A lot of water has passed under the bridge since two punters met in the front row of an Australian festival crowd in 2005 and decided to start making music together, but then again, Ryan Dickinson and Ollie Bowler are far from your average punters. With a shared background in classical instrumentation and electronic music production and influences crossing the entire music spectrum – electronic and otherwise – their union as Bitrok has had an impact on dancefloors from their home town of Brisbane to Britain and beyond.

The duo cut their teeth locally with residencies at respected clubs Family, Empire Hotel and the popular Breaks & Enter club nights, all the while working away in the studio behind the scenes. And they hit paydirt almost instantly, with Danny MacMillan’s P.A.C.K. Music imprint snapping their early track ‘Groovin’ up for release with a remix from the legendary Drumattic Twins in 2006. Interest steamrolled from here, with 2007 seeing ‘The Real’ released through Dead Famous and respected Australian label Title Fight signing ‘Crazy’ and ‘Digital Ryhthm’, the latter of which was licensed by General MIDI for his Y4K compilation on Distinctive Records.

Recognition rolled in from there, with DJMag labeling them as a ‘Gotta Be Big’ act with a two-page article in 2007. ‘Digital Rhythm’ scored the maximum five star rating in Mixmag upon its release, while their remix of cult Australian act Gotye’s song ‘Thanks For Your Time’ featured on the ARIA award winning Mixed Blood album. And DJ support flowed in from across the world, with The Crystal Method, Meat Katie, Elite Force and Rennie Pilgrem all card-carrying members of the Bitrok fan club.

Their dex’n’fx DJ sets bring all of their production skills into the live arena, utilising tempo changes, mash-ups, key matching and heavily re-edited versions of classic tracks (often done on the fly) into a guaranteed dancefloor smashing brew. 2008 has been a busy year for the boys on the gigging front, taking their sound all the way to London to the Breakspoll Afterparty, across Australia from Sydney to Perth to Tasmania, and rocking massive festivals like Good Vibration, Future Music Festival, BBQ Breaks and Parklife – an event at which they delivered one of the standout sets of the entire event, international or otherwise.

Now Ryan and Ollie are busily undergoing the next step in their musical evolution as they bunker down in their Brisbane studio to work on their debut artist album. The underground sensibilities which have always flavoured their production are still present, but the album will be the sum total of all of their influences – from minimal to big beat to future funk and all things in between – with a heavy focus on hook-laden songs as well as heads-down club bangers. It’s a project which is already impossible to pigeonhole, an evolution which has seen the genre and tempo rule book well and truly thrown out the window.

Not that Bitrok have ever played by the rules anyway – if they’d obeyed that eternal childhood rule of never talking to strangers, chances are that random guy next to them on the festival dancefloor all those years ago would have stayed a stranger forever. And the dancefloors of the world would be a poorer place for it.

Website: www.bitrok.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bitrok

Twitter: www.twitter.com/bitrok

Myspace: www.myspace.com/bitrok