About Me – Sonicrampage

Pearsall

Updated January 5, 2014

Sonicrampage is a musical project by Pearsall, i.e. me.

Look, I hate it when people write stuff about themselves in the third person, especially dj’s – DJ X is a true artisan of sound, a careful crafter of dancefloor experiences blah blah bla … you’re not fooling anyone, pal! As for who I am, well, I’m a 33 year-old native New Yorker who is currently living in Berlin, where I recently moved from London with my wife and daughter, where I lived for two and a half years after moving from Edinburgh, where I lived for a year and a half after living in London, etc etc etc. So I’ve moved quite a bit!

Anyways, the concept of this blog is not particularly complicated. It’s a place for me to showcase my mixes and my writing, as well as guest mixes from other dj’s that I like. I always try to go a bit beyond what other people do – I like to do something a bit more than just do a mix and slap it up on Soundcloud or a cyber-locker site like Sendspace or Mediafire (not to knock dj’s who do that). I enjoy writing, and this site has given me a space to write about music and other stuff – some of the essays are about the specific mix, whilst others talk about other stuff I’m interested in, including my memories of going raving (something I don’t do much of these days!), plus I also showcase photos, art, and other bits and bobs.

I have been mixing under the name Pearsall (pronounced Peer-sol) since I was 16 years old. I initially fell in love, deeply and madly, with dance music at the age of 15 and I then spent over a year saving up for Technics and shitty mixer, putting aside money from summer and part-time jobs, and birthday and Christmas presents … my mission was clear. Although I was initially in a monogamous relationship with jungle, over the years since I have played across a wide range of dance music genres, as you can see from the mixes featured in this site, from the spectrum of London bass music (from jungle/drum n’ bass to grime and dubstep, although not UK garage, which I’ve never liked) to electro, breaks, house, techno and the full constellation of harder 4/4 music genres (acid techno/trance, hard trance, hard house, nu-nrg, freeform, etc.), and I’ve played all kinds of stuff at clubs, raves, house parties, and free parties over that time.

For most of 2013 I was running the Freeformaniacs weekly freeform podcast, but I had to step down when the big move to Berlin happened.

I don’t really play out any more, since I no longer have the taste for kissing the promoter ass necessary to get gigs , but back in the day along with a couple of friends I ran a monthly club night in Edinburgh called Rampage in 2001 and 2002, in case you are wondering why so many of the mixes have Rampage in their titles. If you want to read some of my memories of my time in the Edinburgh club scene, check out the posts to accompany Rampage Audio 2 and Squat Rocking 4.

I’m a big-time vinyl junkie, so most of these mixes were recorded using my trusty Technics 1210’s, however a year ago I acquired a pair of Pioneer CDJ1000’s, so some of the more recent mixes were done using cd’s.

When I set up the site I wrote a longer waffle about myself, which you can check out here if you are so inclined.