This guy is my favorite DJ. He’s the inventor of the mash-up, but his skills go way beyond that. I love to DJ, but when i do, I play a lot of classics. I don’t stick to new stuff because I’m not trying to pull out the top forty banger for the club. That’s what I like about the way Z-Trip plays. He actually inspired me to start DJ-ing in the first place. He mixes hip-hop with classic rock, eighties, and all sorts of weird stuff you wouldn’t think would go together. He’ll have people dancing to Deep Purple, for instance, who would never usually listen to a Deep Purple record. It’s a real skill to be able to entertain and educate at the same time. That’s what I try and do with my art, and that’s what I enjoy about DJ Z-Trip: that ability to slip the cool, lesser known songs in there, which works because of the inertia of the stuff people do know. He understands how to navigate that balance.

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I recently added DJ to my repertoire of skills, after I ‘dropped’ tunes till the early hours of the morning in my friend’s lounge room. The dance floor was positively heaving as the punters (or punter, my friend Macarena) lapped up some LCD Soundsystem, N*E*R*D and, of course, Spank Rock. As the sun started to rise, I decided to tone down the mood, working the blissful Park Benches by Belles Will Ring into my set. I’d forgotten how beautiful the song is, and have been listening to it ever since. Check out the lovely video they did for the Shoot The Player team in the backstreets of Sydney.