Van D (GB)

Growing up with a varied taste in music as his parents listened to 60’s and mowtown his brother who he shared a room with was listening to Depeche Mode and Spandau Ballet. As soon as he had saved enough money from delivering papers and working in the local florist before school, he started to buy his own music. Early 90's nineties was a great time for music and the first album he bought was Robin S 'Show Me Love' and he was hooked! Van D's uncle was a mobile DJ and he would spend lots of time listening and watching what he was doing and how he would read the crowd and situation. In 1997 he had an opportunity to DJ a friends birthday party, which obviously was not a perfect set as he had never done anything in public before… However the manager of the bar was listening and he loved what he heard and offered Van D a weekly residency. This was a residency at a place that was a preclub bar and at 11pm a bus would turn up and take all of his customers away. In the following years and working in various pubs, clubs, parties and hundreds of weddings, Van D met the love of his life whilst DJ’ing at a bar in Derby town centre. Starting a relationship and a family took centre stage and Van D decided to put the DJ’ing to one side for a while. A few years out of the game and Van D was itching to get back into something when a friend told him about a radio station he was working on called IdealClubWorld. Van D sent in a demo and got a weekly show. Ideal brought many an opportunity to network with many DJ's and producers. Van D hosted and broadcasted club nights all over the country and even got to DJ at the Brighton music conference alongside some very big names. 3 years later and still on IdealClubWorld after hosting 2 weekly shows (Funkicide & The Weekend Alarmclock) work commitments forced Van D to come off air. Missing broadcasting so much Van D and a few music industry friends took it upon themselves to start their own station as IdealClubWorld had come off air. This was to be called The Chewb and promising to bring the very best in underground music.