UtoldUs Rank: Couch Potato


Name: Jay Kaufman
Activity: DJ/producer
Business Type:
Country: Canada
City: Waterloo
Website

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DJ bios are usually boring and dull affairs - but they’re a necessary evil. Jay’s bio spans 20 years of DJing in dark rooms with bright lights. Fifteen of those years have been spent developing a hardened and very pale studio tan. When it comes to electronic music, Jay Kaufman has lived it for most of his life. Buying records before he paid rent and staying up two days straight to finish that essential tune for a gig that night haven’t been uncommon occurrences over the years. So it goes…

Jay’s early days were spent in his bedroom trying to paste together ‘pause tapes’ of new wave bands – where he’d remix tracks on the spot using a dual tape deck, making pre-BT-era stutter edits. Soon, he found himself with the largest record collection in his Grade 6 class and was DJing his primary school’s dances not long thereafter.

By all accounts Jay was a strange kid. By the age of 13, Jay had amassed a record collection envious of the most avid collector. In 1987, he heard house music for the first time and it all changed… A pair of belt-driven turntables soon followed and thousands of club-goers and electronic music lovers haven’t been the same since.

Jay’s future as a DJ was cemented.
His early days were spent honing his skills (and learning how to mix!) on the job at various events he helped throw in his native Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada area. Dodgy raves held in loft spaces, free parties down by the local river and even the odd cheesy top 40 nightclub or wedding gig all factor into his early resume. More and more Jay became involved with the thriving rave scene in K-W and Toronto as his distaste for drunken grandpas, bride-zilla’s and ditzy vomiting punters with terrible ‘taste’ in music grew. In turn, this saw him rising up through the ranks from a Joe-local DJ, to a DJ/producer with an international pedigree.
Jay’s tracks have seen releases in movies (Rolling), licensed to DJ mix compilations (Slinky Trans:Atlantik, San Francisco Love Parade, etc.), oddities like a Japanese soft-porn DVD and plays from the biggest DJ names out there. Nick Warren, Anthony Pappa, Danny Howells, John Digweed, Graham Gold and many others from the DJ glitterati have all played a Jay Kaufman track. Signings and remixes to labels like Sonambulist Recordings (UK), Bellarine Recordings (Austrlia), L2 (Germany), Park Muzik (Japan), Fullbodysoundsystem (Canada), Existence Music (Canada) and his own Tortoise Shell Recordings (Canada) have helped attain a global status for Jay’s music production skills. Jay has even performed as a DJ on Canadian national television – twice! One of those shows went on to syndication due to the appearance of a certain Britney Spears.

Somewhere in all of this mess, Jay has managed to write for various publications, A&R for several labels (currently Existence Records and his own label, Tortoise Shell Recordings), write ‘one sheet’ press releases for labels, hold down a 3-year residency at a club he ran/promoted and host a radio show for the same time. His mixes have aired all over the radio dial in Panama, Northern Ireland, Russia, Peru, France, Aruba, and the Internet.

That’s all old news though. After a hiatus from DJing, Jay Kaufman is back on the decks (or rather, a laptop and MIDI controller). Right now Jay spends his time slowly going insane yelling at his computer in the studio, reviewing the slew of promos he gets sent, cursing out the state of the ‘music industry’ and trying to do something about its improvement.

Jay Kaufman can be booked through contacting Slamwerks@hotmail.com.

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