We've been featuring DJs, producers, artist managers and industry leaders in Tales From The Dancefloor, and in this 45th episode, our last for the first season of our podcast, we wanted to turn the tables and put our very own Phil Morse in the hot seat. You'll find out about how Phil got his start in music and DJing, his days promoting club nights …

Ben Stowe got his love of the geeky side of audio and visual gear from kicking around a TV shop as a kid. But his growing tech-savviness became his saviour when it literally allowed him to work his way out of his life in a homeless shelfer as a young adult. Now running a large company that he founded, which takes care of audio and visuals for some …

As well as being a wicked DJ, Brandon Block was seen as one of the biggest party animals of the 90s in the UK rave and club scene, living larger than life. Stories of excess were legendary, and an infamous appearance on the Brits (UK music awards) in 2000 reinforced his reputation. TV appearances including one on Celebrity Big Brother kept Brandon'…

Tall Paul was one of the biggest UK DJs of the 1990s, made famous originally via his residencies at Turnmills in London. In fact, his Turnmills Friday night "The Gallery" is still running (nowadays at Ministry of Sound). He toured America and the world, has an Ibiza residency, and scored a couple of huge hits, not least Camisra's "Let Me Show You".…

Like many a young DJ, Dominik Sobanski spend the obligatory ten years enjoying the music scene - promoting, DJing bars, hustling, living the DJ dream (in this case, in Huddersfield, in the north of England). Not many DJs can say they ended up booking Pete Tong and Calvin Harris though! But when it all fell apart, he narrowly avoided setting up a ca…

As one half of the "LuvDup Twins", Mark van den Berg - originally from Cape Town, South Africa - made a name for himself in the Manchester (or "Madchester") scene in the 1990s as a DJ, producer, and club promoter - culminating in DJs in places as far flung as Russia and Hong Kong. Later he found himself pivoting into working on an early social medi…

For those who know, John 00 Fleming is one of the flag bearers for a certain kind of underground music that was once called "trance", but that in the past 20 years has had to relabel and regroup against the EDM onslaught. In great demand and touring the world still after 30 years of professional DJng, John also has a remarkable personal history of …

Ean Golden is a name closely associated with the rise of digital DJing and controllerism, mainly through his championing the scene in San Francisco at the turn of the century, his input onto the design of some early iconic DJ hardware, and of course through being the founder and figurehead of DJ TechTools. In this honest and contemplative edition o…

For many in the know, Innofader is held as an example of all that's right about boutique companies in the DJ industry. It's a company that exists solely to make crossfaders, either so DJs can replace those that came with their DJ mixers for better performance, or for forward-looking manufacturers to fit top their gear "out of the box". And those wh…

Grahame Farmer is behind the Data Transmission website, which at its height employed 19 people and has spawned an online radio show and record label. While the site is still going strong, in the last couple of years Grahame has had a personal "pivot" into something quite different: DJ success coaching. In this episode of Tales From The Dancefloor, …

Seb Fontaine was EVERYWHERE in the 1990s - he had a Radio 1 show, he had a long-standing Cream residency, he mixed compilations for Ministry of Sound, Perfecto and Global Underground... he was one of the first wave of superstar DJs. But unlike many of his peers, he's still going strong - gigging, making music, and loving it more than ever. Here he …

Morgan Page is one of the hardest working DJ/producers in the scene, playing festivals the world over, providing music for Tesla and Space X, collecting Grammy nominations... but it all started for him not in clubs, but as a radio DJ - something he still does to this day with his Sirius XM show and podcast. In this episode of Tales From The Dancefl…

Imagine what it's like curating the music for, and DJing at, Formula E race meetings around the world each and every season, and having your DJ sets not only playing at the racetracks, but beamed into the homes of 200 million people worldwide? EJ (don't call him "DJ EJ"!) is a London-born DJ/producer who helped to create this job, and who does it y…

Aston Harvey was there right at the beginning of the explosion of DIY dance music in London in the late 80s - but little did he know when he formed his group The Freestylers with his friend Matt 10 years later, that they'd have a 20-year career championing the breakbeat sound worldwide. How did they do it? What's the secret of spending three decade…

German producer and DJ Luca Schreiner is an up and coming name to watch. Still only 24, he's self-taught, with a keen eye for what works both on the radio and the dancefloor. From his breakout cover version of Everything But The Girl's "Missing" (that got him signed to Ultra Music), to his remixes of James Arthur, Kelly Clarkson, Clean Bandit, even…

Received wisdom has it that a bunch of British DJs went to Ibiza in the late 80s and brought house music to the UK via London - something Manchester has always contested! In this episode, been-there-done-that Manchester radio and club DJ David Dunne talks about those amazing years from the perspective of the North of England. And he should know - h…

From his worldwide touring schedule, to his long-running record label Punx, to his work with names like Deadmau5 and Oliver Heldens, MOGUAI is not only a prolific DJ and producer, but also a true industry veteran, having started his career playing techno in his native Germany way back in the early 90s. In this episode of Tales From The Dancefloor, …

Growing up in a hippy collective, the young Jonas Norberg was always around music - but it was when he sold his bass guitar and bought decks and records that his path as a DJ was set. However, it is Jonas's work with Pacemaker DJ hardware and software that has shaped his adult life. Pacemaker originally made an innovative portable, handheld DJ devi…

When Stephanie Dell's teenage boyfriend left his job in the parts department of Denon, she thought "I'll apply for that!" - and immediately found herself neck-deep helping DJs with their purchases of Denon's very first DJ CD decks. Just a few years later, she'd combined her love of technology, her passion for music, and her new-found marketing abil…

Alex Zinn (aka SpinnZinn) is a techno DJ and producer who recently played a homecoming gig at Ultra, and in front of 60,000 people at Madrid's A Summer Story festival. In his day job, he's involved in the marketing of both Richie Hawtin's Model 1 mixer and Allen & Heath's Xone:96, spending much of his time touring the world with one or both in tow,…

Sam Gribben was one of the first four people to work at Serato... and when he left the company 10 years later, he'd been CEO for over half a decade, and the workforce was 75! Not bad for someone at their first serious job... Since then, Sam has combined his skills in technology, his love for music, and a life-long attraction to teaching, in his new…

Rik Parkinson, like so many, basically got into the music industry from being a fan and a DJ. Little could he have guessed at the start of his career as a junior at Pioneer DJ that he’d end up researching features DJs want and helping Pioneer DJ’s design team to bring them to market, through his current role in product development. A textbook behin…

Burma-born, UK-raised, DJ Angelo is one of the world’s most respected and versatile DJs, with a style that blends a scratch DJ's technical skill with a club DJ's ability to rock a dancefloor all night long. The past few years have seen Angelo perform across every continent of the world, as well as finding new audiences through his work as a content…

When her brother dramatically fell ill hours before a wedding he was booked to DJ at, Rachel Lynch decided that the show had to go on: Despite zero DJing experience, she stepped in and performed the gig. Now, 15 years on, she's one of the best-known and most-loved event DJs in the USA. In this fun episode of Tales From The Dancefloor, Rachel talks …

Robb McDaniels always knew he wasn't going to spend the rest of his life working in merchant banking, where he started his career. He knew the pull of the dance music scene that he loved so much was going to get him in the end. Yet when he started his first company, to bring the UK dance music he loved to the USA digitally (this was pre iTunes...),…

DJ TLM will be best known to fans of Tales From The Dancefloor as the man behind scores of supremely helpful YouTube DJing tutorials, and his #sharetheknowledge podcast series. But from his earliest days promoting events in his own house, DJ TLM has been a performer - and in this awesome episode, he reveals his life as a club, tour, mix and radio D…

Tapping into an unusual reserve of “get up and go”, a young Simon Walsh did just that. His jet-setting start to his music career involved things like, y’know, hearing Larry Levan play and visiting Studio 54 in New York… Quickly fascinated by the science of promoting new releases, Simon went on to found what is now the biggest independent music prom…

Scotty Hoogerbrug always loved dance music and owned decks - but it wasn't until he was offered the top marketing job at Serato as its CMO that his love for building businesses, coding and technology, and the DJ world all came together. And while nowadays he travels the world, gets backstage at the best gigs, even gets invited every year to Jazzy J…

Talk to any DJ who's been around long enough about Laidback Luke and you hear a similar story: He's incredibly passionate about the art of DJing, and he makes time for everyone. We'd like to add that he's also a survivor, having had a whole techno career before he reinvented himself as a more mainstream DJ/producer. But there's so much more to him …

From his first love of UK "hardcore" (the "old school rave" scene, not the guitar "hardcore"), Jay Cunning has been involved neck-deep in all things breakbeat in the UK. the breakbeat scene was a phenomenon in itself, and to those who didn't witness it first-hand, Jay's stories will in themselves be fascinating. But this podcast is more than that: …

Olga Heijns drifted into the music industry just by virtue of going out and getting to know people, at a time when there was no real career path in dance music. Yet even before her current role (which includes managing Laidback Luke), she held positions at Sony Music, SoSoDef and Mushroom Records, forging a unique path for herself. For the past 17 …

Paul Dakeyne has been in this business for a third of a century. Cutting his teeth as a DJ and remixer way before Acid House and the Summer Of Love took the UK by storm at the end of the 80s, he went on to score one of the biggest dance hits of the 90s, Tinman's "18 Strings", that just so happened to have been based around Nirvana's "Smells Like Te…

Judge Jules is often mentioned in the same breath as Carl Cox, Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong and many other "first wave" UK DJs. But as well as having had a decades-long career as a DJ and producer, Jules has also always had his eye on a second career - as a music industry lawyer. In this episode of Tales From The Dancefloor, Jules talks about his earl…

Dan Bewick was one half of prolific dance production outfit Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - but before that, he was an illegal rave promoter and DJ in London. Since them, he's gone on to have a successful career scoring films and TV adverts, based out of LA. Dan's journey has seen him touring the world playing some of the biggest gigs imaginable - but al…

Jason Jani is one of America's top wedding and event DJs. He's DJed at celebrity parties galore, including the Superbowl afterparty. When Wedding Wire (the international wedding services directory that has 8,500 DJs on its books) wants a DJ for its own events, Jason is who they book. Through a mixture of club-standard music and mixing, high quality…

Ferry Corsten is a trance superstar. In the late 90s and early 2000s he produced worldwide hits as System F, Moonman, Pulp Victim and Gouryella, working with Armin van Buuren, Tïesto and many other big names from the Dutch DJ scene. For many people his "Trance Nation" mix albums for Ministry of Sound were a huge touchpoint, but nowadays he plays a …

When DJ Dan started promoting indie club nights at university, he was doing everything himself (including the DJing), and working as hard as he could to fill one 200-person venue. Now, 17 years later, he sees 25,000 people through the doors of his club nights every weekend in the UK... and he still loves to DJ at his own events. Nowadays, Dan's org…

When he left university, Lohan Presencer didn't want to join the world of work. He didn't really want to grow up and leave the student life at all. So he applied for a job in the very university he'd been studying at, as their entertainment booker. So started an incredible and unlikely journey that took Lohan through promoting raves on the south co…

Just how do you go from teaching yourself to make mixtapes with a cassette player, to being a two-times DMC UK Supremacy Champion, five-times IDA UK Champion, and Red Bull 3style UK finalist... as well as becoming a world-touring DJ, scratch tutor and competition judge? Well, in DJ Rasp's case, he did it via a long-term stint as the DJ in a band, a…

Ever wondered what it's like being a world-renowned mashup artist? US-based DJ Adam Dutch knows, having had huge success with a succession of mashups, that tend to be (but aren't always!) in his beloved style, basically where rock and hip hop meet. I was intrigued as to how he got into it, and what his motivations are - and it turned out that he's …

From his early DJing escapades at school in Munich, Germany, Karim Morsy - the head of DJ software company Algoriddim - has come a long way. He and his team built their company - home of the Apple-centric "djay" apps - into one of the most respected DJ software developers out there. But nothing could have prepared him for what happened next... Desp…

After an obligatory ten years as a straight-up DJ, Mojaxx spent the next four years carving a space for himself online as one of the most respected reviewers of DJ technology. And yet to unwind, he likes nothing better than to ditch it all and spin his beloved 7" singles, on good old turntables. So... what's the fascination with playing vinyl when …

Like so many of us, Dan's DJing started at school. (In his case, though, it was an impossibly cool-sounding boarding school that not only favoured "normal kids" over the toffs, but admitted both sexes too!) However, unlike many, Dan's DJing took him around the world. Ever wondered what it might be like to play Ministry of Sound in Singapore? Dan co…

When he couldn't afford to hire a studio to record his band in, Joey Santos decided to start his own. Little did he know he'd go from learning how to record music on his PC, to running one of the most successful recording studios in his home city of Manila. He helped scores of bands get their music out to the world, and worked on soundtracks and TV…

When, as a child in a no-name town, Steve Canueto heard a crackly broadcast of a scratch DJ from London on the radio, he knew there and then he had to get to the big city and be part of the music he'd just discovered. His journey took him far and wide as a DJ, and his passion and drive eventually led to him making a series of CDs that sold millions…