Jega Biography

Jega is the recording name of Dylan J. Nathan, a Manchester-born electronic musician, producer and visual designer. Over three decades he has released music on Planet Mu, Skam and Matador Records, produced all of his own artwork and sleeve design, and built a parallel career as a creative director and visual effects artist working at the intersection of music, film and emerging technology. His work is central to the UK IDM and drill n'bass movements and has drawn praise from Thom Yorke, Björk and Aphex Twin.

Early Years

Nathan grew up in Manchester during the Madchester era, attending the Haçienda and absorbing the Factory Records scene firsthand as a teenager. His first computer was a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, loaded from cassette tape. He received his pilot's license at sixteen.

London 1991–1994

Nathan studied architecture at Kingston University London, graduating in 1994. He shared studio classes with Mike Paradinas, who records as Mu-Ziq and later founded Planet Mu Records. Richard D. James, better known as Aphex Twin, was studying sound design on the same campus. London's rave scene and the city's emerging drum and bass underground were strong early influences, as was Paradinas' own signing to Rephlex Records. Nathan made his first recordings at Paradinas' studio during his absences on tour.

Skam Records 1995–1997

Returning to Manchester after graduation, Nathan focused on music full time. His debut EP, SKA006, appeared in 1996 on Skam Records, the Manchester label affiliated with Autechre and original home of Boards of Canada. Recorded on low-fi borrowed equipment, it was dark and spare, and drew immediate praise from NME and Melody Maker. Aphex Twin called Nathan personally on the release. In 1997 Nathan toured Europe alongside Autechre, Boards of Canada and Funkstörung, and released his second EP, SKA009, which incorporated samples for the first time and introduced the style NME would label Drill N'Bass. That year also saw Jega featured on Planet Mu's debut release on Hut/Virgin Records, alongside AFX and Mu-Ziq.

Spectrum, Planet Mu and Matador 1998–1999

Jega's evolving sound drew the attention of Paradinas, who invited him to be the first signing on his newly founded Planet Mu label. Paradinas has said: "Manchester's Dylan Nathan is one of the reasons I started this label in the first place." Spectrum, released in 1998, was Planet Mu's inaugural release, fusing breakbeat, IDM and melody into a diverse collage of samples and sequencing. The record is widely credited as a genesis of the drill n'bass genre, a term coined by Melody Maker and NME. It charted at number 155 on the CMJ Radio Top 200 and number 12 on CMJ RPM. Licensed by Matador Records for North America, it led to extensive US touring and a deep connection with emerging scenes in New York and Miami, including concerts at Irving Plaza in New York for Matador's 10th anniversary and at WMC alongside Schematic Records. Jega was part of the first Coachella lineup. A Japan tour followed with Luke Vibert and Mike Paradinas, and Nathan performed in Iceland alongside Björk, who praised his work in Mixmag: "I really like Jega, on Skam. It's gorgeous. I DJed in Iceland with Jega a week ago."

Geometry 2000–2001

Nathan recorded his second album, Geometry, on a beige G3 Apple Macintosh, the same machine on which he began teaching himself 3D animation. A departure from Spectrum's genre diversity and sample collages, Geometry moved into digital synthesis, sculpted timbres and a more melancholic, symphonic register. The title track is considered one of the earliest examples of the glitch genre. One of its primary influences was the computer-generated music and imagery of the original Tron, which Nathan had found formative since childhood. The album's opening track samples from the film, the sleeve artwork Nathan designed is likewise influenced by Tron, and the record's title and structure reflect his architectural training. Geometry reached number 15 on CMJ RPM. In November 2000, Thom Yorke played "Rigid Body Dynamics" as the second track in his BBC Radio 1 Breezeblock mix, naming Geometry as an influence on Radiohead's Kid A. The track "Inertia" has since been widely noted as a likely influence on the Solaris (2002) soundtrack.

Brooklyn 2002–2004

In 2002 Nathan relocated to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, connecting with the city's electronic music scene through events like Safety in Numbers and Share. It was here that he met Joseph Kosinski, then an emerging director working in advertising and motion graphics. Nathan gave Kosinski a copy of Geometry. The two became close friends. Also in New York he met Bradley Munkowitz, a designer who would later lead motion graphics on Tron: Legacy, and Joseph Fraioli, who records as Datach'i. Recognizing Fraioli's talent, Nathan introduced him to Planet Mu, leading to a signing. Nathan also introduced Machinedrum to Mike Paradinas, where he went on to release an album.

Despite making only a handful of copies for close friends, an early draft of Nathan's third album, Variance, was leaked to file-sharing networks in 2003. Rather than rush a release, he chose to rework the album substantially. Live appearances continued in New York with Datach'i, Drop the Lime and Shadetek, and in Miami and Los Angeles with Machine Drum, Otto Von Schirach, Richard Devine and Phoenecia. In 2004, Nathan joined a Planet Mu European label tour, performing alongside Venetian Snares, Mu-Ziq, Luke Vibert and KID606.

Los Angeles 2005–2008

Nathan moved to Los Angeles in 2005, settling in Venice. In 2006 he founded Subvert Inc, a visual effects and animation studio, collaborating with leading production companies including The Mill, Framestore, PsyOp, Buck, Prologue and Imaginary Forces on commercial and broadcast work for Disney, Pepsi, Visa, Sprint and others. Highlights included a Visa Olympics commercial with gymnast Nastia Liukin that pioneered photogrammetry techniques, production design for Justin Timberlake's "Lovestoned" music video with VFX supervision on the shoot in Manchester, and an original CG short film that drew over 330,000 views online. In 2005 an animated short Nathan directed appeared at the OneDotZero festival at the ICA in London, where he took part in a Q&A. In 2006 he performed at Planet Mu's 100th release party alongside Boxcutter and Vex'd, and later played a concert in Germany with Plaid. Infrequent shows continued around Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Tijuana, sharing bills with Deru, Mochipet, Edit (Ed Ma of the Glitch Mob), Daedalus and Tom Burbank, a close friend whom Nathan also brought to Planet Mu.

Variance Volumes 1 and 2, 2009

In April 2009 Nathan used studio time at the legendary Westlake Studios in Hollywood, birthplace of Thriller, to complete Variance. A preview of Volume 1 was aired on Mary Anne Hobbs' BBC Radio 1 show, and Nathan performed a live set on Jason Bentley's KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic. Released on Planet Mu as a double album, Variance represents the culmination of his exploration of synthesis, sampling, melody and polyrhythmic composition. Volume 1 encompasses the melodic and lighter side of his sound; Volume 2 is darker and more intense.

Tron: Legacy and Visual Work 2010–2015

The threads of Nathan's creative life converged most visibly around Tron: Legacy. The film was directed by Joseph Kosinski, the close friend to whom Nathan had given a copy of Geometry in Brooklyn in 2002, a record already steeped in Tron's imagery and built around a sample from the film. "Inertia," the Geometry track rumored to have influenced the Solaris soundtrack, had been considered by Kosinski for use in Tron: Legacy, specifically for the pivotal Flynn's safehouse scene with Jeff Bridges, before Daft Punk came aboard as full score composers. Nathan joined the production of the film at Digital Domain, spending seven months on the Light Jet sequence and delivering over 50 shots. He also worked alongside Bradley Munkowitz, known professionally as GMunk, who led the film's motion graphics and whom he had met in New York years before.

His artwork appeared in the Outside the Lines exhibition alongside Shepard Fairey, with whom he also DJed at the launch event at MOCA. In 2015, Nathan directed and released the short film Extropy: Speedhack, an audiovisual work integrating his production and design sensibilities into a single cinematic piece.

1995 and Later Releases

In 2015, Paradinas requested a digital copy of an archival recording, "103" from 1997, for Planet Mu's 20th anniversary compilation µ20. Nathan found an even better mix that Paradinas had not previously heard, and that version appeared on the release. Aphex Twin later commented "Lovely" on the track on SoundCloud, one of his rare public engagements. Digitizing the archive prompted him to keep going.

In 2016, Skam Records released 1995, a double album of fifteen previously unreleased tracks from Nathan's earliest cassette experiments in Manchester. The material dates from the period immediately after his return from architecture school in London, written in an empty family home in Manchester on minimal borrowed equipment: a Boss DR-660 drum machine, a Yamaha DX-11 FM synthesizer, and a collection of borrowed instruments including a Roland Juno 106, Casio FZ-1 sampler and an Atari-ST running CuBeat for MIDI sequencing, with no effects. All tracks were recorded live to cassette tape and DAT. Bleep described it as "a vital piece of history from Manchester's long running tradition of bedroom electronic scientists," noting that it "sounds like a future we have yet to fully realize or arrive in." Headphone Commute called it "raw, glitchy, full of that delicious analog lo-fi grime, and always forward thinking." Nathan has described listening back to the material: "The grey skies of Manchester. Writing in an empty house which I had once grown up in with my family. Hope for the future." A new album has been rumored for some time.

Design Career

Alongside music, Nathan developed a sustained career as a creative director and interaction designer. Following Subvert Inc, he went on to shape foundational UX systems for Google Daydream, one of the first mainstream consumer VR platforms, and served as Creative Director at Magic Leap, where he led the core onboarding experience for Magic Leap One, received multiple patents in spatial interface design, and creative directed artist Beeple before his global prominence. Subsequent roles as Chief Creative Officer at Stageverse and Creative Director at HTC VIVE Creative Labs have extended his work into spatial computing, AI interaction systems and sound design for emerging platforms, including a pivotal role designing the AI assistant for the VIVE Eagle AI Glasses. The architectural training that shaped his music has remained a consistent foundation across every phase of the design work.

(c) Dylan Nathan 2026.