Ben Nicky (real name: Benjamin Nikki Reginald Wederell) is a British DJ and producer born on June 7, 1986. His career began within the uplifting trance scene of the late 2000s, but over time his sound expanded into hard trance, psytrance, techno, hard dance, hardstyle, hardcore and neo-rave. Ben Nicky is known for fast-paced multi-genre sets, the Headf**k concept, the Misfit community and event series, and his large-scale Field of Dreams show. He has performed at Tomorrowland, Ultra Music Festival, EDC Las Vegas and Creamfields, recorded an Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1, and in 2026 entered the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs for the first time at No. 66.
Early years
Ben Nicky’s professional career began long before the major festival stages. Early on, he worked as a promoter and label manager, sold tickets to events himself, and studied DJing and studio production at the same time.
Before committing fully to music, Wederell also worked in electronics retail. Producers James Kitcher and Steve Allen played an important role in his early development, while a residency at Bristol club Syndicate gave him regular hands-on experience behind the decks.
Unlike artists who first establish themselves as producers and only later begin performing heavily, Ben Nicky developed two paths from the outset: his own trance releases and his DJ career.
Special Moment and early trance
His first notable international release arrived in 2009. On June 19, VANDIT Records, the label founded by Paul van Dyk, released the Special Moment EP.
The release included the original track and several reinterpretations, including versions by Steve Allen, Adam Ellis and Gorm Sørensen. Special Moment also appeared on the compilation VONYC Sessions 2009, bringing the young producer additional attention within the international trance scene.
Ben Nicky’s early catalogue was much closer to classic uplifting trance than his current music. Tracks from this period included Catapult, Change of Direction, Morning Breeze, Tears, Gemini, Hectic and others.
His music was supported by Armin van Buuren, Paul van Dyk, Tiësto, Ferry Corsten, John O’Callaghan and other major figures from the trance scene.
One of his most notable early vocal releases was The One with Cassandra Fox, released in 2011.
Headf**k
A major turning point in the development of his DJ style was the Headf**k concept.
It emerged while he was working on an unusual mashup built around Porter Robinson’s Language. Ben Nicky combined several tracks within a single construction and, feeling that the result was more than a conventional mashup, called it Headf**k.
He sent the track to Armin van Buuren, who played it on his radio show. Following that support, the name began spreading among listeners and gradually evolved from the title of a single edit into a broader musical concept.
Headf**k significantly changed the structure of Nicky’s performances. Instead of a traditional trance set built around long, smooth transitions, he began using rapid cuts, mashups, edits and abrupt genre changes.
A familiar trance melody could suddenly move into techno, psytrance, hardstyle or hardcore, while an individual track might appear in the set only as one fragment within a larger construction.
Expanding the sound
By the mid-2010s, the boundaries of the project had become much wider. In 2016, he released the vocal track Anywhere featuring Chloe, which still retained a strong trance foundation.
At the same time, his DJ sets became faster and harder. Psytrance, bounce, hardstyle, hardcore and techno were added to uplifting and tech trance.
Ben Nicky has never viewed this evolution as a simple progression from one genre to another. For him, the energy of the moment is more important, along with the freedom to change direction within a single performance.
This created the range that became characteristic of Nicky: a set may begin in relatively familiar club or trance territory before gradually accelerating into hard dance and hardcore.
The Donk and hard dance
One of the defining tracks of his harder period was The Donk, created with Callum Higby.
The track marked a stronger hard dance and bounce influence and helped finally break the earlier perception of Ben Nicky as exclusively a trance DJ.
This side of his music developed further through collaborations with artists from hardstyle, hardcore and the newer high-speed rave scene.
BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix
In May 2019, Ben Nicky recorded a two-hour Essential Mix for BBC Radio 1.
The programme captured his musical approach at the end of the 2010s particularly well. A single mix brought together Enrico Sangiuliano, Above & Beyond, Tiësto, Vini Vici, Billy Gillies, Showtek, Darren Styles and his own edits and mashups.
Techno, trance, psytrance, hardstyle and hardcore did not function as separate sections, but as parts of one continuous dynamic arc.
That same year, Ben Nicky was nominated for a DJ Award in the Trance category.
Misfit
During the 2020 pandemic, Nicky created the Facebook community Misfit.
The name reflected his own position within the electronic scene. By that point, Ben had long since stopped fitting neatly into traditional trance, hardstyle, hardcore or techno.
Misfit was originally conceived as a space where listeners could communicate during a period without live events. The group quickly grew into a lasting community with its own visual identity and symbols.
Later, Misfit became a fully developed part of the Ben Nicky brand: club nights and festival events began operating under the name, while the project’s visual identity appeared on clothing, flags and stage designs.
For Nicky himself, the Misfit idea extends beyond music. It brings together an audience that values freedom from strict genre and subcultural boundaries.
Vocal releases of the early 2020s
Alongside the development of heavier material for his live sets, Ben Nicky continued releasing melodic and vocal tracks.
In 2020, he released Giving You Up featuring Sarah de Warren and Drown You Out with Rachelle Jenkens.
In 2021, these were followed by Dance with Apollo and Where Were You with Hayla.
This period illustrates the structure of his discography particularly well: his own releases do not follow a single studio formula. One track may be built around emotional trance melodies, another around hard dance bass, and a third around a more accessible vocal dance structure.
We Come 1
In July 2022, Ben Nicky teamed up with Australian DJ Timmy Trumpet for We Come 1.
The track is based on a recognisable idea from the Faithless classic, reworked into a much faster and harder festival sound. Callum Higby also contributed to the production, while Shean Williams recorded the vocal.
We Come 1 became one of the best-known tracks from Nicky’s newer phase and clearly demonstrated his method: a familiar musical idea remains recognisable, but is completely rebuilt for a modern high-energy club system.
Additional versions followed, including a rework with Distorted Dreams and a remix by Darren Styles.
Adagio For Strings
In February 2023, Ben Nicky and Distorted Dreams released their own version of Adagio For Strings through Armada Music.
Samuel Barber’s famous melody has been reinterpreted in electronic music for decades, particularly within trance culture. Nicky and Distorted Dreams retained the recognisable theme while placing it in a contemporary hard dance and trance context.
The release continued Ben Nicky’s characteristic approach of reworking widely recognised melodies at much higher speeds and with dense festival-oriented rhythms.
Dirty Rave
In June 2024, Ben Nicky teamed up with Australian producer Restricted for Dirty Rave.
The track sits in the modern space between hard dance, hardcore and neo-rave and runs at around 150 BPM.
Dirty Rave makes the distance between the modern Ben Nicky and the uplifting trance of the Special Moment period especially clear. The kick drum is significantly harder, while the arrangement is shorter and more aggressive.
At the same time, the underlying trance mentality has not disappeared completely: the track is still built around a rise in tension, escalation and a large climax.
Collaborations
Collaborative work occupies an important place in Ben Nicky’s discography.
He has worked with artists from different parts of the electronic scene, including Timmy Trumpet, Restricted, Distorted Dreams, Brennan Heart, Coone, Technikore, LNY TNZ, Apollo, Mashd N Kutcher, Mark Sixma and others.
Collaborations allow him to move freely between trance, hardstyle, hardcore and festival dance without needing a separate alias for each direction.
For example, Keep Me High with Coone and Wasback belongs to the harder festival side of his music, while other tracks retain the melodic and vocal qualities associated with classic trance.
Oxygen with ARTY
One of the most notable collaborations from his later period was Oxygen with ARTY, released through Armada Music.
The track is a contemporary interpolation of Chicane and Bryan Adams’ Don't Give Up, one of the better-known British dance tracks of the early 2000s.
The new version retains the recognisable melodic foundation while adapting the tempo, bass and overall dynamics to the modern high-energy club scene.
The material later received harder reinterpretations, including remixes by Darren Styles and Olly James.
Castles In The Sky
At the end of 2025, Ben Nicky joined Dr Phunk, GESES and Fahjah for a new version of Castles In The Sky.
As with Oxygen, the track draws on the heritage of classic trance while placing a familiar melody within a significantly faster contemporary sound.
Releases like these occupy a distinctive place in Nicky’s catalogue. Rather than simply returning to the music that shaped him as a DJ, he adapts it for the hard dance and neo-rave audiences of the 2020s.
Field of Dreams
In 2025, Ben Nicky introduced his own live concept, Field of Dreams.
The project is built around a full headline show in which the music is combined with a large-scale laser and visual production. The first major version of the concept was presented at Belfast Custom House Square.
On July 25, 2026, Field of Dreams expanded into an even larger production at Falls Park in Belfast as part of Féile an Phobail. Organisers promoted the event as Nicky’s biggest laser show to date.
For the artist, Field of Dreams became the next step beyond conventional festival appearances and Misfit events: the show is built not only around the DJ set itself, but around an entire visual world of his own.
Northern Ireland
Ben Nicky has developed an especially strong following in Northern Ireland.
Over years of touring, he progressed from club appearances to standalone shows at some of the region’s largest venues and events, including SSE Arena Belfast, Belsonic, Custom House Square and Falls Park.
Belfast in particular became one of the most important cities for the development of Nicky’s large-scale solo productions and the launch of Field of Dreams.
DJ Mag Top 100 DJs
In 2026, Ben Nicky entered the main DJ Mag Top 100 DJs ranking for the first time, debuting at No. 66.
DJ Mag described his style as trance / hard dance / techno / whatever I feel like playing, highlighting his ability to play nearly all of those styles within a single set.
Nicky himself pointed to Field of Dreams in Northern Ireland and the continued development of Misfit as among the defining moments of the year.
His Top 100 DJs debut came after a long professional career. By that point, seventeen years had passed since Special Moment, and Nicky’s own musical language had already undergone several major transformations.
Musical style
Ben Nicky’s career began with uplifting trance. His early tracks were built around long melodic rises, emotional breakdown sections and the kind of dramatic structure associated with late-2000s trance.
Later, tech trance and psytrance became more prominent, followed by bounce, hardstyle and hardcore, and in the 2020s by hard techno and neo-rave.
As a result, modern Ben Nicky cannot be accurately defined by a single genre.
The unifying element is high energy and the way his sets are structured. Nicky prefers quick transitions, sharp contrasts and recognisable musical fragments. A classic trance melody can give way to hard techno, then move into hardcore or a contemporary edit of a familiar song.
The tempo can also change dramatically, ranging roughly from a conventional club house/trance pace to speeds approaching 200 BPM.
DJing approach
Despite having a substantial discography, Ben Nicky built his international career first and foremost as a DJ.
Headf**k taught him to treat finished tracks not as fixed works, but as material that can be dismantled and reconstructed inside a set.
He makes extensive use of mashups, edits, tempo changes and abrupt transitions. As a result, even a very familiar track may appear only briefly before unexpectedly giving way to material from a completely different genre.
This method is particularly effective on major festival stages: the audience recognises a melody or vocal, but cannot always predict the next musical turn.
That is why Ben Nicky’s performances are closer to a high-speed montage of different eras and styles of electronic music than to a traditional one-hour set devoted to a single genre.
Discography
Ben Nicky does not have a large traditional album discography. The core of his catalogue consists of singles, EPs, remixes, collaborations and DJ mixes.
Selected early releases
- Special Moment — 2009
- Catapult
- Change of Direction
- Morning Breeze
- Tears
- Gemini
- The One — with Cassandra Fox, 2011
- Hectic
- Anywhere — featuring Chloe, 2016
Selected later releases and collaborations
- The Donk — with Callum Higby
- Like Fire — with Mashd N Kutcher
- Giving You Up — featuring Sarah de Warren
- Drown You Out — featuring Rachelle Jenkens
- Dance — with Apollo
- Where Were You — with Hayla
- Because The Night — featuring Emily Vaughn
- We Come 1 — with Timmy Trumpet
- Adagio For Strings — with Distorted Dreams
- Dirty Rave — with Restricted
- Survive It — with Creeds
- Numb — with Distorted Dreams
- Keep Me High — with Coone and Wasback featuring Alyssa
- Oxygen — with ARTY
- Castles In The Sky — with Dr Phunk, GESES and Fahjah
- Be With You — with Fahjah, Giin and Aurede
Selected remixes
- Ayla — Ayla (Ben Nicky & Luke Bond Remix)
- Mark Sixma & Emma Hewitt — Restless Hearts (Ben Nicky Remix)
- Becky Hill — Disconnect (Ben Nicky Remix)
- Years & Years — Dizzy (Ben Nicky Remix)
- Alex M.O.R.P.H. & Sylvia Tosun — An Angel’s Love (Ben Nicky & WUKONG Remix)
- Above & Beyond feat. Zoë Johnston — Quicksand (Don’t Go) (Ben Nicky Remix)
Ben Nicky began his career within the classic uplifting trance scene of the VANDIT era, but gradually turned stylistic freedom into the foundation of his own project. Headf**k shaped his rapid-fire, cut-driven DJ style, Misfit built a lasting community around him, and Field of Dreams expanded that approach into a large-scale standalone show. Yet his connection to trance has never disappeared: even his hardest hard dance and neo-rave releases retain the melodic rises and climactic structures associated with the genre. It is this ability to combine that emotional quality with sharply changing speed and intensity that has made Ben Nicky one of the most recognisable multi-genre DJs on the British electronic scene.
