What started as a one-off piano concert, ended up becoming a 10-headed live-band: meet Polyphonic. This band brings the live experience to drum & bass, complete with live piano, guitar, drums, vocalists, and of course the Master of Ceremony.
Polyphonic so far has brought their live drum & bass to Rampage, Liquicity, and other festivals, but it doesn’t stop there. In 2025, they pushed the boundaries of the genre as they played at a classical festival; with success. The result? A full moshpit!
In 2026, they want to take it even further. Their mission? Proving anyone can enjoy drum & bass, and trying to get an invite from the King of The Netherlands himself. We chatted with Rafael- the founder of Polyphonic and Wolf Pax- their MC, to chat about,how Polyphonic started and what more is in store for them.
How did Polyphonic start?
Rafael: I started Polyphonic out of a need to spread the drum & bass culture. When I went to a drum & bass rave for the first time, I thought the atmosphere was amazing. Anybody can be completely themselves… That was new to me. Since then, I’ve been trying to spread that community feeling and the energy of drum & bass. Through some circumstances we ended up working with a professional orchestra. The first time they played drum & bass live, I immediately felt this was very special. This eventually became Polyphonic.
The first Polyphonic show.
What made you decide to put a live orchestra and drum & bass together?
Rafael: It started with a piano concert. I used to go to a lot of live concerts, and after I fell in love with drum & bass, I couldn’t help but miss the live elements of concerts. I was thinking, how can I seduce the drum & bass audience to enjoy live instruments? What if we turn it into classical music? We did that in 2019, with Fiber In Concert. It was supposed to be a one off, but the classical music cover of Tour by Macky Gee went viral. That was the starting point of all of this, because the pianist who I’d asked to do the concert turned out to be an orchestral composer as well.
What to you is the biggest difference between live music and a drum & bass rave?
Wolf Pax: You’ve got a lot more going on stage during a concert, as long as you’re not talking Rampage-level visuals. Looking at a band playing music… It’s such a different experience. The ability to tell a story is different as well. You can tell a story through mixing and selecting, but you can also tell a story through your instruments. In the rave everybody’s connecting, talking, going outside for a smoke, and getting drinks, but a live show is shorter, we’re all in it together for these wild 90 minutes.
Rafael: We’re with 10 different people in Polyphonic and we’ve become really good friends during this process. That’s what I like about what we do, compared to, for example, Camo & Krooked. I was there in Vienna for their Symphonic show, but it was so grand compared to us. During a Polyphonic show, everyone can still connect with everybody in the band individually and that’s nice.
The current Polyphonic group
How is it to work with so many different people?
Wolf Pax: The more people you have in your group, the more planning is involved. Getting everybody in the same room is not easy, because most people either have a job or a family. Not everyone’s a full-time professional artist in the band. But the good thing about working with all of them is that everybody in the band really knows what they can do. Polyphonic is meshing our worlds and our skills together.
Rafael: Being with such a big group really paid off last year when we booked a studio hotel and spent a full week making music there. The energy was amazing. Whenever someone had made something and their inspiration had run out, they could show it to someone else and immediately continue working on it. We’ve got an orchestra composer, producers, a bunch of lyricists, and we all play many different instruments. We made about 15 songs in that week.
Wolf Pax: The vision for Polyphonic revolves around meshing things together that at first glance don’t really go together. That was the first initial hook. During that writing camp we started adding things together, what about Hip-hop? What about Salsa? What if you take a Metrik tune, put big horns on it and then add Tech House melodies, what does that do?
Rafael: We’ve got so many different influences in our group we can take inspiration from.
How do all of those different influences come together?
Wolf Pax: It wasn’t a one-two-three kind of thing, because when it first started, it was just the orchestra. Then we added singers, back-up vocalists, and an MC, because that’s drum & bass. That evolved to us thinking, the orchestra can’t really go on tour with us if we wanna go internationally, we have to think ahead and create something new, something smaller but still big enough to bring our vision to life. So we started looking for people in drum & bass who also play live instruments.
Rafael: What I think keeps the music together, is the fact that everybody in the project has their own flavour, but we’re in it with the same goal: exploring the potential of live instruments and drum & bass. If we’re able to add this live element and we’re able to keep that same energy that makes drum & bass fun, then to us it makes sense to continue doing it.
Polyphonic has been going for a few years now. What have been some of the highlights?
Rafael: Our first ever booking was at Rampage at the main stage of AFAS Live. That was crazy. That was insane. We brought our marching band to Liquicity and Rampage, which we’ve been doing for a few times now, and we also played a classical version of ‘Baddadan’ to elderly people. These were some very cool surreal moments, but I think the real highlights are stories we’re going to bring out this year. We’ve made drum & bass with a 100-year old, and were able to create the world’s first mosh pit ever at a classical music festival. It really shows that what we’re doing is working.
Polyphonic at RAMPAGE
Wolf Pax: The biggest highlight to me is that I have a special connection with everyone in the band. It made me see that drum & bass is a connecting factor in my life. This culture gives me the ability to connect with others. Going on tour and convincing people that drum & bass is super fun, but also overcoming moments of stage fright together and putting on an amazing show. Another highlight is the fact that I’m constantly making new friends thanks to this band. It’s not just the people in the band, it’s also people all around it, like the photographers, videographers, people who manage the tour, people who make sure everything is in order… That’s all new to me. I’ve never toured with a band like that before. I’ve been a drum & bass MC for seven years now, this is such a different experience. You’re all in it together.
Something new is coming from you in 2026, because you used to only play covers and now you’ve started to make your own music. How did that start?
Wolf Pax: Our first tour was a massive hit, it was very cool. The shows went extremely hard, the energy was always good and then we were thinking, this could work in a festival setting as well. So, Rafael had the idea of contacting big festival organisers and convincing them to book us.
Rafael: I went to the office of one of the biggest festivals of the country, Lowlands, and brought a cake with a picture of us and a QR code on it, and “A Taste of Polyphonic”. They liked it, but they told us that they didn’t really book artists who don’t play their own music. That got me thinking. We have done these covers and we’ve experimented combining drum & bass with jazz, classical and latin, but in order for us to take our shows to the next level, we needed to start writing things from scratch.
The first single that’s going to be released is ‘Anthem’. What’s the story behind it?
Rafael: ‘Anthem’ was the first original song that we wrote. We wanted to show the audience that we are an orchestra, but we get drum & bass and we don’t compromise on the energy. In the first 10 seconds, that’s exactly what the song tells you.You hear a classical piano piece and it’s immediately answered by a giant bass. And the lyrics say what we’re about quite explicitly. “Raving with the live sound, this is Polyphonic,” it says. It’s about how we work together. There are many, many great moments, we are all connected, it’s the formula.
Wolf Pax: It’s definitely a fitting first release, but there’s so much more in store. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Rafael: The writing process of ‘Anthem’ was also interesting, because we really wanted to involve everybody. First we had the composition, then we had to find an orchestrator who could produce it, then we found a producer, Artino, and some help from Keeno as well. At the end, we brought everything together and added Wolf Pax’s lyrics and Diandra, our vocalist, added some lyrics as well. I’m really proud of this song, because it really captures the entire Polyphonic-feeling.
Are there any more songs coming?
Rafael: You can expect a very diverse set of releases from us this year. We’ve experimented a lot with bringing that live drum & bass sound to all kinds of styles. Influences range from Chase & Status to Camo & Krooked to Bach and even Pink Floyd. We’ve also just announced our new tour, during which we’ll share our new music, but also still play the music people know and love us for. Those crazy live drum & bass renditions of Noisia, Chase & Status, Hedex, etc.
Any other cool plans you can tell us about already?
Rafael: We want to show that drum & bass can be for everybody, so we are starting a mission this year. We’re going to introduce drum & bass to new people until we get invited to play it for the king of the Netherlands. We are making a YouTube series about this, which features 100 year olds, a classical music crowd and more. We were just thinking, what is the biggest contrast to an underground rave, and who is the last person you would expect to see in an underground rave? Royalty! If we can convince royalty that drum & bass is good, then that’s proof that anybody can enjoy it. We’re super excited about it.
