Tatu Vuolteenaho - My Journey Into Laptop DJing I took piano lessons etc when I was young, but really got into music through dancing. My parents came from a religious family in a small town in Finland and dancing was considered a sin. When I was 13 I sneaked out of the house and went into a youth disco and won a pair of jeans in a dancing competition. Back then it was the 80's and everything futuristic and machine made was what I admired. The exact mechanical beats of Krafwerk, Human League, New Order, Yazoo etc made me test the home stereo's sound levels when my parents were not home. I just loved the energy in that music. A few years on and I was go-go dancing / being a living installation in Michael Alig's Disco 2000 in New York. Back then I didn't pay that much attention to music. I just thought that good dance music comes automatically all the time. There was some really fierce drag vouguing going on and they were all totally possessed by the beats. Back to Finland and the early underground techno rave scene in Helsinki in the early 90s...This was the second big awakening for me musically. The sounds were hard, fast and bold. These parties were in warehouses with just a couple of strobe lights and a smoke machine and a huge sound. No one was doing drugs. There just wasn't any around. I learned to connect techno dancing with spiritual energy visualizations and did used to get really wild on the dancefloor. The hard house style from London clubs like FF and Trade were also big influences. I have always been interested in future and technology, but see myself more as an artist than an engineer so it was great to get to study New Media Art and Design (plus theory and cultural and media studies) in the University of Lapland. We got all the best new equipment there and I used to have my 'private parties' at the faculty building at night time. One computer was calculating video edit, other one was doing filters in Photoshop, then I had some projections and the music on full volume. The soundtrack was FF mixtapes by EJ Doubell. I was enjoying it and got a degree out of it as well. I spent one year as an exchange student in Manchester and It was 'a research year into techno, house and trance through field observations'. In other words: partying. This time I also discovered more minimal sounds. I bought lots of music during this year and when I was back in Lapland I started DJing and organizing techno parties with friends. I also made some music myself during that time and the music was used on my multimedia art installations. I gave up DJing temporarily when I moved to London. There was so many good clubs everywhere so I just enjoyed going out and partying. I was also getting into that scary age of 30 - Oh, I'm an adult now. So got myself a job, mortgage and a flat in suburbia. The clubs lured me back into their fun worlds after I tried drag again after a few years break. Suddenly I was hosting the Cock Live with Mikko and we even recorded and performed songs written by Princess Julia and Luke Howard. The alternative electro scene was really good for experimenting with looks and performances and it was great to be part of the scene and to meet many people that were real stars for me. During the electro phase I also met Kenny Campbell and we started KCTV website together. We started to discover new and interesting hip swinging minimal sounds through the Internet and at parties such as Süd and Run. Big influences were also Mutek's website and DeepMix Moscow net radio. All the net labels are great too: you get good music for free! I had done so much 'research' into this new scene and sound that the next step seemed to make sense: I want to DJ again. I had already a good collection of mp3s on my computer so I decided to start my DJing this time as a laptop DJ. I got Traktor 3 DJ Studio, headphones and a little Audio Kontrol 1 interface box. I was all set, practiced, put demo mixes online and I got my first laptop DJing gig at Studio Neon in London. Now I have played more at Studio Neon and in many other clubs in The UK, Spain, Italy and Finland - and I love it!