MUSIC FROM PLANET EARTH: PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE

With his tinnitus-inducing clothing, it's always hard to miss Will Styles.
 
Classically trained from a young age, Will grew up playing violin, piano, French horn, xylophone, timpani, drums and glockenspiel. As a 16-year-old grunge fan, he discovered dance music whilst wearing 2 flannies, a Skid Row t-shirt and torn jeans. By the end of the night he was on the dance floor, waving his flannies around his head. He was hooked to the beats. Will tried and failed at mixing his first record just hours later. Since then, he has always endeavoured to play the rave, but it was only with the advent of DubRave that people began responding positively.
 
In 2001, he started FunkTrust with a couple of mates. It was all part of a plan to drink beer, meet girls and pay off gambling debts. Every Thursday for 6 years, FunTrust played party-style hip hop, original uncut funk and block rocking' breaks at The Globe and The Hunter Bar resulting in a statistically improbably high rate of Friday absenteeism. Artists who played at the club include the Nextmen, Malente, Mickey Finn, DJ Food, Freddy Fresh and Fort Knox Five. This success lead to Will's first taste of festival whoredom: Big Day Out, Splendour in the Grass, Parklife, Future Music Festival, Field Day, Shore Thing, Sydney Festival First Night, Falls Festival. Will played Good Vibrations in a full panda suit, his FunkTrust-heterosexual-life-partner, Learned Hand, donned a full monkey suit.  Will had arrived; he was rubbing shoulders with the great and good and entertained no-less a pop star than Sandi Thom (no, really.)
 
After a 2 year stint presenting Tuesday Sunsets on Sydney community station FBi, Radio FunkTrust started in 2007. Will & Aaron were invited to play before Silverchair at Triple J's One Night Stand in Cowra, and of course brought their dancing panda with them. After the 2008 Hottest 100 broadcast, with at least one million people tuning-in, he managed to spill a full beer into a million-dollar mixing desk... It broke the desk but he didn't get fired. Radio FunkTrust finished at the end of 2010 on a high, every week they reached 70,000 people with nothing better to do on a Friday night.
 
DubRave started in December 2009, and having thrown parties all over Australia, they have landed a regular home at Sydney's Chinese Laundry. It was launched with the same underground aesthetic, and the same flagrant disregard of genre that made FunkTrust such a success. This time, however, the sounds focused on bass music, particularly the nascent sound of dubstep. They've hosted parties for South Rakkas Crew, Doorly, DJ MK (Dizzee Rascal's tour DJ) and Nu:tone & MC Wrec. The biggest nights always featured local line-ups, a testament to the strength of the brand and the depth of the talent.
 
At the start of 2011, Will represented the DubRave sound around Australia with MC Hayley Boa on the Boiler Room tour. Their show injected bass music directly in the ears of over 100,000 ravers in just 6 shows, including 2 capacity performances in Sydney of 35,000 each.
 
Chosen to mix Ministry of Sound's "Sound of Dubstep" compilation alongside Israel's Borgore, Will is to tour around Australia throughout May and June. Appearing on the mix; Paul Mac personally approved Will's remix Itch-e & Scratch-e's Sweetness and Light; the first remix allowed since its release in 1995. The compilation features tunes from Chase & Status, Skrillex, Rusko and Sub Focus, plus original Will Styles productions and tunes from his label, DubRave. Will's partner in DubRave is MC Shureshock, Australia’s No. 1 MC, a certified raver and all-round party rocker. The CD charted #1 on the iTunes dance chart, #4 on the iTunes album chart (knocking off Justin Bieber) and #7 on the ARIA compilation chart.


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