Bio
hi! I’m a regular guest DJ at Planet Angel and Planet Angel Chilled for the last few years. I'm also proud to call myself a BinglyBongly DJ, having performed at several of their socially atmospheric parties. Earlier in 2005 I also started and ran a series of mid-week chillouts called 'Cafe Cairo' with my good friend and partner, dub and reggae DJ extraordinaire - Fruitmonkey. Recent performances also include the Streatham Festival, Psychadelic Dream Temple, Being Human at Hackney Empire, supporting Pete Ardron and his band Orchid Star and most recently to the biggest chillout room in London at The Synergy Project.
My interest in DJing started when I ran into a number of musical influences in early 2002, most notably DJs Monkey Pilot and U-4-IC who inspired me to DJ at the wedding of 2 close friends. For my first few years as a DJ, I've concentrated on my first love, Chillout Music! Playing a variety of styles within this immense genre to suit the style and atmosphere of a venue and encourage a social atmosphere through all manner of ethnic fusions. I have gained reputation for graduating, wave-type sets that blend through 3-5 genres, covering anything from uplifting trance to breaks, tek-house to drum and bass. Along with playing some Planet Angel and Whirl-y-Gig favourites, a sprinkling of mainstream chill-out and some cheeky dubs, I’ve tried to bring more mystical, spiritual 'new-age' elements to the chill rooms. I play artists using foreign instruments, ethnic voices and electronica to form a delicate blend of compositions by various musicians from around the globe. In a somewhat pagan way, I try to play many unrecognised, unpublished and unappreciated geniuses who's music's beauty can wow a crowd - even if the record companies don't allow it into the record shops or onto the radio. I generally avoid anything that sits still for too long and try to involve as many enchanting melodies as I can. I’m not afraid of toe-tapping beats in the Chill Bar, or promoting the artists I play. Artists such as Banco de Gaia, Le Cod Afrique, Joi, Amethystium, Transglobal Underground, Timecode Indigo, Pete Ardron, Ikarus, Templehedz, Diane Arkenstone, Delerium, Conjure One, Wendy G - they define my style and their ethno-ambience aims to enhance the mood and encourage opportunity for more intimate conversation. I also welcome the occasional appropriate request, so if you know a chill-out tune you’d like to hear at an event, let me know, I’ll even try to work it into my set when you’re around!
I was born in a Midlands shire village and did a load of education that earned me an Art & Design BTEC and a general degree in mostly marketing and international studies. Throughout my early 20s I explored the world, working for my family company in export sales, engaged to a true-hearted, Texan girl with an apartment in Pennsylvania! This led me all over Europe, Scandinavia, China and 13 of the 52 US states. After some tough times with China, my father eventually couldn't cope with the stress and sold the company, moved to Australia, making me redundant somewhere in the middle. I moved on to work in sales for Peer Information (Wrox Press, Friends of Ed) which fairly promptly went bust. Then onto a graphic design agency cum printers - Ink Design, which I used to help me jump from sales to graphic design, along with marketing and IT at Sandler Seating in Bethnal Green – a creative field that I find more fulfilling and actually suits my education pretty well. I just got a rise, so I'm pretty happy with it :-)
Other hobbies? I've recently joined the crew at Whirl-y-Gig as a volunteer and enjoy the practical work there, putting up parachutes, lighting scaffolds, stringing fairy lights around trees and stuff. It makes a break from sitting at a computer far too long playing with music and techy things, it's also a family atmosphere there, which I guess I'm missing a bit with my remaining family in the Midlands and the other half in Melbourne. I also enjoy playing with my cat and his toy mouse, graphic designing, watching sci-fi, playing the odd video game and authoring this website. I've recently resigned my commitments to an ill-founded squat party to move on with more well meaning projects that will benefit more people, and of course to have more fun!
Oh, and why PAYGAN? It's a unique identifier and would have been the correct spelling if only I’d been born in the 15th century, when it was spelled with the ‘Y’! Paygans were the footsoldiers in the ancient Iranian army. It was the name of my Aunt’s horse, and an internet handle for years but lately I draw a lot of comparisons and connections between the life I lead and the music I play with that outside civilisation, outside the mainstream, outside religion and the structure such institutions place on our lives. Also with the sense of community that has developed in my life and that of pagan communities in the past. In developing Planet Angel as a new type of creative, community experience, and through the internet perhaps we are pushing the cutting edge of community and music in the modern world, but still fusing methods, ideas and practices not far from those of our ancestors.