The story so far...
Dan Bevins (real name Dan Kirk), has been DJing for over 8 years now, although 2 of these were spent without decks as he went backpacking around Asia and Australia. 
Born in Buxton in 1981, he has spent most of his life in the North West of England (Buxton, Stockport and Macclesfield) but spent numerous years in Australia between '85 and '92.
He's now living in Bondi with his girlfriend Olivia where he has just started getting back into the scene after a long time off the scene.
Back home in Manchester he was regularly doing sets at local clubs and bars along with getting a residency for Something Funky in Manchester. He also spent 3 months doing a weekly dhow on www.future-fm.com but this ended after bad management and promotion by the production team.
The highlight of his DJing career to date being a set at Sankeys playing for his mates night Obsession.
Being heavily into the music is the reason Dan started DJing originally as the only way he could get the tunes he heard on his nights out clubbing was to buy them on vinyl. This led him to get a pair of decks - "some big, f*ck-off wooden based Vestax jobbies", and teach himself how to string two records together. With his mate Emma lending him a considerable amount of records to practice with, he whiled away the hours at home trying to learn the basics of mixing till stupid o'clock nearly every night for about 6months (p*ssing the neighbours off no-end in the process), until finally it all started to snap into place.
From there he progressed until he had built up a decent level of tricks and skills to make his sets stand out from the crowd. He has gone on to learn basic scratching skills (both beats and samples), effects manipulation, sample manipulation and how to build a decent set that flows together nicely.
The thing that has changed most with Dan over the years though is simply his taste in music. Originally starting with trance in 2000 with the odd bit progressive here and there, he soon moved onto a darker sort of techno sound after only a couple of years. From there he went to a prog/tech house phase but while still playing this he got very into the house scene (funky, American, dirty, deep and electro) after one of his mates started a night up in Manchester and with him going to see Erick Morillo a few times. He plays a lot of house these days yet he has also stuck with the prog/tech house he's been into for a few years but has linked it with breakbeat and some heavier techno stuff too, I think mainly due to his liking of sets by people such as Zabiela, Holden and Burridge. It's an expensive hobby doing it like this but he enjoys it so fair do's!
"If I have to be drawn into the discusssion of exactly what styles I play I'd say I play all forms of house music as I'm really into this sort of stuff, but it also gets me gigs as it's universally appreciated around bars and clubs alike and it's much easier to get work playing that. For my own amusement though I like to play more tech/minimal stuff mixed with breaks and techno as this sort of stuff has the big, chunky, dark basslines I love. It's much harder getting gigs playing that though as it's got a much more select audience but I'm hopefully going to be setting a night up playing this sort of stuff sometime soon..."
His favourite DJ's currently are any of the Subliminal lot (namely Erick Morillo though) for their house sets and on the tech house, techno and breaks side he absolutely loves James Zabiela! A few others he's into are Lee Burridge, James Holden, Plump DJ's, Dave Clarke, Agoria and Justin Robertson. There are plenty more he really likes but if I started listing everone I'd be here all day....
Sets to date:
May 2001 - Dazed & Confuzed @ Jabez Clegg (Trance)
June 2001 - Stax New Mills... lol! (Commercial House & Trance)
Feb - May 2003 - Jar Bar Manchester (Funky House)
Nov 2003 - Obsession @ Sankeys Soap (House)
Mar 2004 - Love Bomb @ 360 Oldham (Funky House)
July 2004 - Something Funky @ Refuel (House & Breaks)
Aug 2004 - Something Funky @ Refuel (House & Breaks)
(some numpty went and put 2002 instead of 2004 though...)
Sep 2004 - Promo vid for GMC @ Barca (Vocal Funky House)
Oct 2004 - Something Funky @ Canteena (House & Breaks)
