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DJ Kissy Sell Out recently packed out Proud |
Kissy the Escape artist
PREVIEW - KISSY SELL OUT
The Great Escape
WHEN international DJ Kissy Sell Out played Proud recently, record queues snaked through Camden Market desperate for the chance to be part of one of the 24-year-old’s cult parties.
The Radio 1 DJ has remixed Mark Ronson, The Noisettes, All Saints and bootlegged REM. Now, he’s been asked to play at Brighton’s Camden Crawl-on-Sea-type festival, The Great Escape – three days, 34 venues and 300 bands – alongside the likes of Kasabian, Metronomy, Little Boots, British Sea Power, Cage the Elephant and Esser, with more huge names to be announced.
Although it’s not strictly in Camden or Islington, The Great Escape is close enough for a Londoner to get to and from for a weekend and still be back in time for work on Monday morning.
Kissy, whose name stems from a recurring nightmare about a horror movie of the same name, promises big things from his Great Escape show.
He won’t be standing behind a turntable spinning tunes. He said: “I’ll have a proper live band with a drummer and we’ll play instruments so we can put on an entertaining show. We’re just a bunch of kids dancing around on stage. There’ll be stuff from the new album and a few medleys so people will recognise the music. Remember to bring whistles and horns because it gets really crazy.”
Kissy, who originally trained as a graphic designer, is working on his new album, out in April, and still does his own cover artwork.
He said: “It’s all about my childhood – seriously crazy with lots of partying, very post-modern, and I can’t wait for people to hear it.”
During his teenage party days, Kissy’s mischievous streak came into its own. “I’ve done a lot of things I could’ve got in trouble for,” he said. “Once we found a lot of fireworks outside a garden centre. They were out of date so we just nicked them. I can’t emphasise how big this box was. It was the biggest fireworks display you’ve ever seen. There were a few near misses because a few were planted in the floor upside-down.”
Growing up in Colchester he found it difficult to make others take him seriously.
He said: “None of my friends were into the music I was into. They were into R’n’B and UK garage and rubbish music like Coldplay and I was listening to Felix the Housecat and trying to make edgy electro.
“I called it Kissy because I felt I was facing my fears. It made me feel like an underdog already. Sell Out was related to the fact that no one would listen to my music. I really wanted to be a DJ when I was younger. I was from Essex, but because there’s no kind of cool dance scene, if I ever got a DJ gig people would ask me to play R Kelly.”
He says he’s loving every minute of being a Radio 1 DJ: “It’s cool. I’ve got a big inadequacy complex, I never feel I deserve the attention. I just try and promote as much unsigned music as I can.
“After 7pm you can play whatever you want on Radio 1. Everything’s going really well. It’s stressful getting this album out. I lose two days a week on the radio show and travel every weekend.”
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