John O’Callaghan

Ireland is known for many things: Guinness, shamrocks, and now – John O’Callaghan. Firmly established in the A-list trance elite, John O’Callaghan is set to continue his journey further up the ladder of electronic dance superstardom. John’s high-energy trance mix coupled with a highly refined precision mixing style has seen him surge up through the DJ ranks. Spinning his first Radio 1 Essential Mix in the summer of 2008, the gifted producer/DJ was one of only 4 trance DJs to do so during the year. Immediately following that, he made his debut in DJ Magazine’s Top 100 DJ’s rundown, arriving at No.60. In the 2012 poll, he’s taken the poll at number 55, having cemented his place as Ireland’s foremost DJ & producer. In his home country he has picked up the Best DJ awards at the Irish Dance Music Awards for 3 consecutive years; decisively conquered the notoriously competitive testing ground of Ibiza and was the first Irishman to play Trance Energy. John has achieved so much already but this is just the beginning of a trance legacy.

Production: Since making his first moves into music production 10 years ago, O’Callaghan’s notched-up over 50 productions and released them on some of the most respected labels in the industry. Early club-anthems like ‘The Chamber’, ‘Exactly’ & ‘Space & Time’ became mainstays of DJs sets and along the way prompted Paul van Dyk to comment that he is “one of the most exciting producers in the world today”. Soon after, John produced ‘Big Sky’… off the back of an extended 4-month- long club & radio hammering from the big 5, it was voted the No.1 trance tune of 2007 on Armin’s ASOT show. From there, ‘Big Sky’ took on a life of its own and has now reached the status of a modern trance classic. ‘Find Yourself’, taken from the Never Fade Away album, has had massive global success with all the big name DJs playing it regularly in their sets and has also reached a monumental 3,5 million views on YouTube to date. John also produces through a number of pseudonyms, including Joint Operations Centre and J.O.C. Under the latter he displays his affinity of techno-fringed productions, supported by a who’s who of techno and progressive jocks.

Album ‘Unfold’: April 15th 2011 saw the release of John’s 3rd and arguably most well crafted album. ‘Unfold’ comprises of 14 tracks, which cross the boundaries of all fields of dance music, from chill-out to techtrance, from uplifting vocals to banging melodies; Unfold ticks the boxes, and then some! Singles ‘Talk To Me’, ‘Save This Moment’, ‘Bring Back The Sun’ and the rougher ‘Raw Deal’ and ‘Stresstest’ have all contributed to the affable Irish hero’s rapidly evolving outlook on the world.

‘Subculture’ series: ‘Subculture’ is a series launched in 2009 – an innovative hybrid mix album that premiered freshly produced material, including many of the Subculture labels’ exclusives. From 2012 on, John also creates a monthly selection of favorite tracks, featured in his Subculture Selection pack.

DJ: John caught his first DJ’ing break playing on national Irish radio station 2FM’s ‘Sessions Tour’. From the DJ booth he has gone on to throw trance-fire onto the floors of some of the world’s highest-profile clubs, arenas and festivals. Counted amongst them are Planet Love, Lush, WMC in Miami, Rain in Las Vegas, Global Gathering, Poland’s Transmission, Electric Daisy, Future Music Festival,  Creamfields and many of the A State of Trance events. He is also a regular fixture in Ibiza and expanded his fan base in Australia, North- & South-America, Asia and the US.

This just about sums up John’s non stop DJ travel diary.

The Subculture Radio Show: For the last five years John has presented his take on the trance scene through his Subculture show on the industry-leading station DI.FM. Subculture presents a crystal-clear monthly snapshot of John’s in-and-out of club sound, exploring the outer reaches of electronic music. The show goes out at 5pm UK time on the 2nd Monday of the month, noon US EST and 6pm CET.

The Subculture Label: In February 2010, after the radio show and compilation, John took the next evolutionary step and launched Subculture: the label. In cooperation with industry giant Armada, the imprint quickly started to showcase John and other likeminded musicians’ tracks, kicking off with his own floor-pounding ‘Striker’.

Subculture Events: 2010 has been the year of Subculture Events, with John’s own events selling out at each location. Lush in Northern Ireland had its doors closed at 10pm due to a capacity crowd, a record-breaking feat. The Subculture brand has quickly built momentum with such success that John has played at Tripod in Dublin, which is commonly known as the best club in Southern Ireland and sold out his feverishly awaited debut. Subculture nights were quickly becoming such a success in Ireland that plans were set afoot to take it further afield. In 2012 the brand expanded to the UK where Subculture rocked at the legendary Arches alongside the Inside Out brand, and onwards to Passion where it took take over at the infamous Emporium.

John O’Callaghan Remixes: Although his studio career carries more of an original production bias, John has lent his musical skill to many exceptional remixes. In 2005 his debut came in the form of the hugely received rewiring of fellow countrymen Agnelli & Nelson’s ‘Shiver’. From there he went on to rework (amongst others) John Askew’s ‘How Can I Put This’, Ronski Speed’s ‘The Space We Are’ & Filo & Peri’s ‘Anthem’. So taken was Armin by John’s 2008 remix of ‘If You Should Go’ that he took the rare step of asking O’Callaghan to rework a second track from his ‘Imagine’ album. With another album in the wings Armin has asked John yet again to remix the first track ‘Full Focus’ from his ‘Mirage’ album, this time under his Joint Operations Centre alias. John’s remix of The Doppler Effect’s ‘Beauty Hides in the Deep’ became a cult hit within the trance fraternity and 2009 and 2010 has seen him go on to remix material from a number of A-list trance heavyweights such as Armin van Buuren, Gareth Emery, Emma Hewitt, Susana, as well as a multitude of highly sought after reworks and bootlegs for JOC sets only. He is widely regarded as one of the most in-demand remixers in electronic dance music today.