DJ Soda

Since his youth DJ Soda's been influenced by a vast range of music. As a child listening to his two older brothers very different music collections, Soda was being influenced bysuch artists as The Smiths & Iron Maiden to Depeche Mode & Micheal Jackson. By the time Soda was 12 his taste had turned to Hip Hop and its infectious urban uprising. Artists like Eric B & Rakim, Big Daddy Kane & Public Enemy began to grace his headphones. Producers The 45 King, Premier & Pete Rock and others sparked his obsession of the breaks. Funk & soul breaks combined with poetic lyrics grew to be his first true love, and this love needed to be released in the form of his own music. Hip hop and original breaks drew Soda to the turntables. Starting off mixing hip hop and funky breaks gained Soda residencies with some of Vancouver's top dance music nights including Vivid Sessions, NEXT, & twentyHz. With his stock rising Soda took his sound on the road, traveling abroad touching down in Europe dropping into to play England, Germany & Holland and throughout the USA as well as regular dates across his native land of Canada. In 2005 Soda and ragga crusader DJ Angst (aka Josh Rudner) started twentyHz Music a "full spectrum breakbeat" label that would feature the broad musical spectrum of the breaks. Releases from an all Canadian roster that featured DJ Wood, Wicked Lester, Jimmy Towers, Czech & Marlin took the label into the crates of some of the worlds top breaks players. Soda's only release to date a breakbeat remix of DJ Wood's "Bun Dem" alongside Pacific as Karma came out on twentyHz and was well received by top dance music zines such as DJ Mag & Urb, with Karma being coined by Canada's Rinse magazine as "ones to watch". After 2+ years the label and Soda began to go in different directions musically, with Soda and Angst putting the label on the back burner. Having set his sights on drum n bass, Soda put his focus forward on the sound. His DJ sets grew in tempo that includes a heavy dose of soul influenced jump up Drum n Bass. This unique sound and past promotions experience landed Soda a residency and co promoter gig for one of Canada's original Drum n Bass promoters, Automatic. Automatics weekly club night at Lotus in Vancouver hosted basically every major player in the drum n bass world over its 7 year span. Having joined the night with it well into its 5th year, Soda was regularly billed with top acts as Shy FX, High Contrast, Goldie, Calibre & Ed Rush & Optical in the just under 2 years he was resident at the night. The weekly night eventually closed its doors in late 2006. In this short span of time at Automatic, Soda met an MC that quickly became his partner in beats, Myster E MC. A dynamic DJ/ MC combo the 2 are rarely billed without each other have collaborated on 2 mixtapes including "Automatic VIP" in 2006 and "Drum n Bass Love" in 2007 available for download @ www.c1rcapresents.com .