Matthew Dekay was brought into this world on a sunny spring day in 1978. Haarlem, The Netherlands is his hometown and the place he spent most of his life. He was trained as a classical musician, but never really felt that it was his calling. He felt it was the architecture of music that he was most drawn to. ‘I knew I was never the best piano player. I always felt more comfortable when people referred to me as a composer,’ he says. It was never his dream to become a concert pianist. In fact he grew quickly bored with the study involved and became more interested in full compositions, and the relationships which exist between rhythm and melody. Matthew was first exposed to Electronic music in 1990 at a Music Convention in Holland, which he had attended with his father annually from the age of six. This early introduction was the beginning of a fixation with synthesizers and his never ending hunt for new technology. ‘I had a goal,’ Matthew remembers. ‘I wanted to make music that DJ’s like Marcello (resident of the legendary Club IT in Amsterdam) and Dimitri (Roxy Amsterdam) would play but this was the early 90’s and I was just a kid not even close to being ready to release my own music yet!’ Unfortunately when the owner of Club IT passed away, and later the Roxy burnt down in 1999, he thought that he had missed his chance. Subsequently, Matthew continued to work extremely hard on his music, and as the 90’s drew to a close, new stars were being discovered and a fresh style was beginning to infiltrate the scene. By 2000, Matthew had become inspired by the groove and feel of sets played by Danny Howells, and fell in love with DJ Sasha’s emotional, melancholic and melodic productions, which he could only describe as “Music from Heaven.” At this point he felt confident enough to hand a DAT tape to former Roxy resident Erick E. who became immediately interested in Matthew’s production skills. The two then went on to form a strong friendship, and Erick began to release Matthew’s music on his label One Star Recordings. The first two records did well, but it wasn’t until the third release “Passion” that things really took off. The track was picked up by Matthew’s idols Danny Howells and Sasha, and his fourth release “Lowriders Part 1” appeared on the Deep Dish Global Underground compilation CD. Suddenly Matthew was getting interest from a many different labels, but it was Deep Recordings where he decided to make his new home. Matthew’s tracks “If I Could Fly” and “Beautiful Monday” consequently turned out to be Sasha’s opening tracks for every single gig he played that year. It was at that moment when Matthew says he realized maybe he should start DJing himself. ‘All these guys were filling their sets with my music. I had a discussion with the label owner at Deep about how I could get into the world of DJing and he came up with a plan,’ he recollects. This plan was a residency at Club Stalker in Haarlem, The Netherlands (open since 1983) ‘I was nervous,’ Matthew says. ‘I’d never played for an audience before, and now I was there with a five hour set time, thinking how am I going to do this? ‘I only have a small record collection! I had to play the A and B-side of every record I owned! With these limitations and complete lack of technical skills, I had to very quickly learn how to DJ or else I would have completely embarrassed everyone involved not to mention myself! ‘I felt a huge pressure on my shoulders to get this right.’ After that night rumours spread through the electronic music world - there was a new DJ in town. A DJ who could also produce music, music that DJ’s all around the world already had as favourite records in their crate. Big festival organisations began requesting Matthew for gigs, and from there on in everything became a big blur for this new rising star. Extrema Festival, Dance Valley, PinkPop, Sensation and the Berlin Love Parade became Matthew’s new stages in 2003, plus many more clubs in Holland and Eastern Europe. Meanwhile back in the studio, Matthew continued to develop his sound inspired by the experience of performing. During this time he released the “Dekay meets Beastie Boys” remix of “Intergalactic” and in 2004 “Higher Thoughts”. He also did an Essential Mix for BBC Radio1. Now Matthew’s touring schedule was busier than ever before, and he played in almost 100 different cities that year. By the time “Bad” came out in 2005 on his own imprint DK Recordings, Matthew had cemented his place amongst the big players of the industry. ‘Nothing in life could prepare for what was happening to me,’ Matthew says. ‘Success can be a very big problem. When it happens you are completely unprepared for it and have no control over anything. I hated that feeling of losing control. And all these strangers suddenly wanting things from me and giving me advice on what to do with my life at the moment, I felt the most fragile. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t handle it.’ “Bad” became an anthem to the masses when a new group of DJ’s picked up the record, which also included the ‘World’s #1’ at that time. Within months it had appeared on over 50 compilations CD’s. ‘There was no escaping it. I just wanted to play music, and the crowds were saying, “play the same thing over and over, we like that.” ‘They could never understand that what they liked so much was just something I was doing on my way to getting better.’ In the spring of 2008 Matthew realized how unhappy he really was. ‘The music industry…,’ he says. ‘I love the music, I live for it in fact, but the business part plain stinks. That was when I started to understand that popular music has little or nothing to do with musical values at all.’ Whilst coming to grips with this, he made the decision to move to New York City. ‘I was in desperate need for a change of scenery,’ Matthew says. ‘I felt like I’d hit rock bottom and needed to escape Holland for a while.’ But before his move to the U.S, Matthew went to Ibiza for the opening of the 2008 season to prepare for his summer residency at Amnesia. After being invited by the club to check out the opening of Cocoon, he didn’t really know what to expect. ‘I thought it was going to be all minimal clicky techno,’ he recalls. But nothing could have been further from the truth; Matthew was about to have his musical epiphany. ‘I remember having a dance upstairs on the balcony with Danny Tenaglia and us both looking down on the heaving masses being literally conducted by Ricardo Villalobos. I was mesmerized. ‘And the music! It was much housier than I had ever expected. It reminded me so much of why I started doing this in the first place. ‘That feeling of not having to play hits to get that kind of crowd response was incredible. It was the moment where I saw that my success had completely removed me from the essence of why I was making electronic music in the first place.’ After the Ibiza season, Matthew arrived in New York with a fresh outlook on life. His new social environment brought about many changes that would begin to help him find himself again. He decided it was finally time to build his long awaited dream studio and after finding a great location in Manhattan, he went on the hunt for the most exclusive recording equipment available. Many months of intensive fine-tuning then followed. It wasn’t too long after that Matthew was introduced to Lee Burridge. The pair met at a gig Lee was playing in New York, and the two instantly clicked on both personal and professional levels. When Lee started playing, Matthew knew he had found his musical soul mate. ‘Standing there listening to what he was playing and the way he was playing it, he was telling the audience a story,’ Matthew recalls. ‘It had always been my mission to master the craft of playing that way. This was all the reminder I needed to go back to my roots and it was in this moment I fell in love with electronic music all over again.’ Matthew knew that somehow he had to get Lee into the studio and play him some ideas. Little did he know, Lee was thinking the exact same thing. ‘It was crazy! We both realized we had been living almost parallel lives for the best part of a decade!’ he says. And in the studio it was like a musical marriage. The joy of finding each other was the core of their musical creativity, and from this partnership the first demo of what was to become “Wongel” was born. A vacation to Berlin at the beginning of summer 2009 proved to be the final step in Matthew’s road to musical enlightenment. It was there he discovered a whole community of artists he finally felt he could identify with. This is, what he says, he had been searching for all his life. ‘All the stories about New York in the 1980’s were, to some degree, a direct comparison to what was going on in Berlin now,’ he says. ‘The city is still developing, it’s an unfinished project. ‘The cost of living is very reasonable, there are parties going on seven days a week in the most unlikely of places, and the city’s liberal attitude towards culture attracts the most creative people from every country in the world. It is an artist’s dream. By August of that year, Matthew had packed up his studio in New York and moved his life to Berlin. Sharing a communal complex with electronic music producers such as Tobias Freund, Pier Bucci, Heartthrob, Mike Shannon, Alex Picone and Cassy, provided him with not only fresh musical inspiration, but with a whole new set of friends. ‘Finally after all these years, it felt like coming home,’ he recalls. ‘Everybody was all about sharing; leaving studio doors open so others could come in and have a listen to what they were working on, borrow equipment or just hang out. ‘It was a complete lifestyle. When one guy would have a gig everyone would go down to support him. I had never experienced this anywhere else in the world.’ Amazing things began to happen for Matthew in Berlin. Lee came over from London to work in the studio and they finally finished “Wongel.” After Cassy played the track for the first time at the Miami WMC in early 2010, Nick Curly, the boss of German label Cecille Records loved it, and immediately signed it to the label. “Wongel” went on to peak at #6 in the Beatport Tech House charts, and #1 on Resident Advisor’s 50 Most Charted Tracks of November 2010. The track was also included on Cocoon compilations “Party Animals” and “Green and Blue”. Matthew also continued to work on his own production development, and released music on labels such as Monique Musique (CAN), Troll Records (NO), Portobolo Records (FR) and Maruca Music (GER). By the time Lee joined him in the studio again, Matthew was in peak production form, and they wrote a flood of new material, including a remix for Ian Pooley’s “Groove Me” (Pooled Music) which was also included on Fabric’s new compilation CD mixed by Visionquest, and “Out of Order”, which again was signed to Cecille Records and released on the Special Edition Somero 2011 EP. The duo had become so close that Matthew says: ‘Lee could read my musical thoughts and I could read his. It was like my brainwaves were in his head and his in mine.’ It was at this moment they decided to take their partnership to another level and start two new record labels. “All Day I Dream” began with a series of four daytime parties on a rooftop in Brooklyn, NYC this summer. The philosophy behind the new brand is to promote and showcase beautiful, melancholic, gorgeous House music as the name suggests. Matthew and Lee share a strong belief that there is a gap in the market for such a label where artists can create and release music from the heart, defying current musical trends. Released in October “All Day I Dream 001” features “Sunrise BCN” by Audiofly and “Gemini’s Spell” by the label bosses themselves. With support from respected industry names such as Soul Clap, Steve Bug, Ame, Osunlade, Mark Romboy and Reboot, to name just a few, is confirmation the duo are on a one-way road to victory. The second label “Get Weird” will debut before the end of 2011 and will also be followed by a series of night time parties across Europe. After completing a metamorphosis through many styles and sounds, Matthew believes he has finally been brought back to where he feels the most comfortable expressing his creativity in underground music. ‘I’m so excited for what lies ahead,’ he says. ‘I’ve never felt this way before. ‘Everything I have done up until this point has just been a practice exercise for what I have coming next.’
