atmospheric production, and emotional resonance. Rather than pursuing a multi-label strategy or exploring different sonic directions for different imprints, Cubicolor has built their entire catalog within one consistent creative framework.

Cubicolor’s Netherlands origin places the project within one of electronic music’s most established regions. Amsterdam has served as a hub for progressive and melodic house artists for decades, and Cubicolor’s catalog reflects that environment’s influence: technical production precision balanced with compositional ambition. The project prioritizes textured, layered electronic music designed for sustained listening over functional club tracks. This approach has remained consistent from the earliest EPs through the most recent album projects, suggesting a clear creative vision maintained across nearly ten years of output.

The catalog structure itself reveals the project’s priorities. Four EPs concentrated in the project’s first two years served as a developmental phase, followed by four albums spread across subsequent years. The shift from shorter releases to full-length statements indicates a deliberate move toward comprehensive listening experiences. This trajectory demonstrates a sustained commitment to long-form electronic music composition rather than a focus on individual singles.

Genre and Style

Cubicolor operates within melodic house and progressive electronic music. The project’s sound centers on harmonic progression and textural layering rather than loop-based structures or drop-focused arrangements. Synthesizer pads provide harmonic foundations across tracks, while arpeggiated sequences and processed vocal samples add melodic content. This approach favors atmospheric depth and gradual evolution over sudden rhythmic shifts, creating music that rewards attentive listening rather than immediate physical response.

The house Sound

Vocals function as textural instruments within Cubicolor’s productions rather than traditional lead elements. The project uses ethereal, heavily processed vocal samples that blend into the instrumental mix, creating a unified sonic surface where voice and synthesizer occupy similar frequency ranges. This technique treats the human voice as another layer of texture rather than a focal point demanding primary attention. Basslines remain warm and understated, supporting harmonic movement without competing for prominence in the overall mix.

The project’s commitment to album-length releases reflects a deliberate focus on cohesive listening experiences. Each full-length record explores a sustained mood across its track listing, with individual pieces contributing to a larger arc rather than standing alone as isolated tracks. This album-oriented mindset distinguishes Cubicolor from new EDM artists who build careers around individual singles, remix packages, or playlist-ready selections. The multi-year gaps between album releases suggest careful attention to long-form composition rather than a rush to maintain constant visibility.

Production choices balance electronic and organic elements throughout the catalog. Reverb-heavy piano chords, filtered guitar textures, and natural-sounding percussion appear alongside purely synthetic components. Tempos generally sit in the middle range of electronic dance music, faster than deep house but slower than trance, allowing space for both rhythmic momentum and melodic development. This pacing supports harmonic evolution within individual tracks and sustained textural exploration across full album listening sessions.

Key Releases

Cubicolor’s first two extended plays arrived in 2014. The Next Planet EP and the Got This Feeling EP introduced the project’s melodic sensibilities and established the working relationship with Anjunabeats that would continue throughout their career. Both releases demonstrated the harmonic and textural approach that would define subsequent output, serving as an initial statement of creative priorities and setting expectations for the atmospheric electronic music to follow.

  • Next Planet EP
  • Got This Feeling EP
  • Magnum EP
  • Down the Wall EP
  • Brainsugar

Discography Highlights

Two additional EPs followed in 2015: the Magnum EP and the Down the Wall EP. These releases expanded the project’s sonic range while maintaining the atmospheric production style established the previous year. The four EPs issued across these two years provided a developmental period that refined the sound later explored at greater length on full-length records, allowing the project to establish its identity before committing to album-length statements.

The project’s debut album, Brainsugar, arrived in 2016. This release consolidated the melodic electronic approach developed across the preceding EPs into a unified listening experience, marking Cubicolor’s transition from shorter formats to comprehensive album statements. A significant gap followed before the second album: Hardly a Day, Hardly a Night appeared in 2020, four years after the debut. This sophomore full-length continued the project’s exploration of atmospheric, vocal-inflected electronic music, building on the foundations of the first album while extending the project’s textural and harmonic vocabulary.

In 2022, Cubicolor issued Sometime Not Now, their third studio album. The year brought Sometime Not Now (Remixed) (2023), a companion release featuring reinterpretations of the album’s material by other producers. This remixed collection represents a collaborative approach to revisiting existing work, allowing external artists to engage with Cubicolor’s compositions through their own interpretive lenses. The decision to close the catalog (to date) with a remixed album rather than entirely new material suggests an interest in viewing past work from alternative perspectives. This release stands as the project’s most recent confirmed output.

Famous Tracks

Cubicolor established their sound through a focused run of EP releases in 2014 and 2015. The Next Planet EP and Got This Feeling EP both arrived in 2014, introducing a melodic, vocal-driven approach to house music built around layered synths and human voices rather than relying on pure instrumental momentum. In 2015, the Magnum EP and Down the Wall EP arrived, each expanding on the textured, atmospheric production that would define the project’s identity across subsequent full-length releases.

These early releases laid the groundwork for Brainsugar (2016), their debut full-length album. The record consolidated ideas explored across those shorter releases into a cohesive listening experience, blending electronic production with organic instrumentation and layered vocals. It reflected a deliberate shift from dancefloor-focused tracks toward songwriting that could hold attention outside the club, without abandoning the rhythmic framework of house music. The album format allowed for a wider dynamic range than the EPs had offered, with tracks that could breathe and develop over longer running times.

The progression from four EPs to one album in under three years signals a clear creative trajectory. Each release added depth, moving from the concise statements of 2014 toward the broader palette of the 2016 debut, setting a template that subsequent ram records would continue to refine.

Live Performances

Hardly a Day, Hardly a Night arrived in 2020, four years after their debut album. The record deepened the integration of live instruments and vocal layers, providing material that translates to the stage with natural variation between studio and live renditions. The album’s structure, alternating between restrained passages and more driving sections, follows an arc suited to live performance where dynamics determine how an audience responds over the course of a set.

Notable Shows

Sometime Not Now (2022) added another full-length’s worth of material to their repertoire. For an electronic act with this much catalog depth, the distinction between DJ set and live performance becomes central to how they present themselves. Albums structured around evolving textures and repeating motifs lend themselves to extended stage versions, where a studio track can be stretched and reconfigured in real time. Cubicolor’s writing approach supports this flexibility: their arrangements carry enough detail to reward close listening while maintaining the rhythmic foundation that a live audience demands.

The four-year gap between their first and second albums, followed by a two-year gap before the third, reflects the EDM production timeline of an act that treats each release as a complete project. When those records reached the stage, the material had been refined through live feedback, creating a cycle where performance informs writing and writing informs performance.

Why They Matter

Sometime Not Now (Remixed) (2023) captures something specific about Cubicolor’s position within electronic music: their compositions invite reinterpretation. By handing their 2022 album to other producers, they opened a dialogue between the original material and new perspectives. The songs carry enough melodic and structural clarity to support multiple production approaches without losing their core identity, a quality that not all dance music shares.

Impact on house

Anjunabeats, the British label that has released their entire catalog, has undergone its own evolution since Jonathan “Jono” Grant and Paavo Siljamäki founded it in 2000. Named after Anjuna, a beach in Goa, India, the label spent its first decade as a trance-only operation before expanding into trance-edged house in 2011. Cubicolor’s discography, beginning in 2014, sits squarely in this later period. Their presence on the roster helped define what the label’s house identity could sound like: melodic, song-oriented, and built around genuine vocal house performance rather than instrumental function.

In a genre often driven by individual tracks and playlist placement, Cubicolor has built a catalog anchored by full-length projects. From those early EPs through four albums, the focus has remained on sustained creative statements rather than isolated singles. That commitment to the album format distinguishes them within melodic house and gives their body of work a cohesion that rewards returning to it, long after individual tracks have cycled off playlists.

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