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Hiya!
I'm based in London, Camden to be more exact but I come from theNorth of England and have sporadically had spells of staying inLondon for the past 12 years, but am based here full time now.
I started DJing a couple of years back, purely by accident. It allhappened when I was living in Manchester, for some reason the musicthat I was into wasn't being played at clubs in the city,occassionally there were a few big names such as Switch who'd do agig at a big party, but there definitely was no grass-roots nightshappening that celebrated off-centre electronic music.
With a friend (KevBeard of The Beards) I set-up a night calledTerrorist, in the process of setting it up, I really got a complexthat I wanted to play the specific sort of music I liked, and likemost people who become DJs believed that only I could play it inthe way I liked! A friend suggested I just use my laptop to DJ atthe opening night. He gave me some software and spent the nextmonth learning about matching phrases and harmonic mixing etc, andthe software kind of took care of the beat-matching for me (in mostcases!)
Whilst I was practising how to use the software I started recordinglittle 10-minute mini-mixes just to help me improve, it wassuggested I should use them online to help promote the night wewere setting up. I did and was really overwhelmed by the feedbackthat I got which was really positive and was encouraged to dolonger mixtapes and set them up as a podcast.
I created a podcast, got a photographer called Zach Rathore (who isa genius) to make images for the tiny jpeg cover art as mybackground is in fine art I wanted all the elements of it to bewell produced and as expressive as I could possibly make them.
I uploaded it to a podcast service and thought 2 or 3 of my friendswould download it because they were being kind and never actuallyever listen to it. After a week of it being up and me more or lessforgetting about it, I had an email from the podcast hostingcompany saying that my download bandwidth had been exceeded and Ineeded to pay for an upgrade, which I though 'thats weird', but Iupgraded it, two days later the same thing happened again, andagain, and again, and £100 down the road realised Ihad to go with an unlimited bandwidth podcasting service!
The podcast became ridiculously well known, in the first month itgot 8,000 downloads at which point I got a bit freaked out by it,cos I never really considered myself still at that point to be aDJ, merely playing music that I liked! People started adding me onFacebook like crazy and sending messages to the point Facebookclosed my old account down because they said 'it was too active'whatever that means!
The podcast has been going for about 18 months now, it's enteredthe iTunes chart many times, usually after a new episode, and hashundreds of thousands of subscribers. The club in Manchester that Iset up went on to outgrow three venues, and hosted the dancesection at Manchester International Festival.
I decided to move to London and try at becoming a DJ and promoterfull-time. Partly 'cos I'd got fed-up of rainy greying Manchesterbut mainly motivated by the fact I love clubs and to get paid to bein them, get free guestlist for all the parties I love was the bestoccupation I could think of. So I channelled all my energy intodoing that.
When I arrived in London, I quickly realised venues in the cityseemed really apprehensive about laptop-dj's playing and preferredpeople to use CDJs, the reason for this seemed to be the collectivenegative experiences of people blagging gigs and not really knowingwhat they were doing, people turning up expecting a soundguy toknow how to plug equipment in, sound distorting and clipping etc,so for the first couple of months my bookings were sparse becauseof London laptop-phobia, so I focussed on putting on events to makea living.
I realised I was going to have to learn how to mix using CDJs, afriend of mine Buster Bennett runs a DJ academy called 808 which isbased inside an actual club, and he offered to train me up on CDJsso I could increase my bookings. I spent a couple of months justpractising how to mix using them, the stuff I'd learned aboutphrasing and harmonic mixing from using the laptop was useful, butlearning how to beat-match and use the mixer was a steep learningcurve and it was like learning from day one again. I finally got togrips with CDJs and Buster kept pushing me to learn new things,like cutting in tracks, and playing with the faders, and DJ tricks,which when he showed me looked and sounded so easy and amazing, butI thought there is noway I'm ever gonna get there. Through sheerbloody-mindedness I got there, and I was finally getting goodbookings. I have a few practice sessions a week at 808 as I stillcan't afford my own decks, Buster really pushes me to learn newstuff, I'm pretty certain he's going to make me learn scratchingsoon.
At the moment I play out regularly, I have a weekly residency at anight called Your Mum's House which is at a venue called Punk inSoho, the music policy is the same as my own, and its probably oneof the most popular parties in the city at the moment with afantastic atmosphere. I play regularly at an event called Nuke ThemAll, which is at the moment my most favourite club in the wholewide world, so when I first played there I was so nervous, but thatfor me was probably the moment of synthesis when the ambition ofwanting to be a DJ and the reality that I could now comfortablycall myself a DJ occurred. Since then they have invited me back tocurate their basement club, and I also played at their tent atOffset Festival. I've played at loads of venues and nights acrossLondon and Manchester, and this year I'm turning to producing myown tracks, so I'm entering yet another phase and want to move onto the next level and in my perfect world be jetting around theplanet earth playing at some amazing parties, and getting paid todo it. My dream job!! : )
I'm into all kinds of music, the music that I play out is from allkinds of genres, some people say I'm 'fidget' or 'dubstep' but Ilisten to all kinds of music, I would say that my sets mostly areheavy bass, unusual rhythms, urban feel, upbeat but not fluffy, andas my mate says 'sick' : ) More than anything I trust my intuitionwhen shopping for tracks . But if I were to give labels, I wouldsay the genres were, fidget, bassline, electro, dubstep, grime,baile funk, kuduro, b-more, garage, drum'n'bass, 'old skool' rave,acid house. I'm really excited about Balinese music at the moment,and with my own productions, it's gonna have this sort of flavourto it... but where it leads me I don't know yet, in an ideal worldI'd love to create a whole new genre! Maybe call it ScallyStep!Ha!!
That's me!
scallydandan
Hiya!
I'm based in London, Camden to be more exact but I come from theNorth of England and have sporadically had spells of staying inLondon for the past 12 years, but am based here full time now.
I started DJing a couple of years back, purely by accident. It allhappened when I was living in Manchester, for some reason the musicthat I was into wasn't being played at clubs in the city,occassionally there were a few big names such as Switch who'd do agig at a big party, but there definitely was no grass-roots nightshappening that celebrated off-centre electronic music.
With a friend (KevBeard of The Beards) I set-up a night calledTerrorist, in the process of setting it up, I really got a complexthat I wanted to play the specific sort of music I liked, and likemost people who become DJs believed that only I could play it inthe way I liked! A friend suggested I just use my laptop to DJ atthe opening night. He gave me some software and spent the nextmonth learning about matching phrases and harmonic mixing etc, andthe software kind of took care of the beat-matching for me (in mostcases!)
Whilst I was practising how to use the software I started recordinglittle 10-minute mini-mixes just to help me improve, it wassuggested I should use them online to help promote the night wewere setting up. I did and was really overwhelmed by the feedbackthat I got which was really positive and was encouraged to dolonger mixtapes and set them up as a podcast.
I created a podcast, got a photographer called Zach Rathore (who isa genius) to make images for the tiny jpeg cover art as mybackground is in fine art I wanted all the elements of it to bewell produced and as expressive as I could possibly make them.
I uploaded it to a podcast service and thought 2 or 3 of my friendswould download it because they were being kind and never actuallyever listen to it. After a week of it being up and me more or lessforgetting about it, I had an email from the podcast hostingcompany saying that my download bandwidth had been exceeded and Ineeded to pay for an upgrade, which I though 'thats weird', but Iupgraded it, two days later the same thing happened again, andagain, and again, and £100 down the road realised Ihad to go with an unlimited bandwidth podcasting service!
The podcast became ridiculously well known, in the first month itgot 8,000 downloads at which point I got a bit freaked out by it,cos I never really considered myself still at that point to be aDJ, merely playing music that I liked! People started adding me onFacebook like crazy and sending messages to the point Facebookclosed my old account down because they said 'it was too active'whatever that means!
The podcast has been going for about 18 months now, it's enteredthe iTunes chart many times, usually after a new episode, and hashundreds of thousands of subscribers. The club in Manchester that Iset up went on to outgrow three venues, and hosted the dancesection at Manchester International Festival.
I decided to move to London and try at becoming a DJ and promoterfull-time. Partly 'cos I'd got fed-up of rainy greying Manchesterbut mainly motivated by the fact I love clubs and to get paid to bein them, get free guestlist for all the parties I love was the bestoccupation I could think of. So I channelled all my energy intodoing that.
When I arrived in London, I quickly realised venues in the cityseemed really apprehensive about laptop-dj's playing and preferredpeople to use CDJs, the reason for this seemed to be the collectivenegative experiences of people blagging gigs and not really knowingwhat they were doing, people turning up expecting a soundguy toknow how to plug equipment in, sound distorting and clipping etc,so for the first couple of months my bookings were sparse becauseof London laptop-phobia, so I focussed on putting on events to makea living.
I realised I was going to have to learn how to mix using CDJs, afriend of mine Buster Bennett runs a DJ academy called 808 which isbased inside an actual club, and he offered to train me up on CDJsso I could increase my bookings. I spent a couple of months justpractising how to mix using them, the stuff I'd learned aboutphrasing and harmonic mixing from using the laptop was useful, butlearning how to beat-match and use the mixer was a steep learningcurve and it was like learning from day one again. I finally got togrips with CDJs and Buster kept pushing me to learn new things,like cutting in tracks, and playing with the faders, and DJ tricks,which when he showed me looked and sounded so easy and amazing, butI thought there is noway I'm ever gonna get there. Through sheerbloody-mindedness I got there, and I was finally getting goodbookings. I have a few practice sessions a week at 808 as I stillcan't afford my own decks, Buster really pushes me to learn newstuff, I'm pretty certain he's going to make me learn scratchingsoon.
At the moment I play out regularly, I have a weekly residency at anight called Your Mum's House which is at a venue called Punk inSoho, the music policy is the same as my own, and its probably oneof the most popular parties in the city at the moment with afantastic atmosphere. I play regularly at an event called Nuke ThemAll, which is at the moment my most favourite club in the wholewide world, so when I first played there I was so nervous, but thatfor me was probably the moment of synthesis when the ambition ofwanting to be a DJ and the reality that I could now comfortablycall myself a DJ occurred. Since then they have invited me back tocurate their basement club, and I also played at their tent atOffset Festival. I've played at loads of venues and nights acrossLondon and Manchester, and this year I'm turning to producing myown tracks, so I'm entering yet another phase and want to move onto the next level and in my perfect world be jetting around theplanet earth playing at some amazing parties, and getting paid todo it. My dream job!! : )
I'm into all kinds of music, the music that I play out is from allkinds of genres, some people say I'm 'fidget' or 'dubstep' but Ilisten to all kinds of music, I would say that my sets mostly areheavy bass, unusual rhythms, urban feel, upbeat but not fluffy, andas my mate says 'sick' : ) More than anything I trust my intuitionwhen shopping for tracks . But if I were to give labels, I wouldsay the genres were, fidget, bassline, electro, dubstep, grime,baile funk, kuduro, b-more, garage, drum'n'bass, 'old skool' rave,acid house. I'm really excited about Balinese music at the moment,and with my own productions, it's gonna have this sort of flavourto it... but where it leads me I don't know yet, in an ideal worldI'd love to create a whole new genre! Maybe call it ScallyStep!Ha!!
That's me!
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Comment by MoRRis90 on ScallyDanDan's Dubstep Fidget Mixtape:
nice listening and I ask about voice. thanks:) http://www.letsmix.com/mix/39570/morris_pioneer_spring_sessions#/mix/39570/morris_pioneer_spring_sessions
8 maj (2 months ago) -
Comment by beatfreakmedia on Waddup World?:
Hey whats up! Just stoppin thru to tell u about my latest mix uploaded for the Pioneer Spring Sessions comp. Check it out and if u like please vote for it. Keep it CRUNK! http://www.letsmix.com/mix/39631/spring_love_2010_mix
6 maj (2 months ago) -
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Comment by mauski on ScallyDanDan's Dubstep Fidget Mixtape:
mate this is sooo good well done ! why arnt you signed?
20 mars (4 months ago) -
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