I was born in 1963 in Miami, FL USA and spent most of my early years overseas in Germany and SE Asia.   I am truly grateful for that experience because I have seen so much more in this world than most people.  These experiences helped shape my character, exposed me to cultures and music of all types and makes me whom I am today.

I performed my first paid DJ gig at the age of 13 in 1976 at the American teen club in Bonn Germany (no longer there).  I love music and I love working out great segues and entertaining because I love the music.  Oddly enough, I had absolute stage freight when I had to actually talk on a microphone.  I eventually got past that fear (15 years later). 

I was a resident DJ at several clubs and venues from the early 1980’s thru late 1990’s.  My first steady gig was being a DJ in a bar in Richmond Virginia spinning Rock and Roll for a few years in 1983/84.  It was fun, but beat mixing was my true calling, I just didn’t know it at the time. 

In 1987 I became friends with a couple of DJ’s that showed me all the ropes on beat mixing and I never looked back.  Yes! I sucked at it for quite a while, but eventually, I got proficient with continued practicing. My highlight was being the resident on-air DJ in a club in Maryland in the 1990’s doing one of the earliest mix shows live from a club on FM radio for 18 months every Friday. I made that club tons of $$$$.

I grew up mixing on vinyl so I don’t particularly care for today’s controllers with none spinning platters.  Serato makes things so easy for DJ’s these days but it’s not much of a challenge with everything displayed and quantized perfectly for you.  

Currently, I have the Denon DJ SC5000 motorized control decks along with 2 Pioneer PL-1000 Turntables and a Denon 1800 mixer.  I love the setup because it still lets me control the mixes very tightly by dragging or speeding up the platters like I always did with vinyl and while it is Serato capable, I prefer to do it the old way (by ear). I am still waiting for one of these manufacturers to come out with a 12″ motorized platter that doesn’t require Serato.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that will ever happen.  Just hoping.  Denon DJ did release the SC6000 with larger platters and I will probably upgrade to those at some point if nothing else comes along.

I do the shows that I do because it is my creative outlet.  I spend way too much time doing it and I do it all for free.  I have a passion for EDM and trance as well as old school funk and disco.  I also like house but a lot of it is just too repetitive. Most of the remakes of the classic tracks these days are just unlistenable crap (IMHO). Occasionally, someone does up the ante on a remake.  I think my early years give me a definitive ‘different’ perspective on music in general.

I started doing online shows circa 2003 and have over 200+ mixes/shows out there somewhere.  I ended up here because of the saying “once a DJ, always a DJ” and my creative side needed an outlet.  My main outlet has been Digitally Imported Radio (DI.FM) and there are almost 200 shows between Angelix and Vocal Trance Nation on their site alone.  I have done many more including the mix series named:

Vocal Mixology
Vocal Verandas
Autobahn (a few mixes in the genre of hands up)
The Utterance Mix Series (only 3)

Vocal Mixology #3 is still playing to this day and you can find some of my older stuff on youtube (posted by others) under my old DJ name “Martin in the Mix”.

I also do a mix series called “Vocal Recall” that goes back to the very early days of vocal trance.  These mixes air randomly on the DI.FM classic vocal trance channel.  They take a long time to compile and thus why there are only 5 of them at this time.

Vocal Trance as an actual genre did not really appear until 1999/2000.  Producing this series, especially the very early ones, is quite a challenge;

1) in finding songs that you can consider “Vocal Trance” and;
2) finding enough of those songs to actually put together a show.

However, I like a good challenge and I make the Vocal Recall series as time allows.

I will probably transverse back a bit to doing some party mix stuff just for fun.  The stuff that I used to mix in the clubs many years ago was fun and is much needed in this world today.

I hope that you enjoy the mixes and shows that I do.  Don’t be shy.  Feel free to contact me.  I would love to hear from you.

Kindest Regards,
Martin