The term "prog revival" has become a convenient shorthand for a certain strain of club music that has gained serious traction over the last 6 or 7 years. But as with many genre labels in electronic music, its usefulness is pretty limited. Speak to the individuals most closely associated with it, and there is little agreement on what, if anything, is being 'revived'.

"There's definitely a bunch of people out there who share a similar taste," says producer and DJ Bliss Inc, describing a loose constellation of producers influenced by "'90s and '00s progressive house, trance, left-field techno and all that." What has emerged over the past "seven or eight years," he suggests, is something decentralised, that "grew out of a few labels and collectives… in the late 2010s," initially "online-spawned" before "spilling over into physical party spaces."

Speaking to Steffan Todorović, half of production and DJ duo Abdul Raeva and head of labels such as Gestalt Records, Coymix and now his latest venture, Squash, this sense of emergence without a centre is echoed. Like Bliss Inc, Steffan agrees that much of the early momentum behind this sound did not originate in a single city or club circuit. Instead, tight but influential Facebook groups, for example, provided spaces where older records were circulated, re-evaluated and fed back into circulation. As those networks expanded, the feedback loop between DJs, producers and audiences accelerated. The power of the tastemaker DJ flexed its muscles and from that, a scene was built.

With that said, the irony is that producers driving this scene are often unaware of the trends they're actually setting. When Abdul Raeva latched onto these sounds and started making records, "We never realised it was happening until we started getting booked," says Todorović. "Then we realised, okay, maybe we are producing progressive stuff." The implication of this comment is pretty straightforward; what gets labelled as a movement is often only visible in hindsight. In making music that simply sounds fresh to one's ears at a particular time, there is no unified intent, just a bunch of individuals making what sounds good to them.

Interestingly, attempts to define the sound itself tend to focus on what it isn't. Writing on what he terms "2020s prog," in Resident Advisor, Rey Colino, head of the highly influential label Kalahari Oyster Cult, describes a style that resists easy classification: "not quite deep house… nor is it techno," and "far less tooly" than UK tech house. Instead, it occupies "a grey zone," moving across prescriptive boxes without settling into any one of them. This 'grey zone', one could argue, is accessed as a result of borrowing sounds and influences without the desire to simply recreate the atmosphere of a bygone age. "What we managed with Abdul Raeva was to take a lot of the acid, a lot of the tech, and combine it into something that made up 'prog'," says Todorović "but in a very new and modern way, without intending to do so."

This sense of 'borrowing' particular sounds and combining them into something new complicates the term 'revival'. Eben Rees, co-founder of Cardiff-based label Haŵs, takes issue with the term for this very reason. "It suggests something that disappeared and then returned unchanged," he says, "which I don't think is the case." Instead, he frames the current moment as part of a longer cycle: "prog didn't really go anywhere… what we've seen since the early 2020s feels less like a return and more like another phase."

Somewhat provocatively, Todorović asserts that this act of reinterpretation, of borrowing sounds and styles and reshaping them, changes the very nature of music production. "I don't really like calling us artists. We're not. It's not really art. We're using stuff that was made 30 years ago, that was art when they created something new. Now we're just repurposing it. So we're producers. We're creators, for sure, but I don't really feel like an artist." The distinction between revival and reinterpretation matters though. A revival implies fidelity to an original; reinterpretation allows for mutation, drift, and, crucially, change.

And it is vital that this openness, the understanding that this 'reinterpretation' which allows for the creation of something different, remains exactly that: open. "There is this incessant need in the industry today that we have to label [music]," Todorović continues. "When you do put it into that box, it just becomes less exciting." Music becomes a target rather than an exploration. The honesty in production is lost, and it's easy to tell. "People sit down and open Ableton… and lock themselves into: it has to be 'prog revival'."

The conditions that inspired the emergence of this sound help explain why this happens so quickly. Bliss Inc points to a dual shift in the mid-2010s: "a kind of fatigue with the more serious, and too rigid side of underground electronic dance music," alongside a generational return to earlier influences. For some producers, this meant revisiting the sounds of their own "'90s childhood nostalgia phase." At the same time, external factors accelerated the process. "Then COVID-19 happened," he notes, bringing a "big industry shake-up" and giving more weight to the role of online platforms in shaping taste and circulation.

From Rees' perspective, the shift was also functional. "DJs started looking for something with more character and variation," he says, music with "tension and release, atmosphere, and a bit of edge." Prog, in its current form, fits that demand: "emotive and driving at the same time," adaptable across settings. Prog can be listened to at home, in headphones, it's not so minimal as to be only consumable at the club.

But for Todorović, those same conditions also produce a more structural problem. The speed at which sounds circulated and were subsequently reproduced compresses their lifespan. "It came really quickly, blew up, and then it got watered down even faster," he says. "It got chewed up and spat out." What might once have unfolded gradually now moves through its entire lifecycle in a matter of years.

This is not an isolated case. We've had (for better or worse) cycles of deep house and the lo-fi craze in the 2010s, and the resurgence of hard, almost gabber-like techno in the last few years, and Todorović believes this is set to continue. "I'm quite afraid that… we're going to be in the same situation again," he adds, pointing to the likelihood of future "revivals" following the same pattern. And that 'flattening' of sound, the speed at which it feels tired or washed out, could continue to increase.

That condition, one could argue, is shaped by abundance. As Colino notes, many of the artists associated with this wave "grew up online, surrounded by an abundance of genres," moving between them without strong allegiance to any one. The past is no longer distant, hidden in dusty record shops, it is immediately accessible and therefore endlessly reusable.

At the same time, patterns of consumption have shifted. Music circulates rapidly across platforms, often detached from its original context, and is quickly absorbed into playlists, DJ sets and algorithmic systems. Todorović emphasises the distinction between these modes of engagement. "Music should be experienced, not consumed," he says, comparing it to "cooking dinner at home" versus going to a restaurant. One is functional and the other has a lasting impact. The concern is that speed and volume increasingly favour the former.

So how does one stay ahead of this cycle of consumption? This process in which 'new' exciting sounds, something genuinely innovative which has been created with old influences, becomes stale? Rees points to the fact that there are "new interpretations of 'prog' emerging all the time, it's definitely not a fixed style that's being repeated, that's what makes it so exciting." The freshness is dependent on being willing to constantly change and adapt.

For Todorović, it requires a willingness to move on. "When you realise, oh shit, we're making prog… then it gets boring," he says. "And then you stop doing it, and you move on to the next thing." This is less a rejection of the sound than a refusal to become fixed within it. Progress, in this sense, is defined by discontinuity.

The 'prog revival,' then, is not so much a single movement as a demonstration of how trends in electronic music are recycled at a greater rate than ever. It illustrates how older musical ideas can be reconfigured under new conditions, but also how quickly those configurations can set into a slightly tired formula. More importantly, it reveals the pressures acting on contemporary electronic music: the speed of circulation, the weight of categorisation, and the constant pull between exploration and repetition.

"I think that in six, seven, eight years, when we look back at the current prog revival, we'll have forgotten maybe some tastemaker labels like Coymix, and also labels like On Rotation; I think what they've done is fantastically good, you know, Adam Pits and Lisene," says Todorović. "But when we look back on it some years down the line, we'll have forgotten the success stories and look at it holistically. And we'll remember that the prog revival was full of shit."

Whether that is the case or not, this entire movement and recycling of music and ideas teaches us something about the value of honesty in production and sound. When discussing how he selects music to promote on his labels, Todorović confirms this when he says he is sold when "you hear a sound that is genuine. That's the core essence of it." If music is an honest reinterpretation of the sounds and artists a producer loves, you can hear it. If one makes music that doesn't set out simply to sell or follow trends, people will dance to it.

Every one of the producers and labels represented in this article embody this honesty. They are at the forefront of their respective scenes for a reason, and they spawn copycats because, well, they are really good at what they do. As we enter an ever-more attention seeking age, this ability to ignore trends, to 'stay true to your art', as mildly nauseating as that is to type, is more vital than ever for a vibrant, high quality music scene.