We’ve got Grand Theft Audio 100 before GTA VI?! Grand Theft Audio started out as a drum & bass event in Manchester in 2014, but quickly decided they wanted to be more than that. They wanted to release tunes, give up-and-coming artists the chance to be heard, and most importantly: champion the full-spectrum sound of drum & bass.
Twelve years in, and they’re still doing exactly that. When Robbie and James aren’t busy working on their artist project, Sola, they are busy finding the next gem to release. At the start of 2026, they celebrated their 100th release. Not once, but twice. Grand Theft Audio 100 is a celebration of both original and remix tracks, carefully handpicked so that it tells the entire full-spectrum story of the label.
We met up with Robbie and James to talk about this milestone and what it means to them.
Congratulations on your 100th release! How does it feel to hit this big milestone?
Robbie: It still feels weird, because when we’re uploading tracks to the distributor now, we have to type in GTA1, instead of GTA0… finally putting in 100 felt really great.
James: When we started sending in these tracks, that’s when it hit. A 100! I remember some of my favourite labels getting to 100 releases, how cool those releases were, and what those labels did to celebrate that milestone. It’s hard to think, when you’re starting out as a little label, that you’re ever gonna have 100 releases. Is there going to be demand enough for the music that you can keep going that long?
Robbie: We didn’t think that far at the beginning.
James: During the first few months of the label, I was running a drum & bass event in Manchester called Grand Theft Audio, which I decided the name for about two minutes before the flyers went to print. It was going to be called “Halloween D&B All Nighter” or something generic like that. The pun came into my head right before the deadline of sending the flyer off, and I just thought, we’ll go for it. Around that time, we had a couple of tracks, as Sola, and we didn’t really know how to get them to labels. It was tough and we just wanted to release them. We decided to create our own label just to release these two releases and we used a mastering engineer called Dean from Compound Audio. He told us that there were a lot of artists in our shoes who didn’t really know how to contact labels, and he asked us if he could send them over. That’s where most of the tracks for the Vibrations EP ended up coming from.
Robbie: We also put out an open advert, and opened a demo email. That’s how we met people like Sl8r and Data 3, who are now good friends of ours. That first EP was crazy. It had my first solo tune on it, first Sl8r, first Data 3 and it had the first Hanm tune, who’s now the third member of Sola. That’s a solid first EP, looking back.
How did you work towards the 100th release?
James: This is our third milestone release. The first one was GTA 50, and for that we did 50 tracks. We did some themed EPs within certain subgenres and added to that 26 tracks from back catalogue and made a 50 track EP. We’ve never done anything of that size before. Similarly, we did a 50-track release for our 10th birthday.
Robbie: Me, James, and Giles (Aduken) each picked 10 of our favourites from that catalog. 10 originals and 10 remixes, and then added some more songs to it to get it to 50 tracks.
James: We knew the 100th release was coming. We prepped the whole time we were on tour, as we’ve just toured Asia and Australia again. For this one, we wanted to go smaller, and really, really handpick the tunes. The result is that we’ve got a six-track and a seven-track EP. One came out on February 6, the second part is out on March 6. The first one’s mainly originals, and the second one’s all remixes. The next big release is planned in April and will have around 25 tracks on it, so we were able to sign tracks that we liked and put them there and curate things that work really well as a statement piece for the 100th, but it’s 13 tracks instead of 50. For the April release, because of its proximity to the 100th, we were able to sign some other great songs that didn’t necessarily fit in the 100th release, but still really fit Grand Theft Audio. We didn’t want to turn down great tracks, and this was the way we were able to do just that.
Why did you choose to do a release in two parts?
Robbie: It seemed like the right thing to do, one that was original tracks and one that was remixes.
James: The way the algorithms work is, a lot of people that are on part A are also on part B, and they can only pitch to charts for one of those tracks. We didn’t want any of this great work flying under the radar. Having it spread across two releases gives two chances to get on the algorithmic charts. We thought that it was more important that the music got to the ears that it needed to get to rather than Grand Theft Audio got the kudos of getting some number one album.
We hate the algorithm, but we’re all playing it, unfortunately. You were talking about how Grand Theft Audio started out as an event before becoming a label. Is the event still going?
James: Absolutely. We had a little bit of a quieter year in 2025 because we were touring as Sola. It’s also getting quite tough in Manchester. If you don’t do jump-up and jungle, it is a little bit tougher to do like a varied night with liquid, dancefloor, and neuro. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of demand for that. We’ve taken a little bit of a backseat last year but we’re looking to do an event this year. It is sometimes hard to juggle running a label and being an artist. Which is why it’s good that no one’s holding a gun to your head and saying you have to do this for the event, you have to put out this many gigs, etc.
How do you juggle those two projects?
James: When things speed up with Sola, we slow down with the Grand Theft Audio, and when things slow down with Sola we’re free to do a bit more with Grand Theft Audio. We’re always doing the same amount of work for both.
Robbie: There was a little gap between 99 and 100 but now we have a pile of Sola songs ready to go. We’ve now got the GTA 100 part 1 and part 2, we’ve got a massive 20-30 track so that’s ready to go. After all of these celebrations, we’ll probably take a little breather with Grand Theft Audio and focus on Sola again, and so on.
James: Because we’re an independent, still quite underground, label, there’s no one saying, what’s happening, why haven’t these guys released for two and a half, three months? They don’t mind. Then, when they see all the cool names that are on Grand Theft Audio 100, they’re thinking, ah, that’s what they were doing, they were working. We’re always making sure that both of our projects synchronize. When the stockpile of tunes is getting emptier for Sola, we focus on creating more tunes. I think we’ve only got one Sola tune that’s unsigned, so after this it’s probably time to start finishing some more tunes and getting them ready to send off. For Grand Theft Audio, we’re pretty much sorted for the coming months. We’ve got the whole GTA 100 milestone, got our Full Spectrum release coming up, and accounts day also kept us quite busy at the end of February…
There’s a lot of checklists and to-do lists I imagine.
Robbie: Yeah, we have a lot of to-do lists!
James: What’s really nice about doing accounts is, even though it takes forever, there’s so many artists telling us that we’re the only people who pay them. It’s nice to send them money for their work.
Robbie: We’re always transparent about everything. It happens to us too! Sometimes we get a message saying, we owe you £80.
James: There’s never a day where you’re not happy to find out you’re getting paid for work you forgot you did.
You started the label 12 years ago. What was the scene like in Manchester back then?
Robbie: There was a lot of neuro and dancefloor, which was like what we would put on at our events. We would promote a little bit of everything, but I think a lot of people still link dancefloor and neuro with us. That was the sound at the time. We’ve always done a bit of everything, but that was definitely more of the sound at the time.
How has it evolved?
Robbie: The sound’s still there, I think in Manchester itself, there’s more of an appetite for jungle and jump-up now.
James: Drum & bass in Europe is still massive, look at Let it Roll.
Robbie: I was at Let it Roll Winter at the weekend, and dancefloor in Europe is very much
alive and well. We get more bookings around the world than we do in Manchester at the moment, which is something we are absolutely fine with.
Anything to get yourself out of the rain.
James: Or in a different kind of rain. The rain’s very different in Thailand.
How about the wider scene? When you started 12 years ago, how do you look back on when the scene started and where it’s going now?
Robbie: The world is still into everything. The more we play, the further away we get, the more they just look for any type of drum & bass. Certainly in the places in Asia we’ve played, everyone loves the full spectrum of D&B.
James: There’s no genre smotheration.
Robbie: We’re really spoiled here in the UK. We get so much D&B that we’re able to go to a night of just jump-up, just jungle, or just neuro, and that’s beautiful. We’re lucky to have that. But it does mean that when you play a bit of everything you fit more in the places where they’re happy to hear drum & bass in any shape or form.
James: When we first started, there were a lot of labels that did a lot of everything. I would say apart from us, the only one I can think of is Hospital Records who’s doing that at the moment. You’ve got Metrik, they did a collab album with Let It Roll where there’s a bunch of neuro. You’ve got the liquid tracks they’re putting out still, you’ve got the jump-up from Anaïs and Unglued… They do the full spectrum, but I can’t think of any other major label that does it anymore. Everyone hyper-specializes, because it’s the nature of the beast. If you send your promos to the big DJs, they get to know what sounds you put out, and so the same DJs repeatedly go for the same labels. If someone sends out a full spectrum release, they know they’re going to have to listen to that whole thing, and that’s a lot more work for them to pick out the gems.
Robbie: That being said, GTA100 got some really good support.
James: I’d love to thank everyone who released on the GTA100 release real quick. Thank you Conrad Subs, Debice, FJ, Hologram, Jinbu, Karina Ramage, Pyxis, and Tengu on the first release. We’ve got a track on there with Sola as well, so we’d love to shout-out Paul as well. On the second part, we’ve got Conrad Subs, Debice, Genesis Elijah, Gwillz, Harriet Middleton, K Jah, Kleu, Locoda, MC RVS, Plasmator, Replete, Rowney, Sayto, Sola, Soul.Crew, Syran, Tengu, and Vektral.
Now you’ve reached the 100th release, what’s next?
James: We’ve got some cool stuff planned. We’ve got an EP by Gwillz coming out in the summer, we’ve got a remix EP for Plasmator’s album, we’re gonna do our 11th Vibrations release of six summer tracks…
Robbie: There’s the Full Spectrum release coming up as well, which has got 26 tracks on it.
James: GTA101 is a track that we’ve made with Soul.Crew and Max Marshall, which is coming out soon… We took a break before our 100th but the rest of the year we’re going to go full speed.
Any parties planned to celebrate this milestone?
James: Yes! It’s planned for August 8, in Manchester. It’s going to be my 40th birthday so I’m gonna have a 40th birthday party, see what DJs want to come down and play. We’re also going to raise money for Macmillan, which is a charity closer to my heart. Very much looking forward to that. Other than that, we’re going to keep on going, and we’ll see you again in 12 years time to chat about the 200th release.
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