I adored music – I still do. At first I wasnt into electronic music that much. In the 90ies I went to this “rave party” – it was around the era when Digweed and Sasha were doing (what I personally think) the best gigs of their lifetime and that was it, I was hooked to electronic music – the dark, deep, underground 4 on the floor type of it, that is – I think it was around 1996 or so. Trance was already popular but frankly, it was the genre of electronic music that was making me puke whenever I was hearing people talk about electronic music – it always sounded to me fake, plastic, game music. But those guys, Digweed and Sasha were playing something different, deep bassy kicks, basic percusive patterns, simplistic and driving, dark and trippy, no belss no whistles, no silly apreggios – what I consider now to be the first minimal techno sounds I had ever heard – at the time of course, there wasnt such a term at least here in Greece. People were calling it “progressive house” but it wasnt that either.
At the same time, being a guy who is into music and all that stuff, people at school were asking me if I could DJ at house parties (by house I mean friends’ houses not the genre house lol) and whatnot. I never declined even though I hadnt really developed DJ skills. Syncing turntables wasnt a skill I had developed but since I was into music and stuff I could make a half-decent job at beatsyncing.
I wasnt so much intrigued by the DJ aspect as I was from the actual music itself – therefore its creation/production. Needless to say as a kid I didnt even have money to buy turntables and mixer, let alone synthesizers and audio effect units. Just before 2000 I bought my first computer. Naturally I begun searching around the web for the topic that interested me most: and that was music. I discovered a magazine called “Computer Music” and I searched in my hometown and found a foreign press shop where I could buy the magazine. I became a fanatic – absorbing all the info I could get my hands on, studying the magazine, working with the provided freebies and searching on the web for books, info and articles about music production. Aroudn the same time Traktor in its first version was out. Before learning my way around DAWs I was using it to record loops out of commercial/released tracks I had (mainly out of Global Underground’s old CDs I had) and was creating my own tracks – which were not really tracks, just 30 minute overprocessed loops stolen from those tracks, re-imported into traktor and re-remixing them lol. I then moved on to FL Studio. I had finished school by then, but I remember a few occasions where at parties guys would play with CDJs and I at the after hours I would play with them too – again nothing big and nothing special because I had never practised.
Needless to say of course, DJing looked to me as an easier way to communicate my creations with the audience but I never actually gave a lot of my time to it. I wanted to become good at making music thinking that playing that music afterwards would be far easier. I wanted to overcome the hard part which was making it.
Years since then, i still try to improve my music making skills, and I have understood that DJing wasnt the easier part at all, its a different part alltogether.
“Officially” so to speak, I became a DJ when a local DJ heard my music and contacted with me and asked me if I was into DJing – if you want to know specifically it happened a few months after creating a Facebook profile even though I used to have a Myspace profile for yeeeears – for some reason Facebook was and still is more powerful than other websites in Greece for networking. Even my own website wasnt noticed by locals.
I said, “Yeah, sure, why not?” and thats how the whole story started. I had already bought controllers for music production and I knew I could make a decent job with them and my laptop. Since that 1st chance, I went to a lot of gigs as warming up for that guy and by doing so I became more confident with my set up and playing music in public up to the point I used social networking to spread my “brand” locally. I knew of course the “politics” involved when trying to organise a gig so I never organised my own gigs – I was just the guy who will not say “No” when invited to play. I guess I was lucky that I made a few key connections in the local “scene” and people usually think of me when organising gigs and want some tech – minimal – techno guy in the line-up. Still, to this very day, I have never organised a gig by myself, Im always invited – either by other guys or by the Web Radio stations I play in, to their gigs. I think the fact that I have also some official releases in Beatport has helped a lot – even when a guy hasnt heard about me, a quick browse on my networking profiles strikes a good impression (the “hey this guy is a producer – he must be a decent DJ” effect).
Frankly, if you ask me up to the point where the term “Digital DJ” appeared, I never considered myself a DJ – I still do not with the literal meaning of the phrase. “DIsk Jockey”. I am not in any way a maestro at playing vinyl “disks” – Im just a guy making and playing electronic music, thats all! đ When people ask me at gigs whether “Im a DJ or a producer” I reply that “I consider myself a producer, who happens to DJ” – it always causes them to have a strange face – I guess they are full of people saying to them “Yeahhhh mannnn, Im the mannnn, Im the DJ, i am a producer too, mannnnn.” lol. Sometimes I ‘d admit “Im not a DJ” out of respect for those who actually were “DISK Jockeys” but people tend to think Im a snob who wants to emphasize that he is producing music and thinks he is somehow superior to DJs. Thats why I stopped saying that.
.
 (smaller).jpg "Disco Skylab Sticker (ontwerp 1980) (smaller).jpg")
.jpg "DISCO SKYLAB in kelder Cafe t'Fust Hoogbuurlostraat (smaller).jpg")
