Gareth Emery

Written by the B&B Crew

Biography -

Born in Southampton, but now based in Manchester, England, Gareth Emery is a producer and DJ of trance music. He comes from a diverse musical background that includes classical piano training, jazz, and a little punk rock.

Emery has emerged in the last few years as one of the world's major trance DJs. Since entering the DJ Mag Top 100 poll at no.#34 in 2006, he has climbed every year since being ranked #31 in the 2007 poll, #23 in the 2008 poll, and entering the top 10 in 2009 at #9. He is widely tipped to become one of the next global stars of trance music, with both Paul van Dyk and Ferry Corsten naming him as a future star in their DJ Mag Top 100 interviews in 2006/2007. In 2010 Gareth was named as #7 DJ in the world by DJ Mag.

Emery first came to the attention of the electronic music community early in 2002 when his debut vinyl release, a white label remix of The Shrink's classic 'Nervous Breakdown', was broadcast live on BBC Radio 1 from the Mardi Gras festival on Judge Jules' show. After being championed by a host of DJs, including Eddie Halliwell, Pete Tong, Guy Ornadel, Scot Project and Dave Pearce, 'Nervous Breakdown' was picked up by Nutrition for an official release and later featured on a number of compilations including the Godskitchen Direct mix album.

Following the hard tech-trance flavour of 'Nervous Breakdown', Gareth turned his attention back to his traditional style of trance with his next release, a double A-side comprising the tracks 'Psiclone' and 'Flood Control' on his own label Influential. The release picked up considerable support from all the major trance spinners including Armin van Buuren and Ferry Corsten.

However, the track that truly put Emery on the production map was GTR – 'Mistral', which was the fourth track he had produced. It was created entirely on a laptop computer over the course of a two week holiday in Provence. Nevertheless, the CDR that Gareth sent to Paul van Dyk caused a storm when van Dyk debuted it live on the radio during the Nature One Festival. 'Mistral' received huge support from some of the world's leading DJs, including Tiësto, Paul van Dyk,Dj EGG, Armin van Buuren and Ferry Corsten, and received highly positive reviews in Mixmag, Muzik, and DJ

2006 probably represented the year when Emery first started to become a serious global contender, partly due to his radio show The Gareth Emery Podcast which was launched in March '06 (see below) and became extremely successful, and also due to finding form in the studio again. Before 2006, it looked unlikely that Emery would be able to better the success of 'GTR - Mistral' (from 2003), but that year he managed it with two huge anthems: the first being his remix of Albert Vorne's 'Formentera What' and the second 'Another You, Another Me', written with fellow DJ Lange.

In the passing years, Emery has showed little sign of slowing, with numerous big tracks and remixes like 'More Than Anything', 'This Is That', his 2009 hits 'Exposure', Metropolis, and his 2010 Global (Which is also the theme for 2010 Global Gathering). He is now well established as a globally successful DJ and producer, now under his new record label Garuda. Starting in 2009, Garuda has also hosted a series of club nights at Manchester superclub Sankeys.

Emery has a distinctive and unique production style that can perhaps best be described as a fusion of trance and progressive, with psy, tribal and techno flavours. His productions have been described as intelligent, driving, melodic and progressive. His dub mixes are often done in his signature "stuttering vocal" style, which he pioneered on his early hit 'Bouncebackability' (co-produced with Jon O'Bir). He is well known for playing a diverse showcase of music both in his DJ sets and his podcast, and has often dismissed his categorization as a 'trance' DJ simply stating that he plays good records regardless of genre.

Gareth Emery Website