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Not long after we met, I spoke with Indian Faroukh Hasham a.k.a. Minitech Project his debut. Over time, we became friends and went through some crazy stuff. About his first gig: “A few teenagers were puking in the corner.”
“My very first gig as a DJ was when I was seventeen, in Mumbai, India. I partly grew up there and lived there for a number of years. At that time, I collected plenty of good dance music, but I was actually mainly a sound nerd.”
Professional equipment
“It all started with me helping to repair a sound system. This was at a friend’s club which was used exclusively for booked private events. Because I had worked on the sound system, I was allowed to fiddle with the equipment during the day. That way I learned to mix myself with professional equipment.”
Terrace
“One day after I started DJing, a friend of mine picked up on my playing. Even though I was self-taught, she asked me to play a set at her birthday party. The party took place on a large terrace of a friend’s house. She wanted to rent DJ gear and a DJ booth especially for the party, so I was immediately excited! In the end I arranged the rented equipment myself, through a friend who was a sound engineer.”
Puking
“I wasn’t nervous at all, also because of the kind of party. The visitors were typical young adults and a few teenagers puking in the corner. I think there were about fifty of us.”
Promos
“I had not prepared my set at all. I let myself be carried away by the vibe. Of course, I knew my music collection through and through. That is a huge contrast to today. Nowadays I listen to so many promos every week that I often don’t even listen to the whole track but just scan through it before deciding whether or not a song fits in my set.”
Underground
“I didn’t have a real mentor, but I was enormously inspired by some DJs and artists of the time. I listened a lot to John Digweed, Seb Fontaine and Timo Maas. Basically, everything I heard through friends, on vinyl and on CD. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough access to underground tracks as I would like. In the pre-internet era, everything was done via import. Some of the underground DJs who developed the local scene are still friends. They still play pretty sleek sets to this day.”
Private parties
“That first gig went extremely well. Everyone had a good time. That evening I was approached by a student who was also a DJ. He was eager to work with me at other private parties because he was extremely impressed with my mixing skills and music collection. So, you can say that my DJ career started here. Soon I was a well-known DJ for private parties and gradually my skills also attracted the attention of well-known club DJs. This was followed by club residencies for me as well as a regional DMC title.”
Experiment
“Because to this day I love to experiment and play with professional sound systems – something I could never do at home – I was very happy with the opportunity to play at that birthday party. I don’t think I made any big mistakes. Of course, I learned from it. Among other things, that a set can be improved by the order of the tracks. And that it is important to level well when I change tracks. Ultimately, my profession is an endless process of improvement, which I experience in every set to date.”
“I will be fully operational in the coming weeks, including four or five ADE label showcases plus my own ADE showcase. In addition, I will be touring Asia in November, an underground event with five stages in Lithuania is on the agenda that same month, Kraft will follow in the Melkweg in December, and I will be a monthly resident at Techno Tuesday in Amsterdam.”
This interview with Minitech Project was originally published on DJMag.nl in September 2016.