It all started for me in 1993 with a double deck tape player and copies of the top 40 recorded from Radio 1. Connecting pop hits into one another with the aid of high speed dubbing and a swift pause finger was my first introduction into the world of mixing. It quickly progressed to vinyl in the form of my parents hi-fi system and borrowed copies of classic Breakbeat Hardcore records, again with the aid of blank tapes, rewinding the records, hitting pause and so on and so on.

Sometime in 1994 I was introduced to second hand audio shops which is where I found my first pair of Technics. Not 1200’s or 1210’s but two very different record decks with wheel style pitch control which looked like they were made in the second World War. Pitch wasn’t an issue though at the time, I don’t think I actually discovered what the pitch control was used for until comparing my ripped off mix from a DJ Randall set – it was then clear that pitch control was made to get the records in synch with each other…

I set up Section 23 in 1994 with a group of local lads from School and as cliché as it may sound, the rest is pretty much history – and many, many great memories that will stay will me for the rest of my days.

Switching from Breakbeat Hardcore (some may know this style as Old School) into Jungle, following the crossover to Happy Hardcore for a good number of years, then back over to Drum and Bass around 1996 was pretty much the path I followed.

I was known around Cambridgeshire for many years as the DJ that played ‘the stuff Mickey Finn used to play’ also now known as Jump Up Drum and Bass. This isn’t a bad thing, looking back to the golden era of Jump Up you could see then that the divide between styles that Finn and Darren Jay favoured to those that Rider and Doc Scott played was pretty wide. I remained loyal to the upbeat styles of drum and bass, perhaps it was due to my previous addiction to Happy Hardcore or just that this kind of flavour was, to me, more about the vibes, anthems, reloads and air horns.

I stopped buying most new music around 2007, mainly because I wanted to concentrate on filling in the blanks in my collection and because the new sound of Drum and Bass wasn’t where my heart was. Not to say that I stopped playing out, the last 4 years especially have been jammed packed with bookings and dance floors across the East have been reunited with the real Jump Up sound.

The tag I mention earlier about being the DJ around Cambridgeshire that plays ‘the stuff Mickey Finn used to play’ pretty much sums up what I am all about as a DJ – I play dance floor music for the dance floor. I don’t stand behind the decks in the shadows, for me its about creating a vibe, creating the atmosphere of 1996 and most importantly keeping the dance moving.

So that’s my DJ life over the last 15 years in a few paragraphs, now where’s the lighters, whistles and horns?