Is Deepysky still active or defunct? I just heard View from a Stairway last night for the first time and nearly shat myself. Deepsky's productions have always been consistently good. I know one of the guys left the group, but are they still active?

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te TAT do
Self proclaimed honorary London TAer

(Now back in the boring USA )

One of my favourite acts.
Too bad they (Jason) haven't released anything in nearly 10 years or so.
It's a shame actually.

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My new oldskool TRANCE mix!

I always wonders what happens to these legendary acts, when they stop producing music. Do they just go to a menial job, like service coffee at starbucks? That's what I imagine in my head, anyway.

It always makes me really REALLY sad to think that.

Seeing someone like pulser, or Jason Blum serving coffee... Sad.

Hi, I'm Andy Pulser. I'll be your barista today.

:cry

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te TAT do
Self proclaimed honorary London TAer

(Now back in the boring USA )

quote:

Originally posted by tetatdo I always wonders what happens to these legendary acts, when they stop producing music. Do they just go to a menial job, like service coffee at starbucks? That's what I imagine in my head, anyway. It always makes me really REALLY sad to think that. Seeing someone like pulser, or Jason Blum serving coffee... Sad. Hi, I'm Andy Pulser. I'll be your barista today. :cry

He has been a CTO for the past 10+ years. Probably busy with that, among other things. Also, his linkedin states he has been the general manager of Deepsky music since 2001.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonblum

quote:

Originally posted by tetatdo I always wonders what happens to these legendary acts, when they stop producing music. Do they just go to a menial job, like service coffee at starbucks? That's what I imagine in my head, anyway. It always makes me really REALLY sad to think that. Seeing someone like pulser, or Jason Blum serving coffee... Sad. Hi, I'm Andy Pulser. I'll be your barista today. :cry

I don't think there's necessarily anything sad about it considering most of them had day jobs even while they were household names in a thriving but still ultimately niche creative scene. Unless they were fortunate enough to begin touring as DJ's off the success of their records, music was just a side project. And even then, life after trance didn't necessarily amount to toiling away in menial service industry jobs. A lot of them found work in other lucrative, often related fields: they work as sound engineers, in production studios; Likwit became a professional photographer, Elevation became a real estate agent, Gil Norris became a physician.

I don't think most of them realistically expected to make a living off dance music, so for them I think life just returned to normal.

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He traded sands for skins, skins for gold, gold for life. In the end, he traded life for sand. Afari, Tales

quote:

Originally posted by Paradox Lost I don't think there's necessarily anything sad about it considering most of them had day jobs even while they were household names in a thriving but still ultimately niche creative scene. Unless they were fortunate enough to begin touring as DJ's off the success of their records, music was just a side project. And even then, life after trance didn't necessarily amount to toiling away in menial service industry jobs. A lot of them found work in other lucrative, often related fields: they work as sound engineers, in production studios; Likwit became a professional photographer, Elevation became a real estate agent, Gil Norris became a physician. I don't think most of them realistically expected to make a living off dance music, so for them I think life just returned to normal.

And I mean, in general, the scene has changed so much from back then. The guys I always thought missed it by just a few years who could've gone super mainstream popular were Gabriel and Dresden. As is they remixed for top 40 acts regularly (Jewel, Sarah McLaughlin, etc.) even back in early to mid 2000s. They've tried several comebacks but never made it to the modern mainstream.

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Click the link below to stream all of my mixes past and present. New mixes go up about once a month. Enjoy!

www.mixcloud.com/jluger

quote:

Originally posted by capricorn15 He has been a CTO for the past 10+ years. Probably busy with that, among other things. Also, his linkedin states he has been the general manager of Deepsky music since 2001. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonblum

Glad to hear he is doing very well. Super talented person.

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Truth is A Peculiar Thing

Wow, thats great to hear he's doing so well!

Matt Hardwick is a very successful attorney..

Still, it's a weird juxtaposition, knowing these guys are legends in one place, and work and are successful/failures in others.

Any idea what happened to Pulser, in reality? Or the guys from Goldenscan?

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te TAT do
Self proclaimed honorary London TAer

(Now back in the boring USA )

quote:

Originally posted by tetatdo Still, it's a weird juxtaposition, knowing these guys are legends in one place, and work and are successful/failures in others.

The most amusing one for me is that the co-founder of Vox Media, and formerly one of the most important people at Bloomberg News, is also responsible for the original of this classic:

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Quarantine Classics Brunello di Montalcino (In Transit) Edition [Progressive Classics] (August 2020)
Quarantine Classics - Puligny-Montrachet Edition [Progressive Classics] (April 2020)
What Is Progressive Anyways? [Progressive House Classics] (November 2019)

Don't forget, back in the day (90's) there wasn't the huge sums of money involved like there is in recent years.

A top flight DJ would get 2 grand for a 2 or 3 hour set. A couple of the very top flight were getting 10 grand a gig for massive events - it made front page news in the UK when Junior vasquez announced his retirement and was getting 60 grand for one night.

Now, most big name Vegas DJ's wouldn't get out of bed for less than 50 grand. I honestly saw one deal fall apart with a big name DJ because they wouldn't pay $100k for two hours and were only offering $40k

There were a lot of "big name" DJ in those days that called $100k a good year.

Many of the guys that "made it" like Danny Howells and Tony De Vit had pretty well paid jobs. TDV even said that it was a really scary thing giving up computer programming to DJ full time and was probably taking a pay cut. He was arguably the biggest name in the 90's for hard house.

Paul van Dyk was a broadcast engineer and a carpenter.
Pete Tong was a pretty accomplished music Journalist.
Armin was a successful lawyer.

Sure, some of the lesser known names aren't going to have millions to fall back on, but usually these guys were pretty smart and had good jobs in the first place.

I know the Trouser Enthusiasts became music library content creators (pretty lucrative) and a lot of other guys quietly went in to sound design and commercial music production which probably pays far better than their tracks or gigs ever did.

I think Matt Darey was an IT guy as well. I remember meeting him on a boat cruise party thing, and he already had hits with gamemaster, invisible and sun is shining etc - a few of us asked him to DJ but he couldn't - he didn't know how to. It was only when his tracks really blew up that he learned and became a big name DJ but he had all those big early hits while doing a normal job.

Not from DJing, but there was actually decent money to be made from releasing club records, and also from getting tracks licensed to compilations. The Digital Blonde earned £30k from the Antheum EP in 1996. Red Devil got £10k for having Gamelan licensed to Northern Exposure: Expeditions. These weren't chart-bothering anthems or even underground smashes, just solid selling progressive/trance releases on par with stuff by the likes of Deepsky, Goldenscan and co.

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Mixes:
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24
> Surface Tension [Progressive Trance]
> Back To Deep [Deep Trippy House]
> Terra Nova [Modern Progressive Trance]

If you enjoy any of these sets and want to hear me live, I'll be playing a 2 hour progressive trance set at Basing House in Shoreditch, London on 11th October.
I'm also a resident at our bi-monthly party Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

True. In those days, a lot of producers would make tidy sums getting signed to compilations.

A friend of mine worked for 4liberty records (Dreem Teem, marshamm Jefferson etc) and they would get 2 grand for selling tracks to even small compilation mix CD's and there were tons of them about in those days.

you could also make nice regular income from remixes; The rhythm masters at their peak were churning out over 20 a year and just charging between 2 and 5 grand a shot. Same with Signum.

Timo Maas only got paid 2k for Doom's Night though. *Ouch*