The Story so far.....
My first introduction to dance music was back in 1990 when at the time I was into heavy metal music. There was an illegal rave going off on a site in my local town, Leicester know as the Cattle Market. We went along after hearing about it on a night out in town and it was a fantastic night. I don't remember much about it but I do remember being drawn towards the DJ's and watching what they were doing. My love for dance music was born.
I spent the next few months attending more organised and illegal raves (in an Iron Maiden T shirt!) and always coming home thinking "that was the best night ever". My draw towards the music by this point was so strong I decided it was time to have a go at this DJing thing.
On a shoestring budget I managed to blag a mixer from a friend and had a couple of turntables laying around, they did not have pitch controls they were just standard hi-fi turntables. I bought a few tunes from the genre now known as OldSkool Hardcore and set about mixing them up whilst using my finger on the decks to keep them in time. A little unorthodox I know but it was all I had and what great fun it was. I adopted the name DJ Speed which later Turned to DJ Freebase, I was not playing anywhere but was known as that amongst my friends.
By 1992 I was starting to gather a large collection of Hardcore and my Grandma (RIP) lent me the money to buy some Technics 1210's and a decent mixer. By this time I had quite a few contacts at various raves and some very enthusiastic friends pushing me forward. It was at this point I thought "I'm actually quite good at this, lets see how far we can take it"
By 1993 I had started to attend more illegal parties and club nights playing this new music, Trance. Unhappy with the way the hardcore music was going by late 1993 I started buying up records of this new sound I had found and was loving every minute of it. It was at this point I got my first break in DJ'ing, actually 2 breaks, breaks that later proved to be twice as difficult as I was having to maintain 2 sets of music within the same genre, Trance and Hard Trance.
A club opened by the name of Dielectric in my home town Leicester, UK, it was a club playing Happy Hardcore with a dirty cellar playing full on Techno music. Although I was drifting away from this music at the time the vibe in this club was awesome and is now legendary amongst the hardcore scene. After a few months of the club being open I met the manager, Dave, who I convinced to listen to my tape, not of Hardcore or Techno but high energy Trance. He loved it and 2 weeks later I was spinning at the Diehard club. He didn't however love the drug references in my DJ name and suggested the name DJ Resonate. DJ Resonate was born, a name I still use to this day. A couple weeks after that I was offered a residency, a residency that lasted almost 4 years. Playing at Diehard was particularly challenging as I was playing something completely different to the rest of the DJ's there and educating the regulars took some time but in the end I prevailed in delivering the Hard Trance sound to the Hardcore masses.
Why all of this was going on I met a guy at some local illegal parties, his name was Gaz. Gaz had a vision of making his own parties and he had an aptitude for carpentry and sound engineering (odd I know!). After a lot of equipment purchase, speaker building and a van purchase Elemental Sound System was born and I was asked to be there leading DJ. Elemental played proper Trance and Acid music. Using our contacts on the illegal party scene around the Midlands we were quickly doing illegal parties in fields, tunnels, warehouses, wherever we could find many with 100's in attendance. Elemental went on to do over 50 illegal parties and became very popular with the local law enforcement officers :) The offspring of the illegal parties were club nights under the Elemental name all over the Midlands taking in some huge venues along the way.
As a result of my talent for DJ'ing in both the Hardcore and Trance scene I went on to do 100's of gigs the length and breadth of the UK taking in major clubs and nights all over the country. 4 years later, 1998. Elemental broke up after one too many brushes with the law, it was becoming unsustainable. Diehard got busted and later closed and my love for Trance music was wavering as I wasn't happy with the direction it was going and Hardcore was long out of my thoughts. It was time for DJ Resonate to hang up his headphones and although I still had many other club nights to play at my enthusiasm was just not there so I gracefully bowed out.
Fast forward to 2008, I still had my decks and entire record collection gathering dust in the attic, still primarily listened to dance music and spent them 9 years getting my career on track in IT and now have a beautiful 3 year old daughter.
Dave from Diehard calls and asks me to play at a Diehard Reunion gig in Peterborough, UK. It didn't take many minutes to accept his offer and immediately went about digging out my decks and Oldskool Trance. After a successful party for Diehard my enthusiasm was back again. The DJ's there were using these weird things, CD's lol. I felt a bit antiquated with these Vinyl records and whilst I still prefer the medium I quickly realised that most of the new Trance was not available on Vinyl. After some research I purchased 2x Pioneer CDJ 1000 MK3's and a shiny DJM 600 mixer and set about modern Trance music. I went on to play 4 club gigs in 2008.
My love of 90's Trance still strong I decided to send an Oldskool demo to www.di.fm the world's leading dance music internet radio station, I had been a regular listener since 2002. A few days later Johan (DJ Irish) came back to me telling me he was going to air it on their Oldskool channel. Elated I was quickly offered a regular show on the channel and currently play for them every 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month with my own show "Rewind with DJ Resonate" The show plays Oldskool Trance from both the Genres I used to cater for.
During this time I was also building up a strong Modern Trance collection and after a demo submission to DI got my first Newskool Trance mix aired on their Trance channel to over 4000 listeners with fantastic feedback.
With several club gigs and regular radio shows booked for 2009 the future for the new, rejuvenated DJ Resonate is bright. Stay tuned!
If you are interested in booking DJ Resonate please see the Contact page where there are several options for contacting me.