Dave Clarke was born and raised in Brighton, England, but currently resides in Amsterdam, a city which revitalised his life and work. The offspring of a technology loving father and a disco-soul loving mother, it was always evident that Clarke would cut a swathe through music. “I didn’t really engage at all with the outside world,” he recalls, “I was your typical disenfranchised JD Salinger-inspired young adult that used to hide in and behind music.” Clarke’s debut release was in 1990 on XL. He used the name Hardcore, a guise he then took to the legendary Belgian techno-rave imprint R&S where he released various EPs (some as Directional Force). By 1992 Clarke’s own label, Magnetic North, was on the rise and he unveiled the classic ‘Alkaline 3dh’ (as Fly By Wire), among others. A next level career boost was round the corner when his ‘Red’ trilogy were unleashed on Bush Records in 1994. These catapulted Clarke into a different league and he suddenly found himself remixing the likes of Kevin Saunderson’s Inner City, The Chemical Brothers, New Order, Depeche Mode, Moby, Leftfield and Underworld. Undisputed landmarks in techno, DJ Mag rightly incorporated ‘Red’ in its All Time Techno Top 100 list. As a DJ, Clarke plays out three weekends a month (before Corona) across Europe and the world, living up to his nickname, the Baron of Techno, a moniker given him by the late, great BBC Radio DJ John Peel. There’s the same attention to detail each time, his sets swooping whip-smart along the cutting blade of techno and electro, backed up by a seasoned bag of DJ tricks in which his early hip hop roots clearly show. Techno’s first and original “Man in Black”, Clarke blends into the background upon arrival and lets his music do the talking. That’s where he comes alive, where skills honed for years blow venues apart. In 2019, Dave worked with the violinist Mathilde Marsal on Variations, a project which was filmed live in front of an audience at Charles De Gaulle airport for national French television, an honour driven by his first passionate foray into Classical Music by Gustav Holst. A young Clarke would listen to the Planet Suite with amazement (including the Tomita version) on his father’s hefty Tannoy sound system and although Dave had been offered the opportunity to work in other settings and with other orchestras, Dave felt that it had to be the right collaboration in order to do it justice. 2020 saw Dave and Mathilde invited to Le Grand Échiquier, a grand French National institution that is almost 50 years old, to perform with the Paris Opera Orchestra for France 2 Television attracting an audience of between 2 and 3 million viewers. Dave was the very first electronic artist to be invited to this programme. In short, Dave Clarke might be established, but he will never be establishment.