07/10/2026
Twenty-one years.
On 8 October 2005, at 15 years old, I DJed my first ever gig.
I don’t think I had any idea what I’d started.
I just knew I loved music, loved audio equipment, loved making things loud and somehow loved being the person responsible for creating the atmosphere.
The first photo is from that very day.
The second photo is from one of my most recent gigs.
There are 21 years between these two photos.
Thousands of hours behind the decks. 1,500+ events. A ridiculous amount of equipment bought, sold, broken, upgraded and sworn at.
There have been weddings, birthdays, bars, corporate events, sporting events, conferences and plenty of rooms I never imagined I’d find myself in.
I’ve met some of my closest friends through this industry. I’ve travelled internationally because of it. I’ve been given opportunities because of it. I’ve taught people, learnt from people and somehow, after 21 years, I still regularly find myself in situations thinking, how the f**k did I end up here?
DJing has also changed enormously.
So have I.
At 15, I thought being a DJ meant playing music.
At 36, I realise the music was only ever just one part of it.
It taught me how to read a room. How to communicate. How to recover when something goes wrong. How to entertain people. How to run a business. How to put myself out there. How to walk into rooms where I know nobody and start a conversation.
Most importantly, it gave me a career I genuinely could never have designed at 15.
And the strange thing about reaching 21 years is that this doesn’t really feel like a retrospective.
If anything, I feel more excited about where this could go now than I have in years.
There are still rooms I want to work in.
There are still countries I want to work in.
And there are still plenty of completely ridiculous ideas left in my head.
So here’s to the 15-year-old kid in the first photo.
You had absolutely no f**king idea what you were starting.
I’m really glad you started it anyway.
Twenty-one today!
First pic - with RAINESY - the guy that made this all possible
Recent pic - Daniel Turner
