JAY KAUFMAN

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RANK	SCORE ?	GENRE	LOCATION
34289	0	House, Progressive	Waterloo, CA

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• Walking In Music

In the world of electronic musicians and DJ's, there are entertainers and there are artists. Jay Kaufman is both. With a DJ experience spanning over fourteen years and a production career going on ten plus years, Jay Kaufman is slowly but surely making his mark in the world of electronic music.

Jay originally started out as a club DJ playing abrasive and beat-heavy hip-hop such as Public Enemy and A Tribe Called Quest. Eventually, his 1980s synth pop influences caught up with him and Jay slowly began to play house and early techno at clubs and raves in his hometown area of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada (which is an hour west of Toronto) from 1990 onwards.

Known for his eclectic tastes, Jay has gained the most notoriety with the progressive house genre; yet he'll play funky techno, deep house, breakbeat and tech-house seamlessly all in the same set.

Jay maintains the belief that an open mind can only improve a DJ's insight into creating a set, generating a vibe, and maintaining crowd interest. Jay comments: "A DJ cannot put their head down and just play records. You have to look, listen, anticipate; feeling the music and the crowd in every sense. You want to give them what they want, but also give them what they didn't know what they wanted at the same time!"

After his original involvement in DJing under the name Loop Dokter, Jay shifted gears into more serious projects. Since then, he has refocused his energy on recording and DJing under his birth name. In the process, he has sought an outlet with the development of his forthcoming label, Tortoise Shell Recordings which is set to release its first releases in the very near future.

Tortoise Shell has already achieved some success even before its launch. Jay licensed the first scheduled release on TSR, Daniel Gregory's Deep Cover (Kaufman & Streetdegree's Fully Covered remix), to the Slinky Trans:Atlantik mix CD compilation in October of 2004 ' although the track was improperly credited as being by Jay. Tortoise Shell is set to launch in 2005 with artists such as the aforementioned Todd Sargent and Daniel Gregory, Mic 'Blue Haze' Burns recording as Cardboard, Kevin Sunray and of course Jay himself.

In 2001, Jay signed to UK-based progressive house label, Sonambulist Recordings (formerly Little Fluffy Records). His first release came out early October of 2001 entitled The Fear. The Fear came with remixes from Katakana as well as Lushreed and saw play from top DJs Anthony Pappa, Danny Howells, Pete Heller, Rowan 'Breeder' Blades, Nick Warren, Graham Gold, DJ duo Parks and Wilson and many other A'list DJs. Graham Gold was even kind enough to play it several times on his KISS FM radio show in London, UK. Furthermore, the track spent 6 weeks on the Balance Promote Group Record Pool ' 4 of those weeks in the top 25. Jay's other tracks have drawn praise from many of the world's better-known underground DJs such as Danny Teneglia, BT, the Guvernment's (Toronto) Mark Oliver, Luke Fair, Armin Van Burren, Ian Ossia, Jody Wisternoff (Way Out West), Noel Sanger and so on. Recent signings to Fullbodysoundsytem (Canada), 1 Shot Recordings (US), L2music.de (Germany) and remixes and original productions for sister labels Innovate and Sequential (UK) has furthered his foothold within the music recording industry.

Jay's accolades not only extend into music. He has performed on international TV as a guest DJ for the Canadian MTV-equivalent Much Music-based show Electric Circus several times over. The long-running, but sadly now-defunct dance show went out to viewers in much of Europe, Canada, the United States and even South America. The first show he appeared on also featured Britney Spears and was one of the most replayed Electric Circus' ever. As a result the show went into heavy syndication to a world-wide audience of over 500,000 people.

As a writer, Jay has also written for Thousand Words Magazine of Chicago and several other publications. His writing has included interviews with top names in the business such as his feature article with the Platipus Sound System, BT, Australia's Steve Smart and many more.

Somehow, Jay Kaufman still finds time to fit other things into his hectic schedule?! Formerly the host of 'TECHNOcracy' on CFBU 103.7FM Niagara; Jay formed the first and longest running electronic music radio show the station had on offer since its inception in 1995. He has also been a guest on various other radio shows on the FM dial in Canada - including plays in Panama, Northern Ireland, and Internet station Eccentricbeats.com.

Jay has also been involved in promoting parties and club nights in the St. Catharines and Kitchener areas, co-founding respected club nights (through his production company Slamwerks) in Ontario, Canada. His night Disco3000 ran for four years and was committed to bringing the best international DJ and live talent to the greater Niagara Region of Ontario.

Jay's past gigs schedule reads like a map of North America. He has played as far West as Missoula, Montana; as far East as Ottawa, Canada and as far South as Miami, Florida, USA. Jay was even asked to play the Alive Outdoor Festival 2001 in Belgium with people like Iggy Pop and Front 242. More recently Jay played the Ultra 2004 Festival in Miami and Cleveland superclub 'Moda'. A few other people Jay has also been caught playing along-side with include Noel Sanger, Kevin Freeman (formerly Kava/Deniro of Hook Records), BT, Joeski, Supa DJ Dimitri of Dee-Lite fame, Rowland the Bastard, Chris Liberator, Mark EG and so on and so forth. Recently, further interest has come from as far abroad as South America and it appears as though Jay will be touring Europe, Asia and Oceana in the near future.