Speaking to Youssef Benjelloun, the Moroccan DJ and producer better known as Kosh, I am struck by how invested he is in making sure he gets everything factually right in our conversation. I see this in action as we discuss some of his musical influences. "I was heavily influenced by the New York scene," he said, "the New Jersey scene. All those guys from the tri-state area—DJ Qu, Joey Anderson, Levon Vincent."

Before Benjelloun finishes saying "Vincent," his voice trails off and I see him do some quick mental calculations and real-time fact-checking. "To be honest, I'm not sure where DJ Qu is from," he tells me with concern as I hear him quickly typing. "Ah. I'm not wrong. DJ Qu is from Jersey City." His sense of relief is palpable.

Our dialogue is pockmarked with these types of moments. Benjelloun offers disclaimers like "I can only speak for myself" or "from my perspective." This precision is only trumped by his moderation. Beyond scrolling Discogs to ensure he has release dates and birth cities right, he also avoids talking in hyperbole. "I don't like being extreme," he tells me flatly.

Precision and restraint, as well as being part of his personality, are two qualities that describe Benjelloun's music as Kosh. His debut to the world was a track on a sold-out compilation EP on Casa Voyager, a label run by his close friend Driss Bennis, whom he affectionately calls "the mastermind." Bennis founded Casa Voyager to showcase a fledgling Moroccan techno scene focused on analogue-crafted grooves that made waves beyond Casablanca, from dance floors like Berlin's Club Der Visionaere to Closer in Kyiv.

Benjelloun's contributions to that EP are case studies in moody, emotional electro. More than just softness in the pads, the basslines and kick drums also feel light, more patient and prodding than trunk-rattling. But just as quickly as I ask about these songs, Benjelloun displays his trademark restraint. He feels uncomfortable talking about the tracks, citing the "fallacy of the producer." An idea, he explains to me where, "a producer will always hate his music, even though he secretly likes it."

But whether Benjelloun likes discussing them or not, the 12-inch that followed made it clear that he was just getting started. Null 212 is a combination of Detroit electro and warm breakbeat. It was made for the head and the body, the sort of thing that flits between the warm-up DJ and the afterhours (that said, in the right hands, "Catch A Train," with its robotic vocal, could go off at peak time). These are tracks filled with the soul of vintage Midwest house and electro, but also with the spacey introspection of some of the most interesting contemporary dance music. That this was coming out of Casablanca, a city not typically associated with this groovy, introspective type of dance music, made it all the more exciting.

It wasn't long before the international bookings started piling in. Shortly after his debut EP, Benjelloun quit his job and spent 2019 on a series of whirlwind European tours, turning his hardware-heavy productions into a live set.

Growing up in Casablanca, Benjelloun played in bands, but towards the end of high school he started getting turned onto dance music and production via the gateway drug of psytrance. He doesn't have any battle stories from those school days. "I was a fraud," he tells me. "I didn't go to those free parties or raves."

His exposure to this music was primarily digital. This was the early 2000s, the start of the renegade internet where sites like Limewire meant that you could download music in a way that was completely novel, providing a huge amount of exposure to new sounds, but in a way detached from any context or cultural references. "We didn't have any record stores where you just go and buy CDs or whatever," he said.

When Benjelloun left Casablanca for university in Belgium, this work of contextualization began. He became more immersed in dance music in Brussels, and his taste started to change. This was where he also began to experiment with production and digging for records. "I signed up for medical school, but I'm not sure if I did anything related to med school," he said. "I just produced [during] most of my free time."

Benjelloun dropped out before long and moved to Orlando, Florida, to pursue a degree in business administration. He continued to produce music and buy records, and also joined a growing community. Benjelloun looks back on this time fondly. "We used to hang out in that spot called Sandwich Bar. And all the underground..." he paused. "No, don't use that word 'underground,' I dont like that. But all the alternative electronic scene used to hang out there. It's just a small, small spot. And it was really intimate."

Sandwich Bar was where Benjelloun's friends were booking international and local artists like André Lodemann and DJ Three. It's also where Benjelloun hopped on the decks for the occasional warm-up set. The whole experience was a catalyst for him to dig deeper. He started to find time to travel to New York to party and dig at places like A1 and Halcyon.

Benjelloun cites his experience in America as pivotal in his musical journey. Lately, he's been focusing on stripped-back, European techno that is "more than a tool, less than a track," citing Alex Cortex's Reticarga EP as being the embodiment of this. But there is still a specifically Black and American influence to his work.

"There was a huge, huge difference between what I was listening to in Europe and in the US," he said. "It was mostly house at the beginning, acid house, Chicago house. Everything related to that early US scene. And by the end of my journey in the US, I was listening to electro, all the Drexciya stuff, and The Other People Place, and that's when I went back home in 2016."

Returning to Casablanca, Benjelloun had crates filled with Midwest and East Coast house, techno and electro. But he also found a much larger community that had begun to foment since he left home in the early 2010s. "When I came back, a lot happened. And I felt like there were many many more people into this, this kind of music," he said. "So I witnessed the beginning, the infancy of a scene, of a micro-scene, growing up and with all these different parties, not even one major promoter that just did everything. So it felt like it was growing and growing fast."

This seemed to happen a few different ways. On the one hand, there was a local scene that was growing, thanks to Casa Voyager run with his partners-in-crime Benniss and Jonas Bengio, AKA Viewtiful Joe, and other local parties. But, on the other hand, Morocco had become a destination on the world techno stage, home to a variety of festivals popular with Europeans such as Oasis and Beat Hotel.

In Resident Advisor's feature on Casa Voyager, Bennis discussed the ways in which Morocco was still navigating its "cultural colonialism dynamic" that prioritized Europeans and Americans at the expense of local Arab artists. I raised this question with Benjelloun, but he pointed out that these festivals also offered a huge amount of exposure both for the Moroccan artists that they booked (himself included) as well as the local punters attending the events.

"I don't see it as a bad thing," he said. "They're just people with more experience, and more knowledge about something. They have an expertise in something that maybe I don't have. So I will just try to learn as much as I can from those people, and not see the negative side of it, and try to build a lasting relationship where everybody will benefit from it. So yeah, I don't see it necessarily as a bad thing. As long as they are making a lot of efforts to involve as many local artists as they can."

Benjelloun used this platform to his advantage, signing up with a booking agent and, before long, traversing around Europe. Although initially tempted to move to Berlin (where Bennis was based for some time), he quoted from The Wizard Of Oz as he explained his decision to remain in Casablanca. "There is no place like home." More than just staying close to his family and friends (and the weather), he told me that it's important for him to be invested in his home scene, continuing to help grow the local infrastructure. "I want to build something here and contribute something to the local scene in the long run," he said.

This has come at a cost. Being a live performer who travels with hardware is a challenge in the world of USB DJs, but this is made even more complicated with a Moroccan passport. As the bookings rolled in, it was difficult to get "the visa to travel to Europe, and anywhere else in the world for that matter," he said. Once you do get a visa, touring as a live performer also required a mental leap of faith: it's just you "offering your music to strangers in different countries."

But the payoff can be huge. In 2019, Benjelloun played bigger and bigger stages, including a Klubnacht live set at Panorama Bar and Mtkvarze in Tbilisi. Across this jet-setting period, he described how the intimacy of live performance connected him to this growing global audience. It is, after all, "only your music, so people are dancing to just your own productions. So it was fulfilling and stressing and all different types of feelings mixed at once. But then you get used to it a little bit, but it always felt amazing. Up until that last gig at inner city electronic [in Leeds], it was still like a dream."

Throughout our conversation, Benjelloun discussed his music career in the past tense, constantly referencing the fact that Covid-19 has reorganized his sense of time and that being in a club felt increasingly distant. "Can you even imagine being in a room next to hundreds of people, not able to move?" He's right: I can't quite imagine it. But Benjelloun is adjusting to this reality. Late last year, he went back to his day job as a project manager. His uncertainty about the future does waft through our conversation (he texts me afterwards, apologizing that he may have sounded "too negative"), but I still trace a cautious sense of optimism, both across his music and his personality more generally.

When we discussed his constant musical anchor, Drexciya, Benjelloun became almost whimsical. "They just had such unique sounds and were using sounds that weren't necessarily suited for traditional techno and it was just blunt. I think that's probably the word, and that's how I felt [when I first listened]. These guys are mixing sounds that aren't supposed to be together. Whoa. I was just astonished."

This goes for Benjelloun's own productions, too. From the barely there electro of 2019's "Keep Hope Alive" to last year's dub techno track "Shred It" on Parisian outlet Distrikt, his music unfurls beautifully across cloudy and spacious soundscapes. It's equal parts melancholic and hopeful, something Benjelloun is now channelling into his newest venture, a label called Convergence. Intended as an outlet for himself and friends from Morocco, the label will connect "many different people, careers, backgrounds." Though the label is only one release in, it seems to be moving in that direction.

Each track on the first release, The World Inside, moves towards a clearer articulation of Benjelloun's earlier productions. The sound design is crystalline, with crisper drums, deeper pads and melodies that sound like they're floating through the cosmos. "Maybe that music will bring us all together," he said. "That is the converging point."