Tonight at Barutana, Friday at 23:00, Roni Size and LTJ Bukem bring drum and bass back to Belgrade. That sentence deserves weight. These are not contemporary names in the genre — these are the architects. When they stopped touring as regularly, something left the conversation in Belgrade nightlife. When Bukem’s GOOD LOOKING label defined what liquid funk could sound like to the world, it changed what the city understood as possible. Their return to Barutana in 2026 is not a nostalgia booking. It is a statement that the sound still moves serious music audiences, and that Belgrade’s outdoor summer season can still host something that matters.

The Men Behind the Sound

Roni Size emerged from Bristol in the mid-1990s at a particular moment: when drum and bass was developing velocity and fracturing into styles. Size’s contribution was singular. His work with Reprazent — the collective around him — brought jazz fusion, funk, and soul elements into a genre that had been running on pure breakbeats and science fiction. His production on records like ‘New Forms’ (1997) established a template: liquid drum and bass that had space to breathe, emotion to express, and serious musicianship underneath. The GRAMMY award for that album was not an outlier. It was recognition that something genuine was happening.

LTJ Bukem, operating from London, took a parallel path. The founder of the GOOD LOOKING label (established 1990), Bukem built a roster and a sound that became synonymous with the jazz-influenced, soulful end of drum and bass. His radio show, ‘Logical Progression,’ became required listening for anyone serious about the genre. Bukem’s approach was always about taste, about curating not just tracks but entire listening experiences. The label became a sound — soulful, sophisticated, never chasing volume for its own sake.

What linked them across the 1990s and 2000s was a shared conviction: that drum and bass could say something beyond its technical virtuosity. That it could carry the weight of soul music, jazz history, and genuine artistic ambition. Neither Size nor Bukem has ever chased trends. Both have remained exactly who they are, which is why neither has ever become irrelevant.

Why This Matters in Belgrade in June 2026

The sound that left, the sound returning

Liquid drum and bass had a particular moment in Belgrade’s club culture. The sound arrived in the early 2000s as the city was re-opening its nightlife after the 1990s. It found serious audiences in clubs like Barutana — an outdoor fortress venue that became the natural home for the sound. The physics of it made sense: fast breakbeats running underneath soulful strings and jazzy harmonies. A crowd drenched in starlight and production light, moving to something simultaneously complex and deeply human.

By the 2010s, the gravitational centre of Belgrade’s electronic music shifted. House and techno — particularly the more introspective European variants — began to dominate programming. Drum and bass didn’t disappear, but it became periodic rather than essential. A night here, a festival there. Nothing that defined the summer the way Barutana once did.

Tonight’s booking suggests something: that the appetite for this sound has not vanished. It has only been dormant. Watching a thousand people hear Roni Size and LTJ Bukem tonight — the two-step patterns they helped define, the sonic palette they perfected — will confirm something about Belgrade’s musical memory. That depth persists.

The Barutana factor

Barutana reopened its summer season on June 5 with FJAAK. The venue is asserting itself again as the city’s premier open-air electronic music destination. The production capacity — the light rigs, the space, the fortress walls as a natural backdrop — is unmatched in Belgrade. When you programme Roni Size and LTJ Bukem, you need a room that can carry the weight of the moment. Barutana is that room.

The addition of Dynamite MC — one of the finest drum and bass MCs working today — and local support from Rahmanee, Side 1, and Bitz & Edge MC shows a programming depth that extends beyond the headline names. This is not just a nostalgic moment. It is a conversation between generations, between the pioneers and the Belgrade selectors and producers who listened to them and stayed with the sound.

What to Expect

Roni Size and LTJ Bukem do not play festival sets. They play DJ sets that are constructed like pieces of music — with arc, with narrative, with moments of tension and release. Expect the energy to move between meditative and euphoric. Expect breakbeats that your body understands before your mind catches up. Expect to see why liquid drum and bass, even now, stands as one of the most sophisticated evolutions of electronic music.

Tickets sold out two weeks ago. If you are reading this and have a ticket, you are in. If not — Barutana’s website shows limited capacity for door sales, though that is optimistic. The event will likely fill entirely. For the people who secure entry: this is one of the nights that reminds you why you moved to Belgrade. For those who miss it, the memory of this moment — when the sound returned, when Barutana filled again — will be something to know about.

Roni Size & LTJ Bukem + Dynamite MC at Barutana — June 10, 2026. 23:00–05:00. Tickets (mostly sold out) via Cooltix and Gigstix.