Justin Hawkes Delivers Now or Never, an Immersive Drum & Bass Journey
Experiential Drum & Bass, built end to end by one artist, mixed into a single continuous piece, and kept entirely human-created from the audio to the artwork.
Justin Hawkes has always approached drum & bass as more than a sequence of individual tracks. On Now or Never, his second album, that philosophy becomes the structure of the record itself: twelve chapters connected into one continuous listening experience.
Described by Hawkes as “Experiential Drum & Bass,” the album moves through tech-driven drum & bass, future jungle, halftime, jump-up and expansive, progressive territory without breaking the narrative. Rather than treating the album as a collection of standalone singles, Hawkes builds it as a complete journey, with each section leading naturally into the next.
The result is an album designed to be experienced from beginning to end. It carries the physical energy expected from a club record while leaving enough detail and atmosphere to reward headphone listening. The continuous mix also gives Now or Never a sense of momentum that is unusual in contemporary dance music, where albums are often constructed around individually consumable tracks.
The project is equally personal in its creation. Hawkes wrote and produced every track, while also contributing vocals and lyrics across the record. He developed the album's visual world alongside photographer Chase Yaws and director Sadler Milbrath, creating a consistent aesthetic that extends beyond the music itself.
That commitment to a human-made creative process is particularly significant in 2026, as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly present throughout music and visual production. For Now or Never, Hawkes chose to keep the project human-created across both its sound and imagery, treating the album's artistic identity as something to be deliberately shaped rather than automatically generated.
“‘Now or Never’ captures a complete cycle of time and transcendence; it narrates a continuous path of transformation within my life, and asks deep questions about the nature of core passions and their place in the soul. Consciousness is an infinitely complex, yet infinitely interconnected experience, and I wanted this album to love and hold that wonderful mystery. I'm hopeful that anyone who listens can find a part of themselves within this album, and help them realize and love the beautiful dichotomy of light and darkness which exists within us all.” — Justin Hawkes
The album follows Hawkes' 2022 debut, Existential, but approaches its themes from a different direction. Where that record explored the tension between tragedy and harmony, Now or Never is concerned with passion and the way it persists through time — influencing memory, identity, instinct and personal transformation.
Its twelve chapters represent different facets of that experience, including resistance, attraction, discovery, dance, healing, love and self-realisation. Together they form a broader meditation on what happens when an individual chooses to follow the things that matter most to them.
That ambition also places Now or Never within a longer tradition of album-focused thinking in drum & bass. The genre is naturally associated with the DJ set — momentum, progression and the relationship between one track and the next — and Hawkes applies that same sense of movement to a studio album.
For Hawkes, the result is both a personal statement and a contribution to the continuing development of North American drum & bass. As one of the American artists pushing the genre forward, he has increasingly helped establish a distinctive creative voice for the scene on this side of the Atlantic.
Now or Never brings those ideas together in one sustained piece: twelve chapters, one continuous journey, and an album built around the belief that drum & bass can still function as a complete artistic statement.
