DJ ChadPhunk is the popular new joint resident DJ along with Stew Magoo at Relax@12, the recently opened rooftop bar in the Aloft Abu Dhabi hotel.
Written by: Jon Muller
Originally from the UK, Chad has been DJing in his spare time for 17 years and doing it professionally for four years.
Having spent 16 years in the travel industry, working for various tour operators before running his own travel agency in London, things finally came to a head in 2006 when the economic climate forced him to make some difficult choices. With his business needing serious investment to remain afloat, Chad made the life-changing decision to close his agency down and start taking his DJing more seriously.
After two summers working as a resident DJ on the Greek island of Corfu, Chad happened upon a post on a party website called DontStayIn.com advertising for DJs in the UAE. He jumped on a plane and hasn’t looked back. Having made his way around Abu Dhabi’s most popular nightspots – Chad’s DJing name has done nothing but grow.
To many of us, it would seem that DJing is an easy job but Chad would disagree. “People expect DJs to just turn up for two or three hours, play some music and then go home again,” he says. “It’s just not like that.”
So what exactly is a day, or more accurately a night, in the life of a DJ like?
2.00pm: Chad’s working day starts from the moment he wakes up. After a quick breakfast, he logs straight onto the internet and starts trawling the web for new music. “I’m looking for tunes every single day of the week,” he says. “There’s such a vast array of music out there – the internet is such a useful tool – I use sites like ‘Beat Pool’ and ‘Traxsource’. I also get lots of promos sent to me, some good, and some bad.” Self-confessed House fanatic Chad reckons that for every 20 tracks he listens to, he can pick out maybe one or two that he knows he can use.
6.00pm: After a productive afternoon in front of his computer, it’s time to get some exercise: “It’s important that you stay relatively fit because you’re working unsociable hours and DJing is a lot more tiring than most people think,” he laughs.
8.00pm: He’s back home in time to prepare for work. He makes sure everything’s packed and ready for the evening. Fortunately, everything’s pretty much CD-based now, so he’s not lugging piles of vinyl about with him. “I’ve just converted to ‘Trackor Scratch’, which is a digital vinyl system. You still play with your CDs but everything’s taken from your laptop now,” he explains. “This allows me to be much more creative with the sets I’m doing.
10.00pm: He arrives at work and for the next hour and a half it’s all about preparation again: going through records, making sure everything’s set up, liaising with the organisers and management and checking sound levels.
11.30pm: Chad’s set is about to kick off and it’s time to really focus on the job. He doesn’t have a set list of tracks to play – depending on the venue, there are certain tracks he knows will go down well and he tries to work his set around that. When he gets the chance on set breaks, Chad likes to get out on the floor and chat to people, mingle a little bit and get some feedback. “My job is making sure people are happy, making sure people are not leaving. If you begin to lose the crowd then you have to react quickly and keep thinking ahead. It’s kind of like a snooker player planning two or three shots in advance; as a DJ I’m thinking two or three tracks ahead but also constantly readjusting depending on how the crowd react to certain songs. Mentally, it’s quite demanding,” he sighs.
3.30am: As the night draws to a close, Chad finishes his set and starts to wind down. Generally, he’ll hang out in the bar and wait until all the customers have left. Back at home he then spends another couple of hours on the internet looking for tunes. “It’s very difficult to go straight to sleep as the adrenaline’s still pumping,” he says. Chad finally hits the sack at 6am, which probably explains why he doesn’t get up until the afternoon!
Final thoughts: “In terms of quality of life, I couldn’t ask for any more. There’s nothing better than having a full venue and having the place erupt when you drop certain records. There isn’t a better feeling than that – it’s such a rush.
“I’ve been here 18 months now and I want to stay here as long as I can. As long as I enjoy what I do and keep getting booked and as long as the people who come to listen to me keep enjoying my sets then I’ll continue to be here – absolutely.”
