As hard as I find it to believe I've been mixing hardcore records together under the alias of Lukozade for around 15 years now. Sucked into the rave scene in my early teens via the multitude of pirate radio stations that littered London's airwaves, I was mixing by 15 and taking my first tentative steps into playing out a couple of years later. Inspired by my first underage raving experiences (particularly to the legendary Dream Allnighters and Club Labyrinth in Dalston Lane), it was hard, fast and uplifting hardcore music that I became obsessed with at the start.
My first breaks came on the radio, scoring a few guest sets on London bases pirate stations before settling into life on Addiction 95.2FM which had absolutely taken London by storm. This lead me to Steve Uplift and Cris E Manic, which in turn basically lead to the formation of Raw Elements... happy days!
From a musical point of view, I've always been drawn to that raw, original hardcore sound - frenetic break beats, rough stabs and uplifting pianos and after around about 2000-2001 I was probably playing more old skool hardcore (91-92 kind of old) sets than I was upfront hardcore. It's in these arenas I've had some of my biggest DJ'ing highlights; Raindance @ Brixton Academy - playing to 3000 people at 3am on my 21st birthday; Moondance's @ Camden Palace - incredible, unforgeable nights; Tranzmission @ Ally Pally - beautiful venue.
Over the years I've played both upfront and old skool hardcore for the scene's biggest names including HTID, Helter Skelter, Hardcore Heaven, Raindance, United Dance, Vibealite, Dreamscape, Slammin' Vinyl, Labrynth, Moondance...
Hardcore wise my finest hour was probably the release of Raw Elements #7 - Progression / Concorde. Produced with Stargazer (to use his original name), they're both tunes I'm still really proud of - they also did pretty well in terms of sales with Concorde gaining some kind of mini-cult status thanks to Proteus caning it for quite some time (he's a proper legend, even sending me a message bigging up the tune... massive respect!!)
My musical wings are spread a bit wider these days and some kind of confused schizophrenic, I've got about 4 different names for DJ'ing/producing. There have been several 'things in the hardcore pipeline' as DJ Lukozade for several years now, but that pipeline seems to have narrowed somewhat, so I've stopped making any suggestions about a follow up hardcore release. But you never know!
