DJ Mag
Top 100 DJs / 39. Umek
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39. Umek
Style: Techno
Best known for: Being the producer of 'Gatex' and the father of Slovenian techno.
Gig of 2009: Dan Elektronike (Day of Electronica), an annual event in Ljubljana dedicated to electronic music.
Tune of 2009: Len Faki 'Death By House' (Cocoon)
Breakthrough DJ/Producer of 2009: Sinisa Lukic
The track that changed your life: Todd Terry's Royal House 'Can You Party?'
What makes a good DJ great: A DJ has to be a good technician as well as a music selector.
Most underrated DJ: Sinisa Lukic, Vladimir Acic, Beltek, Alex Long, Andrew Technique, F.Sonik, Ian F and Tomy DeClerque.
Biggest challenge this year: To finish and release my new artist album.
Top tech toy: james@djmag.com
Slovenian DJ Umek proves that sometimes, dreams come true. The techno heavyweight says that one of his favourite gigs in 2009 was at the Mayday festival in Germany, which he used to attend as a punter many years ago.
"This is one of the greatest institutions from the golden rave era. I used to go raving to this massive indoor festival as a teenager and dreamt that I would someday be on that stage and make this huge crowd dance to my music," he explains. "Eventually the dream came true, it was an amazing experience."
Umek also rates the Dan Elektronike (Day of Electronica) festival in Slovenia, but for different reasons.
"It's situated in an open air theatre and the main goal is to promote electronic music as a unique creative culture, not only as party music," he explains.
He also sees technology contributing to the development of electronic music and believes that the future "belongs to computers, new software and hardware solutions that will allow us to process the music in new ways."
Over the coming months, he plans to release a remix of Fergie's 'Exit People' for his 1605 label and has singles planned for 1605, Dataworx and Hell Yeah.
Words: Richard Brophy