Mixing a blend of Drum & Bass,Jungle and Breakbeat enfused Electonica with live Scratching + Decks & FX. In the late 90s/early 00s Dextacy was spending his weekends DJing predomninantly around Birmingham and the West Midlands; part of an Art's & Music collective known as The Brum Creative. Our main haunts were the Custard Factory (Medicine Bar, Cafe Des Artistes, Theatre Space) and other pubs, clubs and bars in Digbeth such as the The Dance Factory... More about Dextacy
Since I was the age of around 10/11 I wanted to DJ... mainly because my mate Dan wanted to DJ... he wanted to DJ because his Dad and Uncle used to run a Reggae Sound System and make Speaker Boxes for other Sounds'.
Me and Dan were introduced to Reggae and Dancehall music very early on. Then we started to hear some of these Reggae and Dancehall samples in the Breakbeat Hardcore/Jungle music that we were hearing more and more at the time.
We also used to have a Jukebox in my house and which had loads of my Mum's 45's including various Ska records (Two Tone), Motorhead, Punk, Dilinja, Alfea & Donna, Elvis Costello, Opus III... and if the Jukebox wasn't on my mum was playing anuything and everthing else on the Stereo or Music programs on the Tele'. Me and Dan also used to see what we could tune into on the radio predominantly trying to find stations playing either Reggae or Jungle music such as PCRL, Choice FM and then whatever Pirate radio stations were around Birmingham then (Before Kool FM Midlands was around which would also become an essential part of weekend listening). We would be in the kitchen holding the radio in the air and twisting the antenna and then recording tapes to bring into school.
I continued down the Jungle and Electronica path, Dan stuck to his Reggae roots and is part of Jah Hamma Sound System "Jah Hamma have played alongside all of the major sounds including Jah Tubby's,King Earthquake,Aba Shanti,Channel One,Iration Steppa's,Young Warrior plus artists like Macka B and Cheshire Cat"
I ended up getting my first set of decks at the age of around 15 back in 1998 and me and Daniel played our first gig at a place called The Gallery (now called The Sunflower Lounge).
I started entering a few DJ Battles/Competitions including Miss Moneypennies Young DJ of the year comptetition (I actually won my heat but was too young to progess) and also landed a few gigs at a bar in Brum near the Arcadian called Heroes; even had a brief residency there. The music policy at Heroes though was strictly House Music and although I did mix some House my preference was mix more breakbeat, Jungle and DnB or various styles together. I did get a telling off for playing an Add N To (X) track on a Friday evening :D
A friend of the family Craig Earp was the guy who I bought my first set of decks from. Craig was (and still very much is) passionate about art, music and all things creative and on the back of this helped form a collective of like minded invdiduals known as The Brum Creative. The Brum Creative included various electronic acts such as Alderaan (Craig Earp, a guy called Phil, then later a guy called Chris Kennedy), Pemalas (Rob Arthur), K-Formation, Department, Arcade and DJ's such Loopz (Steve Price who ran the official Orbital website ), Phluxm, me and more. As well as Craig organising many events, other individuals played a big part and together were part of an experimental art and music scene in Brum; Steve Wilson put on nights such as Cognition (at the Sanctuary/Dance Factory) which would reguarly feature Brum Creative DJ's alongside Jade One AKA Defunkt Dialekt, Harley Davies (Void One) and Sir Real. Thomas Dunstan ran nights such as Earko (at the Medicine Bar/Custard Factory which brought AFX Twin to Brum) (I did live scratching for Alderaan live PA before T-Power did a set) and Neil Spragg (aka Sir Real) (as well as runnning the legendary Techno night House of God) ran an Internet radio show called Mouth of God (Internet Radio was still a new thing back then). We played at each others events, did radio shows together, we made music and collaborated on art and did a lot of partying. It was a great time!
Quite a few are still very much active artisically and musically; Craig has partnered up with Nathan Shwalbe as electronic duo Halt. Rob Arthur is producing and playing under the name of By Bizarre Hands
I went to Uni in Leeds and played a few clubs there but Leeds had a great House Party scene in the student areas where you could just turn up with a bag of records and then play a set. Some of these parties were really well organised and started the get a bit of name for themselves e.g "The house with the yellow door opposite Leeds Uni steps". I also started to dabble with making my own tunes.
After Uni I went travelling and did a bit of work abroad. When I moved back to Brum I ended up doing an Internet Radio show on Handsworth based KetchDis.com every Friday night/Saturday Morning 12am-2am. This was with with a couple of others Jon Jauncey and Si (a minister of a Unitarian Church), and another guy called Richard would join us from time to time. We went under the name of The Quantum Rug Traders. The typical format was a mixture of spoken word and electronica with an emphasis on World music. It was quite fun but trying to regulary get all 3 together on a Friday was hard work (I also didn't drive at the time and lived the other side of town).
If you're interested in booking Dextacy for your next event, please messag me via Insgtagram or Soundcloud