Temper D

Gradually gaining respect as one of very few drum and bass DJs mixing on 3 and 4 decks, the past few years has seen a meteroic rise for Temper D aka Dave Bowles. Now firmly settled in the Offkey Recordings camp, Dave was brought in by like minded artist and long time hero Raiden, and is now lucky enough to be representing the label and sound behind the decks at raves all over the world on a regular basis. 2006 saw Temper D perform in over 15 countries, including Portugal, Spain, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Poland, France, Norway, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Denmark and many more. With solo release material forthcoming on Offkey and a punishing DJ schedule, 2007 promises to be an even more hectic year than the past few. Concentrating on the live aspect of crowd control DJing forced upon him by the true masters of electronic music such as Hawtin, Carl Cox and Jeff Mills, Temper's approach to performing is set firmly against the "batter all your biggest dubs" drum and bass way. Frustated with DJ's purely pushing their affiliated label or just playing the most exclusive tunes they can get their hands on, Dave makes a point of playing across the genre and adapting to the crowd in front of him. Coupled with a purist fascination with minimal techno, his sets use dance music to its full potential as opposed to a throwaway fix. Production wise this has been reflected in several minimalistic records scheduled on Offkey and the commissioning of the debut Offkey Mix album. Initially collaborating with university friend Exile on Renegade Hardware in 2002, the first release 'Warehouse' was caned by the likes of Nicky Blackmarket, Dom and Roland, and even aired on Radio 1 by the late John Peel. However, with Exile being a master of technical trickery and Temper D more concerned with the dance floor, the project was short lived, and a new partnership began with guitarist and producer Tim Robinson, aka K-Fire. A string of releases on various labels followed, including Invader, Gain, and Concord Dawn's imprint Uprising. Between them, the tunes were supported by the likes of Klute, Raiden, Adam F, Logistics and Nu:Tone, Concord Dawn and many more. Tracks were also been picked up for Raiden's techno dnb label Off-Key, the artistic step forward which follows years of concern that drum and bass could learn from the progression and minimalism of techno. Having written on the subject for Knowledge Magazine, and spoken at length with like-minded breakthrough artist Raiden, the music itself is now there to do the talking. Now going solo both in the studio and on DJ dates, Dave intends to push the sound pioneered by Raiden, Prode and Propaganda as far as possible, both in the studio and on the turntables. Years of raving to DJ's like Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills, Robert Hood and Ben Simms, as well as the dnb fraternity has brought about an approach to the dancefloor based on patience and maximising certain moments of when the place really does go off, rather than battering the big tunes as quick as possible. Since winning the massive Dogs On Acid DJ competition, Temper D has regularly DJ'd all over Europe and the UK, and will be embarking on his first major tours in 2007, to cover Europe, Australia and New Zealand and North America. He has also recently done guest DJ slots on the legendary Kiss 100FM with Adam F and been featured in Knowledge Magazine. As much a techno head as a junglist, it is behind the decks where Temper D is most at home. Driven by an attitude of making sure dance floors are always kept interested, his creative mixing marks a style coming directly from the raver's point of view * official website * discography Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.