Chris Duckenfield
July 13th, 2009 by sparky
Chris Duckenfield will perform at The Big Chill 2009.
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Chris Duckenfield - Autobiography
I’m 35, male, and live in Sheffield in the north of England (once famous for Steel and Electronic Pop). I was exposed to alot of different music as a kid, both my parents being fanatical about it - Motown/Stax etc (Mum) and everything from Bach to Black Sabbath (Dad).
Luckily I grew up in a totally mixed neighbourhood (a shithole, in other words) and Hip Hop/Electro became a schoolyard and summer holiday obsession. After sneaking into a few clubs and house parties in the mid to late 80’s, not to mention religiously making epic ‘pause-button’ cassette compilations from the radio, I began hearing a totally new style of music and Djing - music which felt like the futuristic answer to the music I’d grown up on, I was hooked!
And so it goes, despite being something of a dribbling participant in the biggest youth movement of the late 20th century, I actually must have learnt quite alot whilst staggering around the Hacienda, Kool Kat, Jive Turkey & Occasions.
I now play other people’s records for a living, and make a few of my own. Once upon a time I studied English, with a view to becoming a teacher. I also studied - at great length - LSD, music and the art of the compilation tape (not necessarily at the same time). Eventually, music and LSD convinced me teaching was for overly hairy masochists with an unusual passion for corduroy.
So it was with a sense of confusion, a small record collection and even smaller amount of talent that I became a DJ. In 1989 I got my first residency, along with DJ buddy at the time, Richard Benson. I learnt the art of making people dance, and putting records together ‘on the job’, having only had experience of one turntable and the pause button on a tape recorder prior to my debut gig. The crowd were very tolerant and enthusiastic about this learning curve (see, extremely high) we also had a very succesful pirate radio show.
We played at a few raves for 12 - 15,000 people, for about 50 quid each - strange times and almost enough to put me off for life, but there was always the music, mountains and mountains of the stuff.
So, I got a proper job in the WARP record store, at the time the creative centre for the UK’s most forward thinking artists. I even made a few records for them (as RAC) first on the Nucleus label and later on WARP proper, some of which were OK. It was through WARP that I met Richard Brown. We’re still occasionally working together to this day. We started a joint project called SWAG (due to the fact that we stole every loop and idea from other, far more talented people), since then we’ve done quite a few records, and even more remixes for other people, some of them are quite good too!
I also run a label called Odori and occasionally one called Primitive - We do some nice things with those as well, releasing our own curiously popular output as well as music from likeminded artists who choose to throw out the rule book in favour of more boundary pushing sounds.
Having been Djing for 15 odd years, I think I’ve just about got a handle on it. I spend ludicrous amounts of money on music, foresaking many material essentials such as settee’s, soap, and food in order to quench my thirst.
I’m lucky enough to get booked to thundering cathedrals of rave like Fabric as well as such bastions of House Music as the Sub Club in Glasgow and Mad Racket in Sydney, not to mention temples of soulful sonic wizardry like The Electric Chair, Jigsaw Music and, well too many to mention here really, but you get the idea - All of which I love equally.
Apart from all that I run my own little second hand record grocery DUCKBEATS RECORDS. This has the dual purpose of allowing me to offload the often quadruple copies of great records I pick up on my travels, and provides a few extra pennies to supplement my belligerently underground DJ existence.
I DJ Most weekend’s and am loving it more than ever, meeting lovely people and entertaining are addictive in the extreme - I’m also still having enormous fun making music, of whatever variety…..some of which you can hear throughout this site, or better still in a club/stinky basement near you soon. Amen.
www.myspace.com/chrisduckenfield
Chris Duckenfield will perform at The Big Chill 2009.
A-Z line-up | Buy tickets
July 17th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
This man rocks the custard every time, without fail. Earth shaking tunes, mixed like a fucking pro. Yes!