A disc jockey, often abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays existing recorded music for a live audience. Most common types of DJs include radio DJ, club DJ who performs at a nightclub or music festival and turntablist who uses record players, usually turntables, to manipulate sounds on phonograph records. Originally, the disc in disc jockey referred to gramophone records, but now DJ is used as an all-encompassing term to describe someone who mixes recorded music from any source, including cassettes, CDs or digital audio files on a CDJ or laptop. The title DJ is commonly used by DJs in front of their real names or adopted pseudonyms or stage names. In recent years it has become common for DJs to be featured as the credited artist on tracks they produced despite having a guest vocalist that performs the entire song: like for example Uptown Funk.
House music is a genre of electronic dance music created by club DJs and music producers in Chicago in the early 1980s. Early house music was generally characterized by repetitive 4/4 beats, rhythms provided by drum machines, off-beat hi-hat cymbals, and synthesized basslines. While house displayed several characteristics similar to disco music, which preceded and influenced it, as both were DJ and record producer-created dance music, house was more electronic and minimalistic. The mechanical, repetitive rhythm of house was one of its main components. Many house compositions were instrumental, with no vocals; some had singing throughout the song with lyrics; and some had singing but no actual words.
Tech house is a subgenre of house music that combines stylistic features of techno with house. The term tech house developed as a shorthand record store name for a category of electronic dance music that combined musical aspects of techno, such as "rugged basslines" and "steely beats," with the harmonies and grooves of House Music. The music originally had a clean and minimal production style that was associated with techno from Detroit and the UK.
Chris Liebing is a techno DJ, music producer, radio host and founder of the record label CLR. Chris Liebing is also a vegan and promotes the benefits of veganism publicly.
The Medicine Bar was a bar in Birmingham, England. Located in the Custard Factory in Digbeth, it has hosted many techno, acid jazz, funk and hip hop events. It started as a collaboration in the 1990s between the London Medicine bar and local hip hop DJ 'Simon Fat Head', who began his career at the Brothers and Sisters at the Coast to Coast club on Broad Street.
Glade Festival was an electronic dance music festival, founded by Nick Ladd and Ans Guise, which originally started out as Glastonbury Festival's Glade Stage, which was established by Luke Piper and Mark Parsons who also became founding partners in Glade Festival itself. Exeter breakbeat promoter Biff Mitchell also played an important role in the event's development. The annual festival took place for the first time over four days in the summer of 2004, attracting 22,500 people by 2007. The festival's home for the first five years was the Wasing Estate, in Berkshire. In 2009 it was held in Winchester, and in 2011 and 2012 its location was at Houghton Hall in Norfolk. The festival was cancelled in 2013, it did not reappear as was planned in 2014, however the Glade Stage at the main Glastonbury festival continues.
The Zap was a Nightclub in Brighton, England that became famous in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly for the acid house nights that were held there. It has been described as an "influential ... club which pulled together many of the underground strands of visual art, fashion, music, design, comedy, cabaret and theatre which were circling at the time".
Shine was a night club located in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The club was started in 1995 by local DJ Alan Simms. Since its inception it had been held in the Mandela hall, part of Queen's University Students' Union. For a period in the early 2000s, the entire Students' Union building was used - informally known as 'Super Shine' and bringing its capacity to almost 2400 people - although such events have been discontinued, with the snack bar on the top floor of the building no longer in use, although it happened on boxing night 2015.
Godskitchen Global Gathering 2002 was held at Long Marston Airfield, Warwickshire, England with the Birmingham based promoters returning to the site of the previous years festival.
E-Werk was a techno music club in Berlin, Germany that was held in a former Abspannwerk Buchhändlerhof electrical substation. Located near Checkpoint Charlie, it was an influential club in the techno subculture from 1993 to 1997 and was eventually transformed into an all-purpose venue.
Sven Väth is a German DJ/producer and three time DJ Awards winner whose career in electronic music spans well over 30 years. The single “Electrica Salsa” with OFF launched his career in 1986. Lovingly referred to as “Papa Sven” by his fans, Sven Väth has made his mark in the music community by being one of Germany’s “pop stars” in the nineties, running two famous night clubs in Germany, and starting his own company Cocoon, which encompasses a booking agency, record label, and a branch for events. He is recognized for cultivating the underground electronic music scene not just in Germany but in Ibiza as well, with his own night at Amnesia for eighteen years and after-parties at creative locations around the island. Sven Väth is a major proponent of vinyl, using only two decks and a mixer for his extensive DJ sets, his longest set having been 30 hours.
Quadrant Park also known as the Quad or Quaddie was a nightclub in Bootle, UK opened during the late 1980s to the early 1990s. and one of the most important in the UK at the time. and was known to attract a number of international guest DJs. The main styles of music played were Italo house and acid house, retrospectively it could also be defined an early Superclub.
Shelley's Laserdome was a night club in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. It was at the heart of the house and rave scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s too, helping to launch the career of DJ Sasha and featuring regular appearances from Carl Cox. It was eventually shut down by Staffordshire Police.
Club Filter, based upstairs at The Lounge bar and nightclub at 243 Swanston Street in the heart of the city, holds the record as Melbourne's longest-running techno music night, having run every Wednesday night from 1992 to 2003.
The Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE) is a five-day electronic music conference and festival held annually in mid-October. The event is organized by The Amsterdam Dance Event Foundation and offers a full program of daytime conferences at ADE Pro, ADE Tech, HDE, ADE University, ADE Next, ADE Beamlab and ADE Green, alongside the nighttime ADE Festival which features 450 events and 2,200 artists over five days in 115 clubs and venues. The shows attract over 350,000 people from all over the world to the city, making Amsterdam one of the busiest clubbing cities in the world.
Allister Whitehead is a British DJ, musician, remixer and record producer, based in Nottingham. He is widely regarded as one of United Kingdom's most prolific House DJs.
Ultraschall was a nightclub in Munich, Germany from 1994 to 2003. The techno club belonged, besides the Tresor and E-Werk in Berlin, the Dorian Gray and Omen in Frankfurt, and the Munich-based clubs KW – Das Heizkraftwerk, Natraj Temple and Millennium, to the most renowned clubs of Germany's 1990s techno culture. According to FazeMag, Ultraschall was "for many techno fans the most authentic techno club alongside the Tresor".
