Dr. Peacock

Dr. Peacock (Stefan Dekker from Limmen, the Netherlands) is the artist most responsible for frenchcore’s leap from French underground to global mainstage. Producer, label boss and event founder, he built the infrastructure the genre now runs on.

Converted by a record crate

Dekker’s origin story is a crate-digging one: in 2005 he stumbled onto frenchcore records by The Sickest Squad and DJ Radium (one of the genre’s founding fathers), and the off-beat kick never let him go. He began producing in 2010, and his early sets caught the attention of Dutch event company BKJN, which led to a partnership that changed the scene: the launch of Vive la Frenchcore in 2013, the party series that became the genre’s flagship.

Exporting the sound

From there Dr. Peacock scaled frenchcore like nobody before him. His Peacock Records signed and developed new talent (most famously his protégé Sefa), followed by the Frenchcore Worldwide label in 2017 and Euphoric Frenchcore Records in 2019, each staking out a corner of the sound. A 2016 tour took frenchcore to US audiences for the first time, and his festival CV now reads like hard dance’s honour roll: Thunderdome, Defqon.1, Qlimax, Dominator.

The sound: classical chaos

Dr. Peacock’s signature is the collision of relentless 200 BPM kicks with melodies borrowed from classical and cinematic traditions: his long-running ‘Trip to…’ series turns national musical clichés into festival anthems. It is music that shares uptempo’s speed but replaces its menace with melody and mischief, which is exactly why frenchcore keeps winning new fans from the hardcore heartland.

Every new Dr. Peacock release lands on the Frenchcore Release Radar the day it drops. All 400+ tracked releases are listed above.