What happened to James Smith aka Phobia?
James Smith aka Phobia has been releasing on music since the 2000s and had been actively releasing tunes on some of the most important DNB labels like Renegade Recordings, Renegade Hardware, Flex Records, Critical, Ingredients and many more.
My introduction to DNB happened in the year of 2011 which is why I am going back to all the older music and albums that I didn't know of at the time. And because of this I haven't been listening to or keeping up with what's getting released at the moment. But the more I listen to the older music from the scene, the more I go down this incredible rabbit hole of digging up older releases, the more I keep stumbling upon amazing artists, record labels and albums full of solid gold. And I have stumbled upon the heavyweight list of tunes by Phobia.
Phobia seemed to be a mainstay on Hardware and their previous iteration, Renegade Recordings. I was able to find many of the releases on good quality lossless FLAC audio files. But I was wondering what happened to him as according to Discogs, Phobia stopped releasing music since the 2010s. Does anyone know if he still makes music? Or what he currently does or what made him stop releasing music?
Man has released some sick, brutally heavy music on Hardware. Leaving links below to some of my favourite Phobia tunes:
Phobia - Future Soul https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW4FZTf27w4
Ink & Dylan - Need You [Phobia remix] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuQHl8oD12E
But Phobia - Warlock has to be the heaviest Phobia tune I have heard, I mean that Reese bassline! What an incredibly heavyweight bassline!
Phobia - Warlock https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHzgRzPUXOI