Judge Jules Shares a Piece of His Mind (and a Dynamic Summer Mix)

Judge Jules swung by to share his thoughts on Luminosity, the state of Ibiza, and more, and dropped off a mix that’s filled to the brim with gems.

Condensing the legacy of Judge Jules into a handful of paragraphs is impossible. In his career that’s spanned nearly four decades, this artist has truly done it all. He’s DJ’d some of the world’s biggest parties, helped usher Ibiza to the forefront, hosted radio shows, taken the reins as A&R for labels, and if that wasn’t enough, he also became a music specialist lawyer. Combine his skills with his significant accolades over the years, and it’s safe to say that he’s a legend—and a multi-faceted one at that.

While he might not have released new music this year, Judge Jules has continued to be a force to be reckoned with on the performance front. He delivered a standout set at Luminosity Beach Festival and has multiple stops for his DJ and live band sets coming up on the horizon. This includes a trip to Los Angeles in October for Dreamstate’s Timeless trance series at Avalon Hollywood alongside Alex M.O.R.P.H. and PUSH.

In the midst of his run, Judge Jules took the time to sit down with us for a chat. He dives into everything from his experience at Luminosity Beach Festival and its impact on the trance community to the state of Ibiza and his legal practice. Judge Jules also dropped off a mix that’s filled to the brim with curated gems from the likes of MPH, SØNIN, Duke Dumont, John Summit & Gorgon City, Johan Gielen, and more.

Listen to this exclusive mix from Judge Jules and read on for the full conversation with this legendary artist!

Stream EDMID Summer Sessions 2025 || Judge Jules on SoundCloud:

This summer saw you return to Luminosity Beach Festival for another round of trance in the sun. How has this festival changed over the years since you first played it?

First and foremost, it has got a great deal bigger – there are multiple stages. I guess the way one perceives any festival is also based on the weather, and being based on the North Sea and Northern Europe, there is inconsistency in the weather: the weather in the Netherlands is no different from the weather we have here in the UK. The 2025 instalment, in keeping with all of Northern Europe, had incredibly good weather, so the outdoor factor was really positive.

I hadn’t done it for a couple of years, and obviously, I was very involved in it from a very early stage, and I was blown away by the scale of it. Not just the sheer increase in numbers, but the improvement beyond all recognition of the production, the staging, and what’s really great about it is despite being based near Amsterdam, it’s a hugely international affair, drawing crowds from all over Europe and beyond, and that aspect of it hasn’t changed, it’s just it was drawing even more crowds.

Can you speak to the importance of this event for the trance community as a whole?

There aren’t many Trance events that draw people from all over the world. I don’t know whether ASOT does that anymore, because I haven’t done one for a long time, I haven’t been to one, as I’m not one to go out in a punter capacity because I’m always DJing, but I think it’s got the biggest global pull of any Trance festival.

Trance experienced a heyday in the late 1990s, when it gained significant popularity on a commercial level. It’s less mainstream now, but it retains a huge groundswell of popularity, one that is growing. There are certain touchpoints that everyone wants to be part of in the Trance community, and Luminosity is definitely one of the key ones.

As a genre, trance has been on the ropes lately, even as artists seem to utilize its sounds more than ever in other genres. What are your thoughts on the current state of trance? Where would you like to see it head in the future?

In my view, any genre should always evolve, and different DJs play different areas of Trance. I’ve always liked that sort of harder iteration of a hybrid of Hard Dance and Trance. Certain labels and producers are really driving that sound forward, such as Nifra, for example. At the same time, certain other labels seem to be too rooted in stuff that hasn’t really evolved for a very long time. But with a lot of the new producers that have come to the fore, they have borrowed from a broader range of influences.

I’m definitely not rooted in the past; I think there have been some brilliant records over the years, but I believe it should evolve. I think the merger of harder dance and Trance has been what has actually brought it back to popularity in 2025.

When you look back at the decades of radio history you’ve actively been a part of, from BBC Radio 1 and beyond, what role do you see broadcasting taking on in the future now that streaming and podcasts are pulling ears away from traditional formats?

There will always be a need for curation. I think that as Spotify increasingly adopts an algorithm-based curation for its playlists and, at least anecdotally, employs fewer people to do it from their ears or a human perspective, the need for tastemakers will diminish. Those who just rely on their ears in a traditional fashion remain as strong as they ever were.

Of course, we listen to music in different ways, and those of us who have a hunger for new music and new artists get our information in different ways, but I still think specialist radio is important, especially the likes of Radio 1.

How have your industry experiences impacted the way you practice legal counsel?

I’m predominantly a music lawyer, and 80-90% of my legal practice is oriented around electronic music – mainly artists, but I look after some managers and labels. Pretty much every tentacle, if you like, of the electronic music world, I have clients in all of them.

In the past, I’ve held various roles, including manager, promoter at a high level, recording artist, record label executive, and, of course, radio presenter and DJ. I’m still an active artist today. There isn’t another music lawyer out there who has the breadth of experience that I have. To boil it down to its simplest factor, it teaches you what to argue about and what not to argue about, because if one encounters a situation in a contract that I haven’t personally encountered in four decades of the music industry, then it’s likely not worth fighting about. Every other music lawyer out there might be very experienced, but they haven’t actually lived it.

I think having lived it really gives me the edge as a lawyer, not just in terms of being an individual who might appeal to potential clients, but just understanding the industry in a deeper, more practical, more lived sense.

While Ibiza isn’t the powerhouse it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, shaping the scene, you maintain Judgment as a viable sample of the island’s culture. What is it about the island that makes you come back year after year? Is there a space for DJ-focused dance floors over tables and festivals, and how can events reach out to these audiences better?

The last thing I’d want to do is knock Ibiza. Ibiza has been a large part of my life, and I think Ibiza will always remain a very strong part of dance culture because it’s got some of the world’s best clubs, and arguably the most important factor is the size of the island.

The fact that you can reach all of its seven superclubs and various smaller clubs within not much more than a twenty-minute car journey means that the likes of, for example Croatia, where everything is very disporate, or Malta, where it’s a small island but the traffic is really bad, can’t match, and I don’t think Malta necessarily has the same nightclub ecosystem, although it does have a small amount of it. That combination of global clubs and the island’s small size will always make Ibiza special and unique.

Is it a bad thing that it’s now really focused on table service? Well, you’re always going to get some of the wrong people there for that reason. I know one thing my legal practice has taught me is that most of the venues will judge the success of their nights not based on ‘bums on seats’, i.e., paid, ticketed punters; they base their success on VIP table spend, so they become corporate entities for whom the music and the vibe are less important.

But I don’t want to diss Ibiza for that reason; it’s just, in my view, the focus of Ibiza used to be about huge numbers of likeminded people who really are there because they absolutely love music, and that has changed – there’s no two ways about it – but Ibiza also still has all the unique factors I’ve just described.