KELTECH music producer and Turntablist 
born 30/7/1974 in Cardiff, South Wales, UK

Click here for a short biography and photos
or continue and read his story...

BACKGROUND

Keltech started producing in 1990 and DJing two years later.
A long way from producing on his old Amiga A500, Keltech has become an established Producer & DJ in his own right.
The founder of Pyraplastic Records has no less than seventeen 12" releases to his credit. Record labels such as Second Skin, Intelligent, New Vision,Symbiosis, Broadcast, Headfuk and Sony/BMG records just to name a few.
Keltech's material has been licensed to companies such as Sonic Foundry, BBC and MTV (Madonna/P Diddy Profile show). He has appeared on PrimeTime TV and now his name is internationally known. 
So how did this all come along.....

IT WAS NO EASY RIDE 
"THE STRUGGLE"
Keltech has been working extremely hard to get his name known for 14 years.
He started to DJ in 1992 using second hand hi fi record players that he modified with a variable resister so he could change the speed of the record, they were from a junk shop costing £5 each with record inners and paper as slipmats. Technics decks were just a dream then and out of his budget at £450 a deck. 
 
With the music scene saturated with talented artists it was very difficult to break into it. In the 90's it was proving difficult to get himself a local DJ slot, promoters seemed only interested in established names. Desperate to do build his name up and to DJ in front of people Keltech started putting mix tapes in the local shops for free with DJ friend Steady Jay and organising there own little raves for locals just so they could play out to an audience.
 His only ambition was to make a name for himself to enable him to earn just enough money to keep a roof over his head. He is not money driven music has always come first and always will, but if you can earn a living from what you love doing then that's the icing on the cake!
 To add another string to his bow Keltech started to put his mind towards producing music, he thought maybe if he got a name as a producer it would help him break into the club circuit, after all producing music seemed to be the next logical progression after DJing. 
In the early 90's making music required allot of knowledge and studio hardware, it was a steep learning curve but this gave him something to focus on instead of hanging out, smoking, drinking and doing the normal mischievous things 16 year olds get up to. :)

In 1996, after locking himself away in his homemade studio learning how to produce music,he started a website and put his mp3's up there for downloading along with some tips and free breakbeat loops for other up&coming producers to learn from which proved to be quite popular. 
At this time his music production was very dark and angry. Being a struggling & frustrated young DJ it was a way to express his anger instead of just going mad, or getting up to know good with his mates. (see DnB mp3s)  
Each month Keltech would send  off hundreds of demos to record labels worldwide in the hope of interest..and we are talking hundreds of demos now on a monthly basis. Each new tune was sent out on tape but with no real success.

 In 1997 he had a bit of luck after his website was added as a music link page on the official prodigy website. This caused a fairly high volume of traffic to hit his site and caught the attention of a Dutch record label who eventually agreed to release two 12" records of his music under the name "Critical Adjustment". Shortly after that another label, this time based in San Diego,USA, released another two 12"s of his d&b music but he changed his name to Keltech, a mix of being Welsh (Celtic) and his music created with technical methods. Five hundred copies being sold across East Coast America which was great news. Shortly afterwards due to financial reasons, and along with the Dutch label, they stopped releasing music.  

With his hunger to get his music out there bursting inside him Keltech decided to start his own label "Pyraplastic Records"as a platform to get 12" vinyl released. This was a huge struggle on his own. Getting distribution and the tunes in the shops proved to be a nightmare. It was a catch 22 situation. Unless you are a known artist the shops and distributors are not interested, but how do you get known if you can't get the records out there?!?. He contacted nearly all the distributors in the UK constantly nagging them to take his records on board with little success.
This was so frustrating and heart breaking. Keltech was working a 9-5 job and writing tunes every spare moment he had to get his material out there.. Infact he worked so hard at one point he made himself ill and was bed ridden for 3 weeks. If that wasn't enough of a lesson to calm down he also developed tinitus which is a constant ringing/hissing noise in the ears. This is a permanant condition that many club goers and music producers/DJs suffer from through to being exposed to too much loud music. Besides that  the neighbours were pissed off with the constant noise from his studio. :)

SUDDENLY THINGS STARTED TO LOOK UP
In 2000, with it all getting a bit too much and being very close to giving it all up, he stopped making Drum and Bass records and went back to his roots as a DJ and improving his skills.
Johnny B, local rapper and best friend, was persuading Keltech to perform live as a scratch DJ for him on stage while he rapped. This wasn't a new team up as Keltech and Johnny B had grown up together on the same estate. They had performed live shows at parties in 1992 and recorded tunes on tapes, but had gone their separate ways during the late nineties to pursue their own individual music careers. They both worked hard on an EP and album together and performed whereever they could across the country supporting big names likes ICE T, Africa Bambaata and Grand Master Flash just to name a few legends. They even had a live interview on a Welsh commericial radio station (Red Dragon) which was unheard of at the time for an underground act. Then in 2003 Keltech and Johnny B won the Welsh music awards for their live act, and Keltech for music production and DJing.



(a classic pair of cheesey grins if I have ever seen it)
click here for a list Keltech and Johnny B past gigs
With encouragement from Johnny and some confidence from being on stage Keltech entered a local DJ battle just for fun Being very nervous and armed with only average DJ skills he was knocked out in the first round. Undeterred, and one of his ambitions being to win a DJ battle, he practiced and practiced for 12 months, returned the following year, and kicked some serious ass defeating the current champion to win the Higher Learning DJ battle!

Now growing with confidence as a DJ he set his sights higher and entered the biggest DJ competition on earth..the World DMC DJ Championships. He entered the DMC's 6 times, a total of  6 battles of  3 years. Glasgow, Manchester, Bath and Cardiff three times. With the Glasgow battle he was so determined to enter he drove 8 hours from his home in Wales to Scotland and went straight on stage when he arrived.


 Bath 2005

THE BREAK
On the last year 2005 at the Bath regional final (photo above) Keltech decided to put together a routine using the John Williams "Imperial March" music from Lucas Films "Empire Strikes Back", unknown to him this routine would launch his career.
When he dropped the mix the crowd blew up, and afterwards people were constantly congratulating him on one of the best sounding sets they had ever heard. That night in the club a friend suggested to him that he should record his set on video and put it on the net as a viral. This gave him the idea of taking the little routine one step further and dressing up in a £10 Darth Vader outfit and recording the infamous Keltech Strikes Back routine in his bedroom.  

The video was a instant hit on the internet Infact it was so popular Keltech's website nearly crashed with his website host asking him to increase his bandwidth. He was getting 25,000 hits a day at one point which is quite hard to believe for a non commercial website, and viral video host websites were also hosting these cult DJ videos. Stupidvideos.com just to name one of the major plays out there had gotten his videos  over 1 millions hits(click to view latest count) .

His video hit new heights when it was on the front page of MSN.com,Yahoo.com and lycos one of the worlds biggest websites. it even knocked the crazy frog video off the top of the lycos viral charts. Just searching for his name in Youtube,Google or Yahoo were bringing in over 15 videopages!! of his work fans had posted on the net take a look  here

Thanks to the popularity of the character Darth Vader and the "Imperial March" and idea of merging the two together as a turnablist routine  this simple bedroom video had totaly launched his name on an international level, talk about a complete switch around! At one point it was hard to get a DJ slot at any club and now promoters haven't stopped contacting him. 
Constant emails were flooding in telling him that he had inspired fans to start DJing. This type of attention came as a huge shock. This was the type of publicity he had only dreamed about. Not only did his videos now have a cult following but he had the added bonus of having inspired others to take up DJing.  


Keltech already runs DJ workshops at local youth clubs across South Wales teaching DJ skills to the youth.


Publicity didn't stop there,  he was asked to travel to Belgium to perform the Darth Vader routine live on primetime TV click here to watch the TV video A few months later he perform the same routine at a star wars game launch party in Trafalgar Square, London (photo below).

An interview on the official STARWARS.COM website along side huge industry names, he even had a Christmas card off Lucas Arts signed by George himself!! 
read interview here 

A few weeks after the star wars video was out Keltech decided to record another routine he had made using War Of The Worlds music, again a favourite piece of music he grew up listening to as a kid.
This was met with equal success on the net and led to Jeff Wayne the legendary producer of the War Of The Worlds musical contacted Keltech and asking if he would do an official studio remix for the new album released on Sony Records. Keltech's first major label and a chance to see his music on sale in all the music shops!!


click for details

Its hard to believe how these silly videos which have now been downloaded in the millions have catapulted his name to new heights.
Keltech an extremley creative person be it music or video, primarily a music producer but with a huge passion for creating interesting and you can say tongue in cheek DJ routines 
In 2006 he is now about to finish his scratch album and a 12" EP with with Johnny B. 
Release date is summer 2006, along with the a tour
release previews
Keltech officially retired from professional DJing in 2009 but still continues to work in music

The offical BBC website Keltech page click here