Robot Wars

Ive been pretty much been into House/Techno since the early nineties. It somehow seemed to fill a gap left by the lack of good lyrics in the pop-ification of punk and the movement away from self growth in Hip-Hop, more than that though, it felt right for the times. House was pretty much the only place where all the colors, creeds and sexes came together in a pretty segregated South Africn society. Our group of firends from Pretoria were pretty much in the middle of it from the beginning. We started learning to mix using one Sony and one Marantz turntable, both were belt-driven, both responded differently and both used a little knob for pitch control. The mixer had no faders, just knobs. It was hard. It took me so long to learn how to just get the tracks in sync. When I first touched an SL1200, I thought was a perfect machine; it just did what it was told.   From then on I started DJing in all sorts of places. School parties and small shitty clubs. My most interesting season was playing at a Goth club on wednesday, a House Club on Friday and a Punk Club on Saturday; I still had a regular job at an IT company so I don't remember sleeping much. Occasionally I would get a good gig at a big club in Joburg, but never had a residency; let's just say I had other priorities.  Anyways, Somewhere along the way I started learning how to make tunes, first on Rebirth, then with an analogue 505, then FLstudio and Cubase. My favorite moments during this period were coming home with friends after a skwat party and making tunes together. The room had two keyboards, mics a microkorg and a Virus. We made Hip-Hop and House and all sorts of stuff.  It's a pity I never tried to release anything, I have thousands of incomplete tracks. ANyways, thanks to to Doha crew, Ive started mixing again (after a 15 year hiatus) and I am finally starting to finish some tracks. Hope to bring you some soon on the dancefloor.

Robot Wars

regexgreg