“I couldn’t cut it in the jazz world,” he says. “I was a jazz musician and tried as hard as I could, but it’s just too difficult these days with all the jazz clubs I used to play at closing down.” As a youngster he fell in with UK label Hed Kandi and played alongside Bob Sinclair and Martin Solveig, bringing the trumpet behind the decks and fuelling his new love for dance music. Coming back to Australia, he met two up and coming DJs who asked him if he wanted to play with them.
“It was at a gig in Wollongong of all places where I met The Stafford Brothers, and they invited to me to play with them because their usual player was sick or something,” he says. “The gig was actually the festival Summafieldayze, and we played the main stage having never rehearsed together, and it just worked out.”
This new beginning for the former high school trumpet tutor led to opportunities to mix Ministry of Sound compilations, play Pacha Ibiza and release his own singles. He has a collaboration in the works with Aussie rapper 360, and also wants to make the most of the US market with The Stafford Brothers now residing there.
“I’ve got a US visa and am working with the Stafford’s who are kind of setting it up for me over there, which is great,” he says. “To really break through there I would have to live there, which they do, and their track Hello with Lil Wayne out now is doing really well.”
When he can find the time to listen, music in general is his sole inspiration and he says he loves to play what’s new, breaking down musical boundaries in the process. “I’m loving Spofity and listening to music through that, and although I don’t write any of it, I’m really getting into trap music,” he says. “I’m impressed by Flume, and I’ve always loved the Melbourne sound and Will Sparks as well.”
The significance of the instrument he plays to his sound and the career he’s forged for himself is something he hasn’t forgotten. “I’ve always looked at myself as a trumpet player and not a DJ,” he says. “I’ve been playing trumpet since I was four years old, and I did trumpet tutoring through high school and jazz band world tours when I was young. The trumpet for me is everything.
“I play trumpet about 50 per cent of the time in my sets,” he says. “I do that because it’s not about me, it’s about the music that I’m playing.”
BY TOM KITSON
