I AM A DREAMER

'80s: Little mini me.

Γειά σου, Hello, Halo, Hola, Ciao, Salut, Guten Tag, Zdravo, Привет, 你好, नमस्ते, سلام! This is not a professional biography to show off myself, this is how I would like to introduce myself to you. I am just a human being like you that I just like to express myself through my music and make people dream, feel, smile, think, jump, shout, enjoy and dance music as I do.
I was born in Athens on 17 April 1980 and raised in Piraeus, the biggest port of Greece. Since I was a little kid I loved music. I was in the elementary school choir for 6 years and in the late '80s I remember myself spending hours and hours on listening to different genres of music. I did a few tries to learn piano as well but this was a big fail as I didn't like that type of classical music the teacher wanted me to play. Also I didn't like music theory and even now I am writing this if you ask me what scale is one of my tracks, I will propably fail to give you the correct answer. So as you understand I am self-taught and I love that, I just feel my feelings guide me. Also below I had some top 10s from my favorite lists on Spotify. It's the music I love and it inspires me. End of intro.... Boohoo! :D

Early '90s: The start of a gold decade.

Many of my electronic dance music influences are from this decade. 1992-1993 are two amazing years to explore and the years I started exploring Electronic Music. I also remember buying my first 12" vinyls and CDs and trying to mix them, without a mixer though. Actually I was just selecting the order of the songs and recording cassettes without breaks in between each song.

Mid '90s: Going trance, going rave!

Mid 90s, X-Files, the LOL days, a little bit the search for extraterrestrial life, the question I had "Are we alone in the universe?", a new music journey began by listening more classic trance, psychedelic trance, big beat tracks and early classic house. While I had access to computers before, it was around 1995 when I discovered the internet with a pstn line (:O). It was Altavista to search, IRC to chat, FTP to share, music blogs and forums to discover, download and discuss about music. That's how I get access to even more music and genres, that I couldn't find in my hometown stores or in the radio. I cannot forget though how slow the internet was, downloading a song within an hour and only if I didn't have a phone call to interrupt the download. The internet was a new world for me and I spent some time as well on playing games, doing a little bit html design, not something fancy though. Of course I have to mention my all-time favorite band, The Prodigy. Their music is still top-class, unique and fresh.

Late '90s: Not everyone understands house music.

My first contact with DJing equipment was actually in between 1996 and 1998 in Schinoussa, a wondeful tiny Greek island in small cyclades that I visited with my family from the late 80s. There, in the one and only beach bar, I started mixing music and experimenting with music genres for fun.
1997 was a continuation of what I was listening from the mid 90s and 1998 is exactly the year Ι felt in love with House Music. I loved every track! At the end of 1998 I spent some time with ReBirth RB-338, a software synth by Propellerheads, without though producing anything.
1999 finds me working as a DJ into a local bar in my hometown playing various music genres. There I started trying to mix house music tracks, even though the majority of people didn't even know what music that was. The same period a friend of mine had a setup in his basement with some speakers, a computer and a program called Fruity Loops (now FL Studio). And that's how it started, just for fun we did few tracks that we uploaded as Housevision in a website called mp3.com. I loved music and then I realized how much I wanted to make my own music so I downloaded a demo version of Fruity Loops in my home pc and started playing with it, making some tracks. The problem was that I couldn't save the project in demo mode so I was using the windows function "Record what you hear" to save the whole track and that was it. No way to go back and edit. Honestly, it was a new music journey that started for me in the late '90s with so much great music to listen, enjoy and dance. The year I actually fell in love with djing was when I heard Danny Tenaglia in an unforgetable dj set back in 1999 and from then he is one of my favorite all-time DJs.

Early '00s: Kevin Sunray.

In 2000 I got iy my hands my first dj equipment including two Technics MK2 to practice and improve my djing skills all day night long. From 2001 to 2002 during my army duties and when time allowed me I arranged few parties and it was then when I actually got seriously into palying the music I loved. Around summer of 2002 I got in my hands Propellerheads Reason 2 to try it out and that's the program that taught me to make music the hard way. It is also responsible for the knowledge I have so far, because it was much harder to achieve the sound that you had access in other daws or equipment, thankfully now it's not like that. One thing that I cannot forget was that in Reason you couldn't work with audio files, making it difficult to work especially with vocals. I was working though day and night, learning & experimenting with Reason, printing cds to send to record labels and always dreaming to make a 12" release in one of my favorite labels. 2002 was the year I created my alias Kevin Sunray. Between 2002-03 I managed to produce several tracks that some were released in the mid 00s including Anemone and few tracks as Moodway, another alias name I used back then.
2003 is the year of my first music agreement with Gossip Records, a record company I was a fan of. I remember I mailed them a cd with my demos and few months later they contacted with me to release 2 of them. They sent me an acapella from The Ghetto Kids - Junkee Express to use on my tracks. This was my first 12" release, which was released by Heavy Traxx in 2004, a sublabel of Gossip Records. Additionally I did a remix for Natural Rhythm and signed my first collaboration with Greek dj Leo Mars called Supernatural Love, both released by Blockhead Recordings. In the early '00s I also did my first appearances as Kevin Sunray in Greece and participated in events of a great music community I was a member of, thecityvibe.com.

Mid '00s: My first 12" release.

In 2004 my first 12" release is in stores and is the year I met with one of my favorite producers and DJs that time, Antoine Clamaran. I was doing the warm-up set the night I gave him a demo cd, including my collaboration track with Greek dj George Siras as Samurai Jack, and 2 months later I got 3 tracks signed with Pool E Music which resulted later in my appearance as a guest DJ in Amnesia, Paris. From 2004 and later on I was living my own musical dream, making music all day and touring around Europe. After my appearance in Love Parade Berlin in 2006 I decided to develop my own label imprint.

Late '00s: Birth Of Unlove Music

2007, the year when vinyl distributors started to collapse because of digital downloads domination and the year when I offically launched Unlove Music & Recordings. My label's first release, "Maybe" from Junatik, was the one and only 12" vinyl release of the label, as all next releases were available in digital format only. 2007 was a great year for me in general with my first appearance in Miami WMC and being the first Greek DJ to compile and mix Ministry Of Sound's Clubbers Guide Mykonos which was released by Planetworks. 2008 I released on Pacha Recordings my dance cover of Black's "Wonderful Life feat. Tasos Fotiadis". That year I started doing more remixes than originals to promote my own label imprint and in 2009 is the year I released my remix "Release Me" by The Attic Feat. Oh Laura on Unlove Recordings and later on was selected by Matt Darey on DJ Mag Top100 as his Tune of the Year.

Early '10s: Following My Destiny

In the beginning of 2010 I remember myself experimenting and producing tracks under various genres that may improved me in the long run as a producer but I also got into an internal sound war that actually made me totally unproductive and I gave up for a moment. Even though I was still trapped in my own sound war, in 2011 I decided to record my first album and release it in 2012 on my own label including my all-time favorites "Stories Untold" and "City Lights" feat. Gaia Barbero. That period I also remixed "All Go Down feat. Davey La" by The Scumfrog which was released on Black Hole Recordings and in 2012 on Armada Music my remix for "Still Waters feat. Kate Louise Smith" by Matt Darey. The same year I also remixed along with Dimi Phaze "Fallin feat. Demy" by Playmen which went gold and released by Panik Records. In 2013 along with Dimi Phaze & Just Fine as Mad Mankeyz we produced "One Year Later feat. Elijah Thomas" which was released by Harem recordings in 2014.

Mid '10s: Summer of 2016

In 2014 and 2015 I released some originals as well as collaborations with an upcoming producer from Greece called Arrow (now Zain Conor). The summer of 2016 was one of my worst summers ever regarding music and to be more specific, djing. It was then when I started feeling "very tired" musically. So I decided that it was better to enter myself into a music silence, both in listening and in making music. The difficulties I faced along with my experiences pushed me back and I decided to try and do something different, develop an idea I had for some time. This was to develop a new music platform to solve two common music industry problems, to filter and rank music according to music quality and help musicians get what they actually deserve. I really enjoyed every minute of learning and programming Traxbeat and at the end it was another way for me to be creative. That's how Traxbeat was born out!

Late '10s: Just Silence

Between 2017 and 2019 I was focused completely on Traxbeat without actually doing anything music related. You may say too long, I may say it was not only the big amount of time I was spending in learning, researching, coding and working to be able to create Traxbeat but also my personal difficulties I had to face along with my own deep depression. Regarding music there is not much to say or mention, except that in December 2019 I started just listening to music again, music I loved from the past, usually while I was walking to my part-time job.

Early '20s: COVID-19 & Back in Music

In the very begining of 2020 we learned about a new virus called COVID-19. In March 2020 Greece has entered its first national lockdown and I remember myself opening my daw after a very long time and then is exactly when I started writing and producing music without any music boundaries. Until June 2020 I managed to produce almost 10 tracks and this is how the idea of producing my second album, "Trilogy of Life", came up. I ended up mixing my new tracks with unreleased tracks from the past to create a music journey from start to finish and make a more artistic approach by collaborating with singers from around the world. In April 2021 I release my second album "Trilogy Of Life". Listen on Spotify: Kevin Sunray - Trilogy of Life [ALBUM]