DJ and producer Jay Brooks from Kassel, Germany, was introduced to electronic music (Kraftwerk;Tangerine Dream; Yellow etc.) and vinyl’s by his father, when he was only a 5-year-old boy. Fascinated by the ‘black gold’, he soon bought his first LP, a break dance sampler. This was the very start of his passion for music. Growing up in the 80’s and being inspired by radio and his social environment, he soaked up everything related to music. Ever since, Depeche Mode and new wave have been his favourite kind of music. Whenever he heard these records playing on the radio, he would scrape all his pocket money together to get them. Thus, by the beginning of the 90’s, he already had a small collection of 12 inch records.

When the Euro Dance Wave (Snap; Dr. Alban; Culture Beat) came up in 1991, Jay listened to a 3-hour non-stop DJ-Mix by Sven Väth and Torsten Fenslau on the new radio program ‘HR3 Clubnight’. That was very fascinating and new to him. At this time, he also met two DJs through their mutual hobby skateboarding. They introduced him to the art of mixing tracks. After this experience, he took all of his savings and bought his first mix set and a lot of techno and house records. From this time on, he practiced very hard and kept on listening to every ‘Clubnight’ to get deeper in to the art of mixing. He also visited electronic music parties to see DJ’s performing live. When he joined two friends DJing at a party, he was asked to perform the first hour of the night. This was the defining moment for his DJ career. From this point on, he knew what he wanted to be: a DJ!

He organised little gigs at private parties and other locations, to improve his skills. Living in Kassel was a great inspiration for him, because one of Germany’s most popular techno clubs, the Factory (Stammheim/ Aufschwung Ost), was located there. Every famous DJ of the house and techno scene, performed in this club. Thus, Jay always kept up-to-date according to current music trends and releases. During this time he had his first performances in little clubs in Kassel, Kitzingen and Hannover.

When the ‘Factory’ closed down in 2002, he lost his motivation to go on with his career. In addition, he did not like the upcoming trend of ‘minimal techno’ and paused DJing for a while. In 2004 he received a CD with two ‘BBC Essential Mix’ programs by Adam Freeland and the Plump DJ’s. Overwhelmed by the new and powerful style, commonly known as ‘Nu Skool Breaks’, he started collecting records of this genre and soaked up everything which was connected to the British music scene. He began performing again. Only after a little while he realized that the style he was following now was not very popular in Germany. People tend to mix up ‘Break’ with drum’n bass and ‘Break’ DJ’s cannot be categorised easily.

To stand out from the DJ crowd, he doesn’t interpret ‘break beats’ in a common sense. Instead his style is affected by a mixture of different music styles to prevent a monotonous sound. Many influences such as Fidget, Nu Rave, Chicago House, Techno, Rock, Hip Hop and Electro, can be found in his diversified sets. For him it is essential that his music rocks the dance floor and makes the audience having fun. Since a lot of people are interested in his style, he is booked not only national (Leipzig; Darmstadt and so on) but also international (Baden/ Switzerland; Krakow/ Poland etc.). Three years ago Jay has also started producing his own tracks which were signed to the labels ‘Big Mamas House’ (Germany), ‘DSR Records’ (UK), and our very own ‘Bone Idle Records’. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.