PAWSA & Solid Grooves Hit New York: The B3B That Matters

Solid Grooves Makes Its Mark on New York

On September 5, Solid Grooves touched down in New York City with a show that had been quietly anticipated for months. At Fulton Fish Market — hosted by Teksupport, the promoter that has built some of the most credible underground bills in the city — PAWSA, Michael Bibi, and Dennis Cruz played their first three-way B3B set in New York together. For a label and event brand that built its name in the UK, then across Europe and Ibiza, the NYC moment felt like a proper arrival rather than a tour date.

The event sold out. It drew the kind of crowd that knows the difference between a party built around a headliner and one built around a sound — and Solid Grooves has always been the latter. The lineup of three artists who co-developed that sound, playing back-to-back in a city with its own deep house legacy, was a statement in format as much as billing.

PAWSA: The Quiet Architect of the Solid Grooves Sound

Of the three artists on the bill, PAWSA — real name David Esekhile — is arguably the least visible internationally despite co-founding Solid Grooves Records with Michael Bibi in 2015. His approach has always been intentional: vinyl-only sets under his PAWZCAST series, a solo imprint (PAWZ) for the more minimal and experimental material, and a performing style that leans into the stripped-back, percussive groove that Solid Grooves built its identity around.

His productions are built on what he describes as "raw ideas" — hats, claps, basslines, and texture — closer in spirit to early Juan Atkins or Omar S than to the maximal end of tech house. That minimal-micro approach has had a quiet influence on the sound of the label's releases over the past decade, and it's increasingly influential beyond it, as a younger wave of producers cites the stripped-back Solid Grooves aesthetic as a reference point. DJ Mag's deep profile on PAWSA from his early rise charts exactly how that tension between accessibility and rawness has shaped the label's trajectory.

The Chemistry of the B3B

Playing B3B requires more than just schedule logistics. The three Solid Grooves sets that work best share a tempo range and an approach to energy management: a long, slow build, shifting in groove rather than intensity, with the peak arriving through texture accumulation rather than a conventional breakdown-and-release. PAWSA, Michael Bibi, and Dennis Cruz are unusually well-matched for that kind of collaboration because they've spent a decade building the same library of tools and references. They know exactly where each other's strengths sit.

Bibi brings the hookier, more vocal-forward material — the ear candy that keeps the floor anchored between deeper stretches. Dennis Cruz, the Barcelona-based Solid Grooves stalwart, works in a more driving, percussive lane. PAWSA holds the space between them: lower in energy on the surface, but technically the most demanding to sustain, because micro-groove-forward sets lose the crowd fast when the energy management isn't exact. The format works precisely because the three are good enough to manage it without it feeling like a committee-designed set.

Why New York, Why Now

The US market has historically been complicated for the Solid Grooves sound. American underground club culture tends toward either the deep-house end (Chicago and Detroit legacy, preserved through venues like Output and Smart Bar) or the more aggressive, festival-facing tech house that's dominated streaming playlists for the past several years. The groove-first, tempo-controlled sound that Solid Grooves champions sits somewhat between those poles and has often had to work harder to find its audience stateside.

Teksupport is one of the few promoters consistently programming that kind of underground on a serious scale in New York — they've built a track record of booking acts like Peggy Gou, Dixon, and Adriatique for events that are fundamentally about music rather than spectacle. Pairing Solid Grooves with Teksupport at an outdoor venue like Fulton Fish Market — open air, no VIP infrastructure, all emphasis on the dancefloor — is the right match of artist and context. It gives the sound the space to work.

What This Sets Up

Solid Grooves' US shows have traditionally been one-offs, tied to individual bookings rather than a coherent touring strategy. The Fulton Fish Market event felt different: a purpose-built showcase at the start of fall, with three of the label's founding figures together, in a city that increasingly has the promoter infrastructure to support it. Whether that becomes a seasonal pattern — a Solid Grooves NYC at the beginning of autumn, much as the label has built repeatable formats in London and Ibiza — remains to be seen.

What's clear is that the appetite exists. The show sold out on its own terms, without the support of a mainstream booking or a crossover act. For a sound that's still fundamentally rooted in the underground — in the patience of a late-night dancefloor, in the craft of a warm-up set that never announces itself as a warm-up — that's the result that actually means something.