Yousef - The Art of the Warm Up DJ

Circus' Grand Ringmaster, Yousef, played an unusual role at his last gig at London's Electric venue in Brixton. Rather than taking peak time slot, the man behind one of Liverpool's biggest nights set about a warm up set ahead of the mighty Carl Cox and by all reports, rather enjoyed the experience.  We managed to grab a recording of the two hour set and chatted to Yousef about how he approaches these things - this is one for you, all up and coming DJ's!

Yousef: “This mix is all about the art of the warm-up, something which often gets forgotten in clubland and a set I don’t get to play too often any more, not even at my own event, Circus. It’s where pretty much every DJ starts out their career (I did way back in the annexe of Cream) and it’s maybe the most important set of the night, starting the ball rolling for the evening and setting the vibe and the tempo for the DJs that play later.
At Circus I have to listen to a lot of warm-ups and play a few extended ones, and it’s definitely one of the key ingredients of what we do. You need to be able to trust someone to slowly coerce people onto the dancefloor, building the energy over a period of time rather than going for the jugular straight away. There’s nothing worse than someone banging out the tunes to an empty dancefloor ten minutes after opening, and we’ve always strived to ensure this is one of the best sets of the evening.

Playing for Carl Cox’s Revolution at Electric Brixton I saw a rare chance to do the warm-up slot away from Circus, so I asked to see if I would be able to lay down the tone of the night beforehand. This mix reflects everything I think a good warm-up set should have and it also gave me the chance to play a lot of records I don’t get to play very often; starting off deep and emotive and slowly building the pace. There’s some lovely spacey almost electronica sounds at the start, very warm, before we end up getting into some serious floor wrecking house music, all in the space of two hours.”

Listen to Yousef on Pulse Radio