Originating in Canberra, Ken Cloud is one of Sydney’s more low-key DJ exports. Keeping his profile in his adopted home to a decent size has seemingly paid off: his word-of-mouth Mad Racket parties are still a hit in the industrial inner city suburb of Marrickville, and he’s also become a fixture at the supercool Honky Tonks club in Melbourne and has several overseas gigs under his belt. Back on home turf Mr Cloud trips back in time for Spraci and tells us where it started.

What do you remember of your first gig?

My first gig was in Canberra in a club called the Private Bin. I was lucky enough to meet a DJ who offered to show me the ropes. He was a really lovely guy, it was quiet exciting for me because back then, nobody really had turntables, especially in Canberra. I had to get special permission to enter the club being underage. Within about 20 minutes he’d shown me what the deal was and he had me queuing up records and dropping them. I spent the next year basically going everywhere he played and watching and learning and he let me play when he wanted a break to chat to the ladies, eventually I bought turntables and was able to practice at home.

The dance scene is very different now. It’s very much a ‘marketed’ mainstream part of music culture. In saying that, there are a lot of diverse elements to electronic music, and a lot of those still pay homage if you like to the earlier days. I don’t think people still go out for the same reasons as they used too, it’s quiet a complex question as there are so many different people! I think (in general) people were a lot more ‘in love with music' then, but I don’t want to harp on about the early years, things just change. I can’t say it’s harder now to rock a crowd, I don’t find it harder, getting the right bunch of people in front of you is the key though, a lot of DJs play just hits that go for the jugular and I've never really been one for that.

There are definitely fresh and exciting things going on, but by and large most of the large scale events aren't that exciting for me. I really like a lot of the live stuff around at the moment: Prop, Hive etc, I also like our Mad Racket events and the Bloody Moody events are definitely very cool. Sydney could really do with some smaller venues, that are willing to support other styles of dance music. The licensing laws here are quiet restrictive to opening venues, its so expensive compared to Melbourne.

I think Melbourne is seriously rocking at the moment, clubs such as Honky Tonk and Revolver have a real 'art' angle on things, really good ideas for decor and presenting the music.

Leaving Reachin, where is was manager, that’s been really exciting. I’m now working for Thunk which I’m enjoying a lot. I’ve Djed overseas as well which was great

Czech Republic is an amazing place, a place of real constrast. You've got Prague, which is one of the most beautifull cities I've ever been too, and then you've got all this leftover Communist stuff, which is super ugly. The attitude of the younger people is very exciting, they so want to be part of the west, the older people – they’re very cynical and don’t trust you. Didn’t meet any Czech pornstars, but let’s just say that the girls were lovely. Playing there was amazing, I played 3 parties, the highlight being the Prague event, they had 5500 people there. The production was huge, on the scale of the Boiler Room say. They flew in dancers from Spain, the sound guys from the UK, and these Bunji jumpers from NY, who were doing accrobatics in the middle of Darren Emmersons set, it was huge. They are super keen to dance and enjoy the music, when the parties open they get in there and they dance. I went with Simon Caldwell and we had an amazing time.

Well we’ve just got over our NYE party with Herbert which was amazing. In the next few months we’ve got a really amazing live band from Germany called Pantytec who produce on Perlon and are super talented. We’ve got Tom Clarke a DJ from Berlin who's a friend and runs Highgrade records, I think they've both on the 2nd Feb. Also, we’re tentively doing Charles Webster later in February. I really enjoyed our wig party last year, and I'd like to do some more fun dress up stuff.

I don’t really know, maybe write a great book, score the winning goal in the World Cup Final, haven’t tried sky diving yet, maybe I'll give that a go..