BACKGROUND
Music
Producer and Turntablist
born 1974 in Cardiff, South Wales, UK
Keltech started producing in 1990 and DJing two years
later.
A long way from producing on his old Amiga A500, Keltech has become an
established Producer & DJ in his own right.
The founder of Pyraplastic Records has no less than seventeen 12"
releases to his credit. Record labels such as Second Skin, Intelligent,
New Vision,Symbiosis, Broadcast, Headfuk and Sony/BMG records just to name
a few.
Keltech's material has been licensed to companies such
as Sonic Foundry, BBC and MTV (Madonna/P Diddy Profile show). He has
appeared on PrimeTime TV and now his name is now internationally known as
a scratch DJ and producer.
So how
did this all come along.....
IT WAS NO EASY
RIDE
"THE STRUGGLE"
Keltech has been working extremely hard to get his name
known for 14 years.
He started to DJ in 1992 using second hand hi fi record players that he
modified with a variable resister so he could change the speed of the
record, they were from a junk shop costing £5 each with record inners and
paper as slipmats. Technics decks were just a dream then and out of his
budget at £450 a deck.
1995
With the music scene saturated with talented artists it was very difficult
to break into it. In the 90's it was proving difficult to get himself a
local DJ
slot, promoters seemed only interested in established names. Desperate to
do build his name up and to DJ in front of people Keltech started putting mix tapes in the local shops
for free with DJ friend Steady Jay and organising there own little raves
for locals just so they could play out to an audience.
His only ambition was to make a name for himself to enable him to
earn just enough money to keep a roof over his head. He is not money
driven music has always come first and always will, but if you can earn a
living from what you love doing then that's the icing on the cake!
To add another string to his bow Keltech
started to put his mind towards producing music, he thought
maybe if he got a name as a producer it would help him break into the club
circuit, after all producing music seemed to be the next logical
progression after DJing.
In the early 90's making music required allot of knowledge and studio
hardware, it was a steep learning curve but this gave him
something to focus on instead of hanging out, smoking, drinking and doing
the normal mischievous things 16 year olds get up to. :)
In 1996, after locking himself away in his homemade
studio learning how to produce music,he started a website and put his
mp3's up there for downloading along with some tips and free breakbeat
loops for other up&coming producers to learn from which proved to be
quite popular.
At this time his music production was very
dark and angry. Being a struggling & frustrated young DJ it was a way
to
express his
anger instead of just going mad, or getting up to know good with his
mates. (see DnB mp3s)
Each month Keltech would send
off hundreds of demos to record
labels worldwide in the hope of interest..and we are talking hundreds of
demos now on a monthly basis. Each new tune was sent out on tape but with
no real success.
In 1997 he
had a bit of luck after his website was added as a music link page on the
official prodigy website. This caused a fairly high volume of traffic to
hit his site and caught the attention of a Dutch record label who
eventually agreed to release two 12" records of his music under the
name "Critical Adjustment".
Shortly after that another label, this time based in San Diego,USA,
released another two 12"s of his d&b music but he changed his
name to Keltech, a mix of being Welsh (Celtic) and his music created with
technical methods.
Five hundred copies being sold across East Coast
America which was great news.
Shortly afterwards due to financial reasons, and along
with the Dutch label, they stopped releasing music.
With his hunger to get his music out there bursting inside him
Keltech decided to start his own label "Pyraplastic Records"as a
platform to get 12" vinyl released. This was a huge struggle on his
own. Getting distribution and the tunes in the shops proved to be a
nightmare. It was a catch 22 situation. Unless you are a known artist the
shops and distributors are not interested, but how do you get known if you
can't get the records out there?!?. He contacted nearly all the
distributors in the UK constantly nagging them to take his records on
board with little success.
This was so frustrating and heart
breaking. Keltech was working a 9-5 job and writing tunes every
spare moment he had to get his material out there.. Infact he worked so
hard at one point he made himself ill and was bed ridden for 3 weeks.
If that wasn't enough of a lesson to calm down he also developed tinitus
which is a constant ringing/hissing noise in the ears. This is a permanant
condition that many club goers and music producers/DJs suffer from through
to being exposed to too much loud music.
Besides that the neighbours were pissed off with
the constant noise from his studio. :)
In 2000, DJ Keltech was working with a very talented
local female singer Emily Bates (MLE) making some fantastic music but
despite this the drum&bass industry was getting a bit too much and being
very close to giving it all up he stopped making Drum and Bass records and went back to his roots as a DJ and improving his
DJ skills.
SUDDENLY
THINGS STARTED TO LOOK UP
Johnny B, local rapper and best friend, was persuading
Keltech to perform live as a scratch DJ for him on stage while he rapped.
This wasn't a new team up as Keltech and Johnny B had grown up together on
the same estate. They had performed live shows at parties in 1992 and
recorded tunes on tapes, but had gone their separate ways during the late
nineties to pursue their own individual music careers. They both worked
hard on an EP and album together and performed where ever they could across
the country supporting big names likes ICE T, Africa Bambaata and Grand
Master Flash just to name a few legends. They even had a live interview on
a Welsh commericial radio station (Red Dragon) which was unheard of at the
time for an underground act. Then in 2003 Keltech and Johnny B won the
Welsh music awards for their live act, and Keltech for music production
and DJing.
ICE T
(a classic pair of cheesey grins if I have ever seen it)
click here
for a list Keltech and Johnny B past gigs
With encouragement from
Johnny and some confidence from being on stage Keltech entered a local DJ
battle just for fun being very nervous and armed with only average DJ
skills he was knocked out in the first round. Undeterred, and one of his
ambitions being to win a DJ battle, he practiced and practiced for 12
months, returned the following year, and kicked some serious ass defeating
the current champion to win the Higher Learning DJ battle!
Now growing with confidence
as a DJ he set his sights higher and entered the biggest DJ competition on
earth..the World DMC DJ Championships. He entered the DMC's 6 times, a
total of 6 battles of
3 years. Glasgow, Manchester, Bath and Cardiff three times. With
the Glasgow battle he was so determined to enter he drove 8 hours from his
home in Wales to Scotland and went straight on stage when he arrived.
World DMC DJ
Championships regional finals
Glasgow 2003
Bath and Cardiff 2005
Cardiff 2004 and Manchester 2004 THE BIG BREAK
On the last year 2005 at the Bath regional final (photo
above) Keltech decided to put together a routine using the John Williams
"Imperial March"
music from Lucas Films "Empire Strikes Back", unknown to him this routine would launch his career.
When he dropped the mix the crowd blew up, and afterwards people were
constantly congratulating him on one of the best sounding sets they had
ever heard. That night in the club a friend suggested to him that he
should record his set on video and put it on the net as a viral. This gave him the
idea of taking the little routine one step further and dressing up in a £10
Darth Vader outfit and recording the infamous Keltech Strikes Back routine
in his bedroom.
The video was a instant hit on the internet Infact it
was so popular Keltech's website nearly crashed with his website host
asking him to increase his bandwidth. He was getting 25,000 hits a day at
one point which is quite hard to believe for a non commercial website, and
viral video host websites were also hosting these cult DJ videos.
Stupidvideos.com just to name one of the major plays
out there had gotten his videos over
1 millions hits(click
to view latest count) .
His video hit new heights when it was on the front page of MSN.com,Yahoo.com
and lycos one of the worlds biggest websites. it even knocked the crazy
frog video off the top of the lycos viral charts. Just searching for his
name in Youtube,Google
or Yahoo
were bringing in over 15 videopages!! of his work fans had
posted on the net take a look here
Thanks to the popularity of the character Darth Vader
and the "Imperial March" and idea of merging the two together as
a turnablist routine this simple bedroom video had totaly launched his name
on an international level, talk about a complete switch around! At one point it was
hard to get a DJ slot at any club and now promoters haven't stopped
contacting him.
Constant emails were flooding in telling him that he had inspired fans to
start DJing. This type of
attention came as a huge shock.
This was the type of publicity he had only dreamed
about.
Not only did his videos now have a cult following but he had the added
bonus of having inspired others to take up DJing.
Keltech already runs DJ workshops at local youth clubs
across South Wales teaching DJ skills to the young adults
Publicity didn't stop there, he was asked to travel to Belgium to perform
the Darth Vader
routine live on primetime TV click
here to watch the TV video A few months later he perform the same routine at
a star wars game launch party in Trafalgar Square, London in front of the
late Sir Bobby Robson (photo below).
Interview on Freestyle TV click image top watch it (one of the funniest
days ever filming) An interview on the official STARWARS.COM
website along side huge industry names, he even had a Christmas card off
Lucas Arts signed by George himself!!
A few weeks after the star wars video was out Keltech
decided to record another routine he had made using War Of The Worlds
music, again a favourite piece of music he grew up listening to as a kid.
This was met with equal success on the net and led to
Jeff Wayne the legendary producer of the War Of The Worlds musical
contacted Keltech and asking if he would do an official studio remix for
the new album released on Sony Records. Keltech's first major label and a
chance to see his music on sale in all the music shops!!
click for details
Its hard to believe how these silly videos which have
now been downloaded in the millions have catapulted his name to new
heights.
Keltech an extremely creative person be it music or video, primarily a music producer but
with a huge passion for
creating interesting and you can say tongue in cheek DJ routines
In 2006 he is now about to finish his scratch album and a 12" EP with
with Johnny B.
Release date is summer 2006, along with the a tour
release previews
Keltech and Johhny B |