For years, Ben Fraser tried to make every record he loved at once. Acid techno. Hard dance. Psychedelic trance. He wanted all of it in one driving sound, released under his own name.
“When I first started producing, I had a wide range of influences, acid techno, hard dance, psychedelic trance, and so on. And I guess I had a vision in my head of the music I wanted to make, and it was a blend or fusion of all those styles.”
The fusion was the problem. It belonged to no scene.
“If I sent my music to an acid techno club, they’d say, ‘Well, this is psychedelic trance.’ If I sent my music to a hard dance club, they’d say, ‘Well, this is acid techno.’ If I sent my music to a psychedelic trance party, they’d say, ‘Well, this is hard dance,’ and so on.”
“I really felt like I was in a musical no man’s land.”
The answer was to divide the work. Ben Fraser kept the acid material. A new name, borrowed from the label he had just founded, took the psychedelic trance. He records under four names in all, Creeping Tide and Future Outbreak among them, but this is where Sabretooth begins.
“I started my Sabretooth project, and I got the name just from the record label. My label was Sabretooth Records, so I decided to call myself Sabretooth, and went about creating a first album of more focused psychedelic trance music.”
The new name first connected in one room: the Sabretooth album launch at Planet Zogg, in Sheffield. The party had been his base for years.
“Planet Zogg’s always been a kind of musical home for me, playing DJ sets there from very early on in my career and a kind of safe space where I knew I could play across genre boundaries without worry or concern.”
That night he played mostly his own psytrance, and the room answered.
“I played a set of mainly Sabretooth psychedelic trance material for the album launch and the dance floor really kicked off and it really felt like coming home musically.”
Planet Zogg was co-founded by two DJs, Dill and Greg. Fraser met Greg the old-fashioned way, flipping through crates.
“I remember specifically bumping into Greg in a local record shop where we were obviously both doing a bit of crate digging and just having a bit of a chat with him, and that ended up with me giving Greg a CD of some of my early productions.”
Greg started dropping those tracks into his sets, sometimes before they were finished.
“Greg went on to play quite a bit of my music at Planet Zogg, which was always an amazing thing for me to be able to be on that dance floor and hear my new, in some cases, work in progress tracks through a big rig and see the reaction on the dance floor.”
One early hard-trance track, Monster Mash, reached the rig before he did. Hearing it played by someone else was a jolt, part thrill and part second-guessing.
“The mix of sensations, the excitement, but also that artistic introspection where you inevitably as a producer start worrying about the finest details and worrying if you’ve got the mix right.”
The harder, more acidic side of his sound found its own audience abroad. His first booking outside the UK came in Krakow.
“My first international booking was back, I think it might have been 2007. I was booked by the guys from the Absurd Squad parties and a guy called Bartek, now a good friend. And they invited me to play a small party in Krakow with me as headliner.”
One weekend became two nights, and two nights became a standing invitation he has kept for years. One visit to Wrocław ran long by an accident of the calendar.
“I was given a two-hour set, but it was the evening that the clocks went back. So the clocks went back during my set, which meant my two-hour set quickly became a three-hour set. And even after the three hours, the crowd wanted more and I ended up playing for longer.”
Fraser writes fast and always has. What has changed is what he does next. Instead of releasing on the spot, he lets a track sit.
“I’ve got into more of a flow now where I’ll almost stock up the music, make sure that although it is pretty much finished, I’ve got the time to play it out, test it, reflect on it.”
HIS HOME LABEL
The first release from the current batch is Rare Earth, a two-track EP on his home label BMSS, out 2 October. He road-tested both tracks at Wurzel Festival near Berlin, on a bill built the way he likes.
“What I really loved about the festival is that there were no big names on the psytrance stage, and everyone, all DJs and producers, got a two and a half hour set, and I love that. I love when promoters give all DJs real space to tell a story and to really take the dance floor on a journey.”
A long set lets him move through the whole span of the Sabretooth sound, from slow burn to full tilt.
“Starting around 140 BPM with progressive influenced, real heads down, deep driving tracks and slowly but surely build it up to faster, more intense tracks, more breakdowns, more big melodies.”
He is after one specific thing every time he plays.
“For me, what I’m looking for in every set is that becoming one with the dance floor, where the energy of your music connects with the audience. The audience gives you that energy back, and you end up with a kind of spiral or a chain reaction of energy.”
“When that happens, it is one of the best feelings in the world, and one that you inevitably end up chasing for the rest of your life.”
That reaction is exactly what he is bringing to Derby on 9 October.
“Hopefully and undoubtedly that exact chain reaction that I just described.”
He is using the night to road-test new material, written around one idea.
“I’ve been writing a whole range of pretty fast, quite techy and acidic psytrance, but ultimately with a very, very, very distinct and powerful Goa touch.”
“I’ve been really trying to write epic Eastern melodies that you get in Goa trance, but combining those with cutting edge, full on production, loads of acid lines.”
Sabretooth plays live at Holy Pendragon, Friday 9 October 2026, at The Hairy Dog in Derby. Tickets are on TicketTailor at tickettailor.com/events/psycentral/2228802.
In his own words: “hopefully it’s gonna be a cracking set and an amazing party.”
