Taking on the House Underground with Venom and Guile, It's James Trystan!

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This year has seen an impressive buzz of activity from the rejuvenated Trystan. The 4 time Beatport top 10 artist is now poised and ready to take on the house underground with venom and guile. He’s been busy in the studio concocting a new and revitalised, deeper synth-driven sound; layered with subtle emotive riffs and tight, snarling basslines, inspired by a recent globe trotting tour across Asia.

Trystan has recently been playing at Koh Phangan's very own Jungle Experience. We speak to him to catch up and find out more.....

What’s your Koh Phangan story?

I’ve been coming to Koh Phangan for nearly 10 years, first as a tourist backpacker while I was traveling the whole of Thailand. It was just Bob Marley and huts on the beach from what I can remember no House scene at all but plenty of Trance around.

It became one of my favorite places to visit along with Koh Tao. I’ve been coming back pretty much every year since and now I come every year once or twice to rock out at the parties.

What do you think of the parties over here?

There’s something that happens here that you just can’t find anywhere else on the planet. It’s not the easiest place to get to so the people who have taken the time to get to this small remote island are here for a reason. If they’re out to party they’re not holding back. As long as you play a good set and give the crowd what they want you’re sure to have a great time.

You’ve got some of the biggest names in the scene passing through here on tours so it’s fast becoming a much cooler place to go and party than say Ibiza which lets face it you need to remortgage your house for just to buy entry and a bottle of water!

How was your latest set at Koh Phangan’s Jungle Experience?

So usually I play melodic Techno but it really depends on the crowd. At Jungle I played more driving techno - for 5000 people you’ve got to keep the ball up so each track needs to be on point, it’s pretty similar to the style I play when I’m in Ukraine.

I started off with some bangers and the crowd were willing so I showed them some cool new melodic tracks I had towards the end

When did you first start DJ-ing…. how did you begin doing it professionally?

So I’ve been doing this since I was 17 years old, I use to play Hardhouse at illegal raves in the countryside of England on the weekends. Vinyl was king back then and I’ve got the bad back to prove it. I did that for many years but basically just as a hobby until I started working in a bar in Soho London. The DJ for the Saturday night didn’t turn up and I asked to fill in.

The rest moves pretty fast, I started playing there with my DJ partner at the time Oli Cassidy we joined forces and became progressive act Filth & Splendour. You could say we did ok, played every major club in London including Ministry, Cross, Key Turnmills, Matter, Egg, on a regular basis and singing to Perfecto, Armada and about 50 other cool labels releasing near 100 records together. Having tracks played on Radio one /Capital and being remixed by Umek, Paul Oakenfold and Beckers was a highlight for sure.

But like all good things it came to an end, for various reasons. The Progressive scene in London was dead and keeping a partnership together is no easy task. Our label was taking up a lot of time and money and we just had to make a call as to if it was worth pushing forward with it. We decided to knock it on the head.

The year after this was a real low point for me, I’d poured my heart in to making this work and just couldn’t understand why it hadn’t come together. We had the releases on the right labels but the international bookings just never came. That’s when I moved to Thailand for 6 months to get away from the UK for a while. I’d stated doing some Deep House releases under my new alias James Trystan but wasn’t too sure if I had it in me to start climbing that massive ladder again.

Something weird happened when I came to Asia, I got loads of bookings on Koh Phangan which turned into loads of bookings across Asia, I started playing Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Bali and that’s when I realised after so long it wasn’t that we’d failed to make it work before we just hadn’t taken the music to where it was wanted, this was probably the biggest lesson I’ve learnt from the business.

Now things are moving pretty steady with releases on Bedrock, Suara, What I Play, Defected, I can open up a few more doors than before and as long as I do a good job most clubs have me back which means each year the tour builds to more places. As far as success, I’m going to be happy if I’ve managed to travel the world doing what I love the most. I’m almost halfway there so I just need to start going west now (America) which is the plan for next year!

What inspires you as a DJ?

This is a weird one as most people have idols they look up to in the industry but I really don’t have any. I do my own thing and very rarely go to watch other DJ's play.

For me I just want to make records that get signed to the labels that will enable me to play in the clubs so I can make the people go nuts on the dancefloor, nothing gives me a bigger buzz than seeing people having a good time and giving them a special experience, not saying I do that every time but when it happens it gives me that drive I need to go back and keep working at it.

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to get into the scene?

You just can’t sit there as a DJ and expect the phone to ring with bookings or labels to answer your emails when they’ve never heard of you. You have to get out there in the world and make it happen yourself. That’s means making 20 tracks on small labels before anybody will even see you’re on the radar. If your tracks aren’t up that level stop sending them to the big dogs and work with an engineer to get them to that level or you’re just wasting your time.

Don’t just send your track to your friends for feedback, they’ll never tell you if the track sucks. You need honest, brutal feedback so send them to somebody you kind of know that’s higher up the ladder than you and has a better viewpoint on the lay of the land.

Understand that now more than ever the odds are against you to make a living out of this, it’s not impossible but you’ll probably have to do a second job whilst being a semi famous DJ. You’ll never see a penny in sales unless you can manage a small advance off some of the big labels and that’s tough going. Even top 10’s on beatport these days are only a few hundred pounds.

Saying all that, it can be done, Get some good productions together, make sure you have a well polished press pack, photos, bio, links, regular mixes on SC. Then dig in and just work year after year on moving up the label ladder till you find that when you approach a club they want to say yes because your package is sellable for them. Be humble at all times and enjoy the ride because you never know when or where it’ll stop. Good luck!