5th November - How Tim Changed My Life ◢ ◤



Today was a morning when, for the first time in a long time, I decided to delve into the back-catalogue of my all-time favourite, and undoubtedly the greatest electronic music artist of all time, Avicii, whilst generating a happy mood for myself upon waking. I always find that a good solid hour of classic EDM during the first part of the day sets the tone for the rest of it and puts me in a positive frame of mind, but it had been a while since I last paid audio homage to the man who changed everything for me. Some of you may have heard these stories before, some of you may not even care, but my own musical tastes when growing up were a varied concoction. From the first cassette I ever bought, S Club 7, and the years of 90s 'pop' (none of which I'd be able to listen to now without physically vomiting), right into the 'indie' years when - by the age of 19 - I was obsessed with the likes of Oasis, and Kasabian, I never really found my 'niche' musically. That was, until the Summer of 2010.





When the likes of David Guetta and Calvin Harris started to bubble close to the surface of mainstream radio and commercial charts, electronic music was about to take over and truly dominate the scene for all the late teens and early 20s of this era. But it was one night, whilst listening to the Freeview radio stations in my bedroom that I heard a track called 'Bromance', back then still just a bootleg, broadcast on Kiss FM, by an artist named as 'Tim Berg'. From that moment on, I was obsessed. Instantly hooked. I worked a placement for MixMag and wrote about the baby-faced Swede with the receding hairline as my 'sample' for them via email, researching this mysterious bedroom producer to within an inch of my life as I pitched the article for their 'Ones To Watch' feature. Few, including myself, could have ever imagined just how much his future would skyrocket. 




I hammered that tune to just about everyone who would dare listen, and even those who wouldn't. I shoved it down their throats until our Uni house became THE place to go for pre-drinks, as we regularly broke new music to the masses months before they dared of even hearing it. At the time, they'd frown upon our selections and ask for some Rihanna instead. A few months later, they were all screaming 'Like A G6' and so on, forgetting that we were the ones who had initially aired it to them half a year ago. We were the 'Radio 1' of Hampshire, with myself and another dance fan by the name of George, updating our iPods with the hottest tunes in the World every night by scouring Internet forums and festival tracklists. Tim's explosion, later coining monster hits like 'Levels' under his 'Avicii' alias, came at a time when the likes of Swedish House Mafia and Hardwell started to reign supreme across the scene and the term 'EDM' was born. It not only opened my ears for those coming years, but changed the way I listened to music for the rest of my life. These days, my musical tastes remain superior to the vast majority of those around me, based on my dedication to scouring those same sources, and obsessively hunting down the latest IDs. I'm glad to have met others within this industry who share my nature, and understand my passion. But I can trace it all back to that day in my bedroom...





... When Tim changed my life. 



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