Juli Bro

Julian Sierra was born in Lugo in 1991, in a city where the pulse of electronic music arrived in dribs and drabs, but with a particular intensity. Raised in the northwest of Galicia, far from the epicenters of the Spanish scene, Sierra developed an almost obsessive relationship with sound since adolescence: he bought imported records in the few specialized stores that survived in the city, recorded mixes on cassette and spent hours absorbing the pirated radio transmissions that came from cities such as Madrid or Berlin.

His initiation behind the decks was self-taught and modest. At seventeen he was already mixing at neighborhood parties with a couple of borrowed Technics; at nineteen he had crossed the border to Vigo and A Coruña, playing in small venues where the audience was few but the demand was high. It was in those years that Sierra forged something that would later become his hallmark: the ability to read a dancefloor with surgical patience, build tension almost invisibly and release energy at the right moment.

From the northwest to the national scene

The definitive leap came in 2014, when Sierra moved to Barcelona. The city, with its ecosystem of clubs, producers and collectives, offered him the framework that Lugo could not give him. In less than two years he was already a resident in a room in the Poblenou neighborhood, a medium-sized club but with one of the most respected dance floors in the city. His opening set on one of the nights of the Hinterland cycle earned him the attention of several European promoters who were looking for fresh names for their seasonal lineups.

His sound by then already showed the coordinates that define him: tech house with a deep and organic pulse, influenced by the British school —Jamie Jones, Lee Foss, the early days of Hot Creations— but with a darker, more European character, which distanced him from the more commercial side of the genre. As his career progressed, techno gained prominence in his sets: first as a closing tool, then as his own language. Sierra never abandoned the groove, but he added layers of industrial hardness and elements of minimal that gave his proposal an uncommon coherence.

Production: the laboratory as a second language

Sierra is not just a DJ. His facet as a producer, although developed with more discretion than his career in the venue, has been decisive for his international projection. His first releases came in 2016 under the pseudonym SIR on a small Barcelona netlabel, with two ambient techno EPs that circulated discreetly but opened up conversations with A&Rs from more established labels.

In 2018 he signed with Rawform Records, a Berlin industrial techno label, where he released the EP Escoria, a four-track work that combined percussions of Gabber descent with ambient textures of clear Galician influence – field recordings of the Atlantic coast, wind among eucalyptus, rain on stone. Specialized critics received it with enthusiasm. Resident Advisor described it as "one of the most honest debuts of the year in the European techno scene."

Since then, Sierra has published periodically – never frenetic – on labels such as Rotorvane (UK), Subzero Ibérica and his own imprint, Pedra, launched in 2021. The latter was born with a clear vocation: to release productions that are too long, too atmospheric or too rare for the conventional market. Pedra has become a small reference within the most experimental circles of Spanish techno, with four releases a year and a deliberately analogue visual aesthetic.

Live as a ritual

Those who have seen Julian Sierra in the booth agree on the same description: total concentration, zero show, absolute music. He is not a showman. He does not gesticulate. He does not look at the audience frequently. But his way of conducting a set – especially in the b2b sets he has starred in with artists such as Kora Veld (Amsterdam) or Marta Solà (Barcelona) – generates a strange communion, that feeling that time bends and the dancefloor breathes to the same rhythm.

His most memorable performances include a four-hour closing at Berlin's Tresor in 2019, considered by attendees to be one of the best sets of that season in the hall; a surprise appearance at Barcelona's Sónar in 2022 as part of a Pedra Records showcase; and a session at Razzmatazz during the season-opening festival that circulated profusely on unofficial recordings to reach tens of thousands of streams on SoundCloud.

Roots and future

Sierra has not denied his origins. He frequently returns to Galicia, where he collaborates with the Brétema collective – one of the few projects that keeps the underground electronic scene alive in cities in the Galician interior – and has starred in several editions of the Costa de Morte Electronik festival, an open-air event that combines music and landscape in one of the steepest stretches of the Spanish Atlantic coast.

In 2024 he announced his first LP, provisionally titled Granito, scheduled for early 2025 on Pedra Records. According to Sierra in one of his few interviews, the album will try to explore "geological time as a musical concept: structures that change so slowly that you hardly notice it, but when you look back you no longer recognize where you started from."

Julián Sierra is, in short, an artist with a slow scene and a career built track by track, gig by gig, with the discipline of someone who knows that electronic music that lasts is not made with noise but with criteria. Julian Sierra was born in Lugo in 1991, in a city where the pulse of electronic music arrived in dribs and drabs, but with a particular intensity. Raised in the northwest of Galicia, far from the epicenters of the Spanish scene, Sierra developed an almost obsessive relationship with sound since adolescence: he bought imported records in the few specialized stores that survived in the city, recorded mixes on cassette and spent hours absorbing the pirated radio transmissions that came from cities such as Madrid or Berlin.

His initiation behind the decks was self-taught and modest. At seventeen he was already mixing at neighborhood parties with a couple of borrowed Technics; at nineteen he had crossed the border to Vigo and A Coruña, playing in small venues where the audience was few but the demand was high. It was in those years that Sierra forged something that would later become his hallmark: the ability to read a dancefloor with surgical patience, build tension almost invisibly and release energy at the right moment.

From the northwest to the national scene

The definitive leap came in 2014, when Sierra moved to Barcelona. The city, with its ecosystem of clubs, producers and collectives, offered him the framework that Lugo could not give him. In less than two years he was already a resident in a room in the Poblenou neighborhood, a medium-sized club but with one of the most respected dance floors in the city. His opening set on one of the nights of the Hinterland cycle earned him the attention of several European promoters who were looking for fresh names for their seasonal lineups.

His sound by then already showed the coordinates that define him: tech house with a deep and organic pulse, influenced by the British school —Jamie Jones, Lee Foss, the early days of Hot Creations— but with a darker, more European character, which distanced him from the more commercial side of the genre. As his career progressed, techno gained prominence in his sets: first as a closing tool, then as his own language. Sierra never abandoned the groove, but he added layers of industrial hardness and elements of minimal that gave his proposal an uncommon coherence.

Production: the laboratory as a second language

Sierra is not just a DJ. His facet as a producer, although developed with more discretion than his career in the venue, has been decisive for his international projection. His first releases came in 2016 under the pseudonym SIR on a small Barcelona netlabel, with two ambient techno EPs that circulated discreetly but opened up conversations with A&Rs from more established labels.