Auckland-based producer Montell2099 makes his NIGHTMODE debut with ‘BACKAGAIN : ME&YOU,’ a conceptual double-sided single that kicks off a larger rollout built around two interconnected bodies of work. Arriving September 25th, the release offers an early glimpse into the producer’s genre-fluid approach, with each A/B installment revealing one track from each side of the project’s expanding framework.
Leading the release, “BACKAGAIN” pushes Montell2099 further into his bass-centric club sound. Menacing vocal refrains loop with an almost hypnotic persistence, gradually shifting in pitch as the track mutates through a series of increasingly charged movements. Reverberating trap bombast gives way to frenetic percussion and fluttering synth textures before the arrangement takes a sharp turn into a ground-shaking four-on-the-floor house flip. Rather than settling into a single lane, Montell2099 uses the track’s evolving structure to blur the lines between trap pressure and dancefloor momentum, keeping the production in constant motion from its opening pulse through its final transition.
On the B-side, “ME&YOU” settles into a more fluid four-on-the-floor groove, pairing echoing vocals with a heavy bassline and chest-shaking wobbles lurking beneath the surface. Avoiding the route of building toward a singular peak, Montell2099 lets the track breathe through a series of soaring rises and valleys, balancing its darker low-end weight against the luminous quality of the vocal refrain. The result is a hypnotic club cut that’s less concerned with the drop than with the journey between each crest and descent.
The release arrives on the heels of Montell2099’s debut album ‘DUALITY,’ which established the Auckland producer as one of New Zealand’s standout electronic artists. A restless beatmaker with an instinct for experimentation, his catalog moves fluidly through trap, hip-hop, hardwave, drum & bass, house, and bass music, often finding unexpected points of connection between otherwise disparate sounds.
Since breaking through from New Zealand’s electronic scene, Montell2099 has earned support and recognition from a broad spectrum of international and local tastemakers, while building a collaborative résumé that includes work alongside RL Grime, Wilkinson, 21 Savage, Mura Masa, Netsky, Alison Wonderland, What So Not, Charli XCX, and more. His work has also landed across platforms such as Rolling Stone Australia, Complex, XXL, Pigeons & Planes, EDM Identity, and New Zealand outlets including George FM, RNZ, and NZ Herald.
With ‘BACKAGAIN : ME&YOU,’ Montell2099 introduces a new chapter through a format that mirrors his own appetite for experimentation. “BACKAGAIN” sets the tone with a fluid collision of trap and house, while “ME&YOU” takes a more fluid approach, riding a steady club pulse through luminous vocals, weighty low-end, and ominous swells. As his NIGHTMODE debut takes shape, Montell2099 once again positions himself at the intersection of bass music, club experimentation, and forward-facing electronic production.
“This song is the introduction to my next album ‘RE-WIRE // MONOCHROME,’ so I wanted it to set the tone for the attitude of the project as a whole. I haven’t released music in a while so the vocal ‘BACK AGAIN’ feels like a great fit for that narrative. Working with NIGHTMODE has been awesome! I’ve been a fan of the label for years now, and love what they do! It’s an honour to release a project with them and we’re super excited to get this out to the people.”—Montell2099
Montell2099’s new double-sided single ‘BACKAGAIN : ME&YOU’ is available on all platforms via NIGHTMODE.
More About Montell2099
Ahead of his time in every sense, Montell2099 has spent the past decade building his own universe at the outer edges of electronic music. Emerging from Aotearoa New Zealand’s underground in 2015, the producer has evolved from a teenage bedroom beatmaker into one of the country’s most distinctive electronic exports — an artist equally at home bending trap, drum & bass, dubstep, house and hyperpop into something unmistakably his own. That journey reached a defining new chapter with the arrival of DUALITY, Montell2099’s long-awaited debut album, in December 2025. Released independently through his own 2099 imprint, the nine-track record captures the full spectrum of an artist who has always resisted being confined to one lane: the festival-sized trap of “I MIGHT!”, euphoric dubstep on “ENDLESSLY”, high-velocity drum & bass of “ENERGY!!”, hyperpop textures on “PEACE OF MIND” and the melodic house comedown of “THE HAIL”.
Both a reflection on where he came from and a blueprint for where he is going, DUALITY turned years of experimentation into Montell2099’s most complete statement yet. The album followed another prolific period of collaboration and boundary-pushing releases. Across 2024, Montell linked with Sable Valley mainstay FrostTop on “PRISM”, Sam Bruno on “GO!”, What So Not and Lucy Lucy on “SKYLINE**”, MEMBA and EVAN GIIA on “Body Heat”, while showing his drum & bass instincts with the UKF-released “Honest “. “SKYLINE**” in particular brought together two longtime friends and trans-Tasman electronic heavyweights, transforming an idea first developed while Montell was touring the US into a euphoric live weapon. In February 2026, he opened his next chapter with the standalone single “How I Feel”, signalling that DUALITY was a beginning rather than an endpoint. Montell2099’s international rise has been years in the making. His relationship with RL Grime and Sable Valley became a crucial part of that story, leading to releases including “Borderline” with RL Grime and EMELINE and appearances alongside the label’s extended family. His genre-fluid catalogue has also produced collaborations with Netsky — including “Broken” and “Mixed Emotions” — alongside records with Juelz, Sublab and XIRA, while his remix catalogue has stretched from Wilkinson to Charli xcx and Troye Sivan. In 2024, Montell took that sound to Tomorrowland in Belgium, adding another landmark international festival appearance to years of touring across North America, Australasia and beyond.
Back home, his connection to Aotearoa remains fundamental to the project. Montell closed out 2025 at Rhythm & Vines, taking over the festival’s new Rhythm Stage, while his cinematic live performances have continually placed his futuristic production against some of New Zealand’s most dramatic landscapes. 2022’s Live From Lake Alta, created with Human Person and filmed at an ice lake in The Remarkables, followed his acclaimed Live From Karekare set and transformed the traditional DJ performance into something closer to science-fiction world-building. Long before the international stages, Montell2099 was a kid making beats in rural New Zealand. He began producing around the age of thirteen after his grandfather — himself a producer — introduced him to FL Studio, the software Montell still uses today. Early influences came from the producers behind Drake before expanding into electronic innovators including Flume, RL Grime, Baauer, Mr. Carmack and Sam Gellaitry. After high school he committed to music full-time and moved to Auckland, where a George FM radio show and early showcases with Soulection helped connect his sound to a wider world. His breakthrough quickly followed. Support slots for artists including Kaytranada, Metro Boomin and Sam Gellaitry gave way to 2017’s “Hunnid on the Drop” with 21 Savage, a dark collision of hip-hop and electronic production that announced Montell2099 internationally. In the years since, co-signs and collaborations spanning RL Grime, Netsky, What So Not, Wilkinson, Charli xcx, Dimension and more have only reinforced what was evident from the beginning: Montell2099 has never been particularly interested in following electronic music’s existing rules. Instead, he keeps rewriting them. From SoundCloud beginnings to Tomorrowland, from remote New Zealand landscapes to DUALITY and his own 2099 imprint, Montell2099’s career has been defined by constant movement between sounds, scenes and worlds. Now entering his next era with “How I Feel”, the future-facing producer is doing what he has always done best — pushing toward whatever comes next.