MNZ Interview: Ones To Watch: Dawson

Live Nation’s Ones To Watch brings Dawson, Ethan Jupe’s jazz-house project of organic percussion, soft-jazz harmony and club music built with a player’s ear, to The Tuning Fork in Tāmaki Makaurau on Wednesday 23 September alongside Heidi Simpson and Fables. It will be Dawson’s first full live performance. “My first live show is actually going to be Ones To Watch,” he says. “It’s equal parts scary and just so exciting.”

When Jupe answers from Melbourne, he’s living between departure gates and project files: DJ sets in Melbourne and Sydney, then home to Auckland for his own event, band rehearsals and video edits. “So many plates spinning,” he says, with the understatement of a producer whose calendar has acquired its own calendar.

Dawson – the name is a dedication hidden in plain sight: “son of David”, honouring Jupe’s father, who put instruments in his hands before production software offered unlimited tracks. “I would not be doing music if it weren’t for him,” Jupe says. “He originally taught me ukulele and guitar from the age of three or four. I got my first guitar and graduated to the big size. I used to get told off because I’d play my ukulele vertically.” He laughs at the image, then lands on the inheritance beneath it: “He’s the one where I’ve been gifted the musical genes – the ear for it, if you like.”

Father and son both learned by ear; formal study at MAINZ came later. “Up until that point, it was purely guided by my ear – and I still very much am,” he says. “Dad was integral to my foundations as a musician.” David’s 1980’s Ibanez bass also survives in Jupe’s studio vocabulary. “It sounds amazing,” he says. His father ran chorus and flanger across it; his son now makes electronic music where texture is a second rhythm section. The lineage is plugged in.

David’s U2-edition iPod Classic supplied another inheritance: St Germain’s Tourist, Groove Armada, Moby and Crazy P. “That sort of music works,” Jupe says. “You don’t have to be on a dance floor; it can work in any context.” That permeability became central to Dawson.

At MAINZ, Disclosure’s lockdown Twitch streams accelerated Jupe’s education. “My level of production skills went from super basic – Logic, recording bands in high school – to fully fledged electronic productions,” he says. He went on to produce or co-write close to 50 songs. Versatility became a trap. “If I can make everything, then you’re almost nothing to no one,” he says. Dawson imposed useful limits: “If I actually give myself some limitations, I know what it is, I know what it isn’t, and then I can just be productive. I can create an identity from scratch, do all the branding and make something with a cohesive sound.”

The map was the track Gloria, first saved as “Amsterdam couch beat” during a spare afternoon in Europe with berlioz’s new (at the time) album Open This Wall on high rotation. Gloria sat for a year before Jupe recognised its proposition: jazz and electronic rhythm need not take turns.

“It was a marriage of myself as a trained musician and my love of DJing and electronic music,” he says. “It all interweaved and culminated in a new project.”

Gloria carries Lewis McCallum’s saxophone and a 2021 Instagram fragment from Zara Gilbert – part of Dawson’s porous mix of saved voices and live players. References range from John Mayer, Tom Misch, SG Lewis and Disclosure to St Germain, berlioz, Dublon, Tour-Maubourg and Chaos In The CBD. “I still play all that stuff,” Jupe says. “I did a DJ set last night here in Melbourne and I was playing some St Germain. It’s timeless. It works for everyone.”

For the track Secrets, Jupe sent Nathan Haines demos and was invited into Haines’ Ellerslie studio – an unusually private working environment. “I was honestly just so honoured that he said yes,” Jupe says. “He told me he’d done quite a few collaborations, but this was the first time he had allowed someone else into the room with him while they were working. Just getting to watch him work and be in the room was incredible.” Haines asked for no filming or photos; Jupe simply watched.

“He ran through a Neumann TLM 49, I believe,” Jupe says. “It just sounds like butter (so smooth). He ran that through his STA compressor and it was so good! When you hear him play, it’s like: Oh, that’s the sound.” Technique arrived complete at source. “I didn’t really have to do much in the box afterwards. The source is there already.”

Secrets pairs Jupe’s elastic percussion with Haines’ unmistakable tone: not electronic music wearing saxophone as jewellery, but one musician making room for another’s language.

Live players recur across Dawson’s current material: McCallum on Gloria, Francesca Parussini and a sampled Rosie Spering (a.k.a. Alba Rose) on Reset, Tentendo on All Over, and HIGH HØØPS on Blazing Sun. “It’s been awesome to accumulate an amazing list of Australian and New Zealand personnel,” Jupe says. “They’re all incredibly talented, and I’m honoured to be able to work with these people.” Big Fan producer camps widened that circle, while each player keeps the meticulous productions human.

Melbourne is where Dawson has been testing in public. The Australian run is DJ-led while the full-band show is assembled in Tāmaki Makaurau; club dates offer a laboratory for pacing and audience response. “I’ve been deep in live and touring mode,” he says. “It’s such a grind, but it’s been great to see some things come to fruition.” An earlier Melbourne trip produced a session with Tentendo; now the pattern is play, meet, make, return. The operation remains self-managed. “I’m organised. I like to make sure I’m replying to emails very quickly – planning out my trip, doing outreach to strangers,” Jupe says. “Things don’t happen on their own. I don’t have a team.” Dawson’s gentleness rests on a fiercely functional work ethic.

At Ones To Watch Dawson becomes “live, electronic, jazzy house music” performed by five multi-instrumentalists: Jupe on bass and guitar; Charlotte Avery on vocals, guitar and keys; James MacEwan on trumpet and percussion; Rory Johns on keys and synthesisers; and Lewis McCallum on saxophone, clarinet and flute. Jordan Arts (HIGH HØØPS) guests on Blazing Sun. “We all play multiple instruments, as is the nature of being a musician,” Jupe says. Roles can change song by song, letting the recordings breathe and mutate.

The set includes six originals, an unreleased track slated for a Universal compilation and a secretive covers medley with “A little bit of St Germain sprinkled in there.” Jupe hopes to film the performance rather than let this hard-built live version vanish after one night. “You’ve got to take every opportunity,” he says. “We’re working really hard on building this show.”

October brings Melbourne, Sydney and Amsterdam Dance Event, supported by Outward Sound. From Aotearoa, Jupe says career-changing encounters seldom happen nearby. “You’re not necessarily in the shop window to have freak encounters with people,” he says. “Being out there, meeting people face to face and connecting outside your immediate circle is something I’m really excited about.”

UK writing sessions follow, then an NZ On Air-backed month in an Auckland studio. “I am a musician first and foremost,” Jupe says. “It’ll be great to dive back into creative mode.” A possible Rhythm & Vines-related residency remains unconfirmed; the next body of work is firmer. “Within New Zealand, maybe I’m paving a bit of a new path,” Jupe says, while citing Chaos In The CBD as proof that local house music can travel globally without losing character. The oldest image remains the neatest: a child holding a ukulele vertically, an Ibanez bass in a cupboard, Tourist playing in the living room. Dawson may move through clubs, studios and flight paths, but its pulse is inherited.

Live Nation’s Ones To Watch, featuring Heidi Simpson, Dawson and Fables, arrives at Auckland’s Tuning Fork on Wednesday 23 September 2026.