Scratch Tunes

Deejay Billy Nasty may have walked in later than expected to play his set at The Guvment in The Bristol, Gurgaon, but the moment Nasty got behind the DJ console and turned up the volume, it was a riot of electronic dance music for 100-something people who had gathered at the club.

Nasty, who is one of the most in-demand techno and electro Deejays in the world, has been spinning professionally for the last 25 years and was at the helm of affairs in the '80s, when electronic dance music swept the world. He has now been chosen to be a part of the New Noise Experience, an electronic dance music initiative by VH1, where 12 international deejays will be touring three cities in India over the next 12 months.

The holder of the Guinness World Record for being the first DJ to produce a commercially available mix, before he became Billy Nasty, he was called William Nastri and studied to be a navy officer. "I didn't want to be on a ship in the ocean and head nowhere," says Nasty, whose passion for spinning began as an uninitiated 10-year-old, who played his mother's records that contained pub music.

Though he enjoyed funk, groove and hip hop when he started, Nasty got fascinated by the electronic side of music soon after he saw the music scene explode with it. His work includes a mixture of retro, mechanical, tribal drums and also ethnic percussions. "I watch films and get inspired. So I try to incorporate it all in my sets. When I am out on a holiday and I hear the beach waves, birds chirp and insects make noise, I use it later in my mixes," he says.

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