Early 90s – Radio Maximum, the International University Disco

DJ Kolya:
«That was also when the radio era began. Closest to us was Radio "Maximum" with its dance programmes by DJ Fonar. It was the only musical source from which we could draw information about what was happening in the club world. From Fonar we learned what vinyl, turntables and, in general, the principles by which this culture works were all about. Soon the first CDs of dance music started reaching us — the Ministry of Sound compilations, made back then by Paul Oakenfold. Under the influence of this acid house wave, Vanya Illesh and I started throwing our own discos, in the foyer of the International University. By some miracle Vanya got hold of a set of CD players, and we began our experiments with turntables, trying to understand how you could mix records at all, how to make the music play non-stop. There were no teachers whatsoever. We figured everything out ourselves, by trial and error. What beats and the sixteen-bar phrase were, we had no idea, but somehow, purely intuitively, we still managed to mix records. Later Oleg Ojo told me about all these subtleties: it was he who told me that the best thing to learn to mix on is "garage" — it's simple there, because the track has a verse and a chorus. But that was much later. For now, every weekend we spun records at our University, gathering quite a lot of people. A lot of the music came straight off cassettes, recorded from Fonar's broadcasts or brought back by someone's parents from England. On the whole, we were lucky. It was a great time with an abundance of quality pop music, with a leaning towards the club sound».