S3rl
S3RL, born Jole Richard Hughes in Brisbane on December 17, 1981, is an Australian happy hardcore and UK hardcore DJ whose career took off in the early 2000s and has stretched across more than two decades of touring and production. He appeared as a DJ at the inaugural Bam! Festival in October 2010 at Ivory's Rock in southeast Queensland, a milestone within Australia's hardcore dance scene, and returned to live performance at HTID in January 2025 after announcing in 2018 that his touring schedule would wind down.
His stage name traces to a childhood nickname among his cousins, an origin story he has recounted publicly as central to his artist identity. Hughes founded EMFA Music in 2011 to release his own material and later launched a second label, M4 Music, in 2021, extending his footprint within the happy hardcore and hardcore techno subgenres. He began collaborating with contract production partners, including French beatmaker Aurélien Dacher, from February 2020 onward to sustain his music-video output alongside his DJ and studio work.
Despite stepping back from extensive touring after 2018, S3RL has continued producing music and periodically returning to live DJ sets, maintaining his standing within the global happy hardcore community.