Back to Mars

Today, 12th May, 25 years ago, I was preparing to play my first DJ set ever on the next morning 13th May ❤️👽

I started practicing at home in the beginning of 2001, and on May 13th I played my very first set for a public. It was a downtempo set at the start of the after-party for “The Third Life” by 9 Lives of Hofmann in Amsterdam. I created dream catcher structures back then, and made a 3-meter headphone to catch my dream of playing DJ sets.

I only had a small stack of CDs, and at the after-party, Dr. Vinni was playing chill out in the early daylight hours. He already had heard me practicing before, so he invited me to play after him.

I thought I had to follow up with chill out, so I started with downtempo music, but at one point people stood up and started dancing and I thought “oh no, the vibe must stay chilled” so I slowed down the music and got everyone sitting again 😂

A month later, on the 23rd of June, I played my first dance set at the after-party of Hoi Poi Loi by 9 Lives of Hofmann.
We set up the party at dawn, and one of the guys wrote the DJ time slots on pieces of paper. He then put them in a hat, and all the DJs had to pick one, so the DJ slots were random.

And I pulled the prime time out of the hat!
Excited and nervous, I mentioned that to one of the guys and he offered to swap his opening slot with me. But I thought things don’t happen by chance, so I decided to stick to my prime time slot and it was great!

I’m always grateful to the four guys of 9 Lives of Hofmann for introducing me to playing and giving me this opportunity: Rui, Cesar, Stefan, and Vinni 🙏