DJ Spykz

I started DJing i would say mid 90s, originally funnily enough, because we all were into the hardcore scene around Southampton. There were multiple tape packs of every night ever around, all sadly wrecked by overly eager mc’s which, while were great on the night, playback on tape wasn’t so great so I started
DJing to create some mixtapes with no mc input! Some of the earlier mixes were actually atrocious but hey, gotta start somewhere right? There is some evidence of this on my Mixcloud account, see vinyl vault mixes on there… nostalgia n all that…

A mate of mine had an old set of belt driven record decks and a Made2fade mixer and I got started there. Wasn’t long before I took a loan out to get my own set and off we went! Spending every single penny I had buying records from Stu J and Jon Doe at Movement Records down behind the Odeon Cinema in Southampton. I have remained friends with those 2 reprobates ever since!

I DJ most genres these days but I guess my favourite currently sits somewhere on the techno spectrum, ranging from euphoric trance and psytrance right up to beating acid techno and hard trance. Although I still love other styles, happy hardcore, hard techno, house, hard house, drum n bass and so on. Not unusual for me to drop something different into a mix sometimes that no one expects to generate some nostalgia or spark some interest and stand out from the crowd…. Works for me (most times!)

Musical influences … pffff where to start?? Ok umm I guess my earliest influences were on the 90s hardcore scene, we regularly attended the Adrenalin events with DJ’s / producers such as Ramos supreme and sunset regime, mc Marley and Stu J, Druid, Vinylgroover the list goes on…all playing the early happy hardcore breakbeaty stuff. But the biggest influence for me had to be DJ Sy the scratchmaster, as both DJ and producer his sets were amazing. Going forward my love of techno and trance type genres came from Stu J’s techno nights (Electric Kingdom) at Madisons in Bournemouth listening to Stu, Jon Doe, The Xmen,
Carl Cox, Westbam etc, and far too many Saturday nights after falling out of Madisons at 2am heading down to club uk in Wandsworth… the infamous “chewits room” which was techno and hard trance as a rule. I guess that's where that side of things took off.