Undoubtedly one of Plymouth’s most established and skilled Techno DJs, Oorpi Techno’s creator and patriarch Calrek has been a prominent feature of the local underground music scene for over a decade. Combining his love of quality music and technical knowledge, he has brought true underground techno to Plymouth. Realising the need to stay one step ahead of the game, Calrek felt that producing his own tracks was a natural progression. Oorpi 1 and Oorpi 2 were soon cut on vinyl and in 1997, the DJs The Instructor and Pathogen premiered them at Oorpi Techno at The Cooperage in Plymouth to the regulars, and they became instant classics.
Oorpi Techno were the pioneers in the Plymouth scene not only for the cutting edge techno music that each Oorpi DJ supplied, but also for the unique Oorpi Techno atmosphere created by installing fresh and new environments at each event, and integrating state of the art computer visuals. Oorpi also pioneered broadcasting live audio and visuals to the globe via Calrek’s Video Chat room aka LVC, software which he purposely built for this task.
The Oorpi techno events made a positive and lasting impression by incorporating the very best in Opus sound reinforcement systems available at the time. Oorpi later coined the term Technologically Advanced as the theme for their events, which has both inspired and set the standard.
Driven by his passion, in his spare time he studied piles of programming manuals. The result was Plymouth’s first internet radio station in 2001 built entirely from scratch. This was a perfect showcase of Calrek’s lifelong philosophy Do More Things, and the station was named DMT Net Radio and was a global success!
Always keen to contribute to the University where he works for ICT, Calrek set up Club DMT and brought Oorpi quality to the Student Union dancefloor. Despite his technical skills, Calrek is a strong believer in maintaining the human element, and if the occasional mix drifts a little, so what? In an age of locked grooves and digital perfection, his presence behind the decks leaves the listener in no doubt that his sets are live and unplanned, spinning with unrivalled finesse.
Having celebrated Oorpi’s 12th anniversary in 2007, Calrek laid to rest the very successful Oorpi Techno events and following on from Oorpi Techno started the successful (UDP) Underground Dance Parties. Calrek has headlined at many large events overseas in recent years, such as the very successful Mexhanika festival in Russia, Technosphere and the massive Kazantip festival in Crimea. Despite his huge popularity in Europe, Calrek remains committed to bringing the best quality music to Plymouth, and a further collaboration event is in the pipeline with his latest project ETULOSBA featuring artists from the NONOM label.
Calrek’s own productions have also gone from strength to strength, and some of his tracks are shortly due for release on a new collaboration label. His website now also boasts an interactive radio feature, called Live Radio Chat (LVC) – (currently offline while he works on an upgrade) allowing him to continue broadcasting live using high quality seamless audio/video streaming in an interactive chat environment.
Yet another of Calrek’s projects Play More Techno sees him teaming up with local DJ and techno producer Anna Sonic to promote quality techno music to a wider audience. Watch this space to see what Calrek has in store for the future! 2010 will be another busy year for him!
