His passion for music started very young but the biggest turning point was at the age of 12 when he and my best mate nicked his brothers 1991 DJ Sy mix tape. "needless to say we heard it and for want of a better word we were obsessed!" He adds and soon after he came home with a brand new pair of Soundlab DLP1’s. Every spare second they had was spent on the decks mixing everything from Shut Up & Dance records to Disco Magic to his mates Diana Ross albums! After scrimping and saving he got his own belt drives a year later … From there things just kinda progressed.
His early gigs were school discos continually being told off for playing ‘inappropriate’ music … early Harthouse records … Hardfloor - Hardtrance Acperiance … The Drum Club – Alchemy all given to him by his uncle in his (as he told young Krysko in later years) campaign to make sure he didn’t turn into a ‘rock’ kid! Top man! Needless to say he lost the school gig … but had already started playing at friends’ parties and friends’ older brother and sisters’ parties and discovering another side disc jockeying, elders treating you with respect! Where as before you were that grubby kid. NOW the tables have turned with comments like “sh*t that kid can DJ”
At the age of about 17 came his first club, a local ritzy that was mainly hardhouse and trance, he played for an hour and to his surprise got asked back every week. "I always tried to educate I remember once stopping the music and dropping ‘the whistle song’ by Frankie Knuckles … a severe drop of 100bpm’s was never gonna work but I kept trying". As for his clubbing experience, after a little clever copying of his dads mature NUS card he had a fake I.D. Then a rave in and around Yorkshire called the Ark. His first proper clubbing experience which completely blew him away.
"My main influences musically have been my uncle, who was and still is someone I completely and utterly respect and look up to because of his producing, a real driving force for me."
Obviously the wanting to play out more lead to the next natural progression, throwing his own parties. Having grown up going out in Leeds and having friends there was the obvious choice, he and a friend started a night called Ka:pooch at a local bar called Fudge (now where the basics crew throw regular Sunday parties) … they went well but never really took off mainly because no reputable DJ would play any where in Leeds other than Basics. From this he got a residency at (the short-lived) Back II Basics pre-bar alongside Paul Woolford, Dan Tait & Tristan Da Cunah. From there he developed a friendship with Dan Tait who ran another excellent Leeds house night, Homework. After guesting there a few times and in the same period coming runner-up in Muziks bedroom bedlam competition for two months in a row and playing a Label launch night at the home of Stompa Phunk in Brighton with his uncle, all helped him build his own reputation.