Living the Dream

Well this was a special one for me, and warranted a John Lewis style spoof to do a bit of a retrospective 😄

Way back in 1993, someone brought a DJ Mickey Finn tape to school and it took a long haired, Metallica fan on a bit of a jungle journey…

On to 1996 and my bro and I were getting into hip hop / trip hop through the skateboarding scene, and then ‘The Tape’ landed.

DJ Hype – Dreamscape 22 – ‘The Living Dream’

Wow! I know that tape inside out. Every beat, scratch, Joe Peng lyric. What a vibe!

DJ Hype was the king for me for many years after, and I finally heard him live at Helter Skelter at the legendary Sanctuary Music Arena in 1999, sneaking in aged 15.

In between that I’d been to my first rave aged 14 to see the legend DJ Randall, also meeting DJ Reaction whose event it was. We always knew we’d end up working together!

By the time I got to college to do either art or technical illustration (which was by then redundant), one of my classmates shared my musical taste and brought in a bag of her old flyers.

Right on top – perhaps the most iconic flyer of all time: Dreamscape 1.
Woahhhh! Ok – so it’s graphic design I want to do. Right!

Many raves, learning to DJ, running an event for 20+ years… but graphic / web design was what had given me my main career – hundreds if not thousands of flyer designs and countless record sleeves.

Earlier this year, I’d met Adrian Goodman through business networking and he randomly emailed. He’d seen my TikTok channel 👀

‘You’re into that rave stuff right? Have you heard of Dreamscape…?’

Few months later, working with Mark Cox, Jim Tang and Adrian – Dreamscape is alive, and it’s been an honour creating the website.

Lots more to come!

Thanks for the lend of the jacket Mark, to Amber Shoyer and Dean Church for filming (quick cameo from Chris Palmer) and Amber Waterfield / Noah’s Yard for the Walkman hookup.