Mickey out of Belgium is a name gaining ever increasing exposure in the world of house music and for good reason. A prominent DJ with ever sharpening production skills, 2011 has been a massive year which has seen him complete remixes for the likes of Beni, Tyson and Headman as well as gain much internet kudos for his monthly mixtape series (must be a Belgian thing). His latest tape even has been aired as an exclusive mixtape for Triple J, so you know they’re on board!

About to embark on his debut tour of Australia which will seem him take in every capital city over a 2 week period, we felt it suitable to get him to answer a bunch of questions for our readers to help them learn a bit more about the man. Help us help you, help us help you.

Mickey November Mixtape for Triple J

Who is Mickey?

My name is very close to the my DJ name it’s Michaël Bursztejn I live in Brussels city at the beginning I used to be a comics designer but i was more often in my studio so I quit to start produce things I wanted to hear ..

Firstly you have one of the freshest sounds going around at the moment. Always tropical and driven with housey percussion. How would you describe what you do and at this point in your career, what has been the biggest influence on your style? 

The biggest influence was ” The The ” in the Caribbean way among others and the way I doing music depends to all the things I appreciated in the thousands things i heard ..

For a lot of readers, the link between Belgium and dance music isn’t massive beyond Soulwax, Aeroplane/Magician and Mustang. Can you describe to us what the dance music culture is like over there? Can you name any up and coming local talents we should keep our eyes on? 

First I guess we got a lot of good clubs and festivals and the living standard is very good so you can be an artist without kill yourself behind a bar or at the factory. I heard about the new project of Renaud deer the ex half part of Mustang called Attar! otherwise in a other style there’s the label Pelican fly with a lot of promises talent!

Talk us through your studio set-up… 

The sequencer that I use is Cubase ,(I know that’s an old dinosaur) the masterpiece of my studio it’s my jupiter 6 otherwise I got a juno 106, a casio , a microkorg , some controllers, a fender guitar with pedals effects that I also use on synths sometimes all of this mix with VST and VSTI.

If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing with yourself?

Body building, fireman or prime minister ; )

Tell us one thing about yourself that the average fan wouldn’t know about you…

I got the Highwayphobia and I love karaoke

You’ve got a new single dropping this Friday (25th November) on Smile Records. Talk us through the track(s) and what can we expect from you on this release? 

This one it’s much more powerful than the others productions that I made and there’s a vocal guest who gives something sexy to this song… stay tuned!

What are some things you’re looking forward to seeing/doing while in Australia?

I think there are plenty that’s why I’m really enjoy to be in tour here ; ).. ok Koalas.

Marry one, remix one, kill one: Justin Beiber, Kim Kardashian, Rebecca Black…

I ‘ll marry Bieber for his money, then I’ll kill Rebecca because she’ll threaten my future husband’s stardom, and I guess I’ll remix Kardashian so we can make a ‘clip’ together.

You can catch Mickey at the following locations across the country. This is someone you don’t want to sleep on.

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 25 – BOWLER BAR, BRISBANE
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 27 – HUGOS, SYDNEY
FRIDAY DECEMBER 2 – ELSEWHERE, GOLD COAST
SATURDAY DECEMBER 3 – CAREHOUSE, MELBOURNE
SUNDAY DECEMBER 4 – JETS ON THE BEACH, PERTH

For more information, check out Mickey on Facebook and Soundcloud.

http://soundcloud.com/mickey

http://www.facebook.com/Mickeyfanpage

Super bonus, check out this rework of Colonel Abrams classic track “Trapped”