Who: DJ Timeline
When: Sunday, March 28, 8 p.m.
Where: Moe Joe's
Cost: $10 at the door, ½ price for locals with Moe Joe's family member cards
As the saying goes, "time waits for no man." Well, DJ Timeline (better known to friends and family as Dan Wurtele) certainly isn't resting idle; he's been busy in the studio and playing live gigs, remixing and creating tracks to pack dance floors and bring smiles to faces in the crowd.
The dedication and constant sense of excitement he brings to his craft earned him the title of DJ of the Year at the annual ClubVibes Awards in 2007 and has led to a solid residency at Vancouver's popular Celebrities Nightclub, where he plays their weekly Stereotype gig.
"It's a great night! We're coming up on our four-year anniversary and really the night is just growing," he said. "It's diverse, it's kind of what the name Stereotypes means. It's kind of a play-on-words in the sense that we're not stereotyped into a certain sound. We'll go from dubstep to electro house to techno to trip, all within the same month."
Though Timeline calls Vancouver home today he actually has very strong ties to Whistler, moving here from Ontario with his family in 1988 and living in the community for nine years.
"I moved to the city for the music," he explained.
At the time that he moved to Vancouver, he was playing guitar and synthesizer for a band. He only made the switch to DJing in 2000, after discovering house music.
"It was kind of the era, the mid- to late-90s, when house music was really getting big in the city and I was going out to a lot of these events and saw myself being incredibly inspired by the music and the sounds that were being created that I had never heard before."
He found himself surrounded by like-minded people who were simply out to have fun.
"That whole movement, that whole unity with everyone else in the room was something that I really felt akin with."
The band he was playing in at the time had a DJ supplying the beat instead of a drummer and Timeline began keeping a close eye on what he was doing at the decks.
"Of course, watching him was pretty exciting and I would hop on his decks now and then and I started to teach myself how to play."
He was soon confident that DJing was how he wanted to express himself musically, so he went out and purchased his own set of turntables and locked himself in his room, losing himself in the new experimental sound and style.
"I was hearing sounds that I hadn't ever heard before and I just gravitated towards them instantly," he said. "Just the whole bass-inspired music is really something I felt an attraction to. The whole environment: the energy, the positivity, the smiles. It was something that was all very easy to be attracted to."
Over the 10 years that Timeline has been on the turntables, the industry has changed pretty dramatically. And with the advent of new technology like Serato, has undeniably made it easier for people to learn the craft. But that doesn't mean everyone has what it takes to rock a room.
"In the industry now, it's 100 per cent the music that you produce," he explained. "...Anyone can be a DJ and we're definitely seeing the numbers to prove that."
To take the step from being a basement DJ/producer to becoming a legitimate force and name in the industry, Timeline believes you really have to make yourself stand out from the masses and carve out a niche on the production side of things.
"First and foremost, if you're writing tunes that everyone else is loving, downloading, blogging, whatever, then your name is going to get out there, fast!" he explained. "You can be an incredible DJ, extremely talented and whatnot, but if no one knows your music it's going to be harder."
Timeline's own self-promotion and production efforts have paid off in spades.
"I was quite a good self-promoter in the sense that I was always doing new mix CDs and getting them into the hands of the right people, always out and about," he mused.
"When you're a producer and DJ and you're promoting yourself, it's continuous. You can't let people ever forget about you," he chuckled. "You've got to be in their face all the time."
After launching his label Live to Tape Recordings five years ago, he's signed over 20 artists and released a range of albums, including the YVR CD and the YTO CD, the "Airport Series" of artists hailing from Vancouver and Toronto, respectively.
"It was really started as a passion project. I was releasing my own stuff on there and of course it felt good to help other kids from Vancouver, to help promote them and help promote the city as a whole," he said. "And, of course, labels definitely add credibility to artists because it's an era where you'll find most of the 'big guys' - meaning the large, successful touring DJs - they'll have a label, as well, and it helps brand them and their sound."
Today, he's pushing himself to shift focus from the label and back onto his own musical projects, capitalizing on a sudden spurt of creative inspiration. But that doesn't mean he wants to hunker down in the studio indefinitely.
"I always say I get more of a rush from playing in front of the crowds," he said. "...But, of course, the idea of creation and creating something new and sharing, that is very exciting as well."
