Legendary Aussie selector Kid Kenobi is currently midway through his anticipated 20 Years A Kid tour, a nostalgic 8-stop trip around the country to celebrate his long-standing career in the Australian dance music scene.

We decided – granted this guy has been DJing for longer than some of us have been alive – to pick his brain and find out what his 10 favourite club tracks are from over the years, and why.

Delve into the list below, and be sure to catch one of his shows during the tour. The next stop is up in Brisbane at The Met this Saturday.

Ska Train – The Beatmasters

Although this track came out quite a few years before I actually started DJing, this has been a big influence on me since I first heard the album on cassette tape at my Dads back in the late ‘80s. I think it lives in my subconscious and kind of directs my work without me even knowing. So many of my tracks and remixes today still have horn sections, rap vocals, and acid lines in them! Ha ha. I’ve snuck this into a few sets over the years to many people’s surprise. That said it’s def the kind of stuff I’d like to go out dancing to now if I could!

Here Comes The Sun – Bassbin Twins

Bassbin Twins were the big name for me when I first started getting in to breakbeat in the mid ‘90s. Everything he did was just so funky and dancefloor compared to a lot of the drum and bass or big beat that was popular at the time. I felt like I’d hit the jackpot with these early tunes and loved the fact most people hadn’t cottoned on to the sound yet and that these records were kinda hard to find. It’s def where my love of breakbeat in its current form first started.

Breakers Revenge ’93 – Zeb-Roc-Ski & Stieber Twins

I used to start all my sets with this when I first started DJing. It was the ultimate dancefloor tune to me back in the day as it was a megamix of some of the biggest breakdancing tunes of all time. It was total party time! This was also the kick start of an obsession for me, I was infatuated with classic breaks and breakdancing tunes after this and put those kinds of tunes in as many sets as possible!

Super Rappin No. 5 – Tim ‘Love’ Lee

This was such a handy weapon. It has one of the funkiest basslines of all time. It was one of those records you could drop to an empty dancefloor and everyone would just get up and start dancing. This kind of ‘funky’ doesn’t exist as much in dance music anymore, but back then it was all about the funk and this was one of the funkiest of all!

Kid Dynamite – GT

This was written by Aussies GT and Andy Page and it was a record I got well in advance of its release. Not only was it a bomb tune with a killer bassline and crazy breakdown, it had a sample in it that went “Is that him, could I be right, could that be kid, a dynamiiiiite!”. Even though it wasn’t about me most of my fans at the time definitely thought it was about me (ha ha) so it was almost like having a personal anthem for a year or so! I had it for so long before it came out in fact (and rinsed it so hard) that most DJs probably felt weird playing it when it did finally came out ha ha.

Prophecy – Bogeyman

This was written by a drum and bass producer at the time named Twisted Individual under a secret alias. I picked it up whilst record shopping in London. I loved this tune, the bouncy yet dark, bass driven, 4/4. Although ‘bass house’ is pretty standard these days, 4/4 music with super nasty basslines like this was pretty rare in those days so this was a bit of an anomaly. It was definitely way ahead of its time. No one else could find this record in OZ either so I had total reign over it for ages, and I must say I loved that fact ha ha!

Killing in the Name (Freq Nasty Remix) – Rage Against The Machine

(Find track here)

This was a super handy bootleg done by Freq Nasty that was extremely hard to come by. I’ll be honest, I was never a huge rock fan but this tune used to have an immense effect on my gigs as it totally shifted the energy on the dancefloor. That said you had to be careful where you dropped this, especially in some of the smaller towns where ‘punching on’ was a bit of a past time. You could quite easily turn a loved up club into an aggressive mosh pit in a matter of seconds! Whoops!

The Gate – Plump DJs

Anything the Plumps did was pretty much the highlight of my sets back in the day! They always had the biggest breakdowns and dopest beats and were always a crowd favourite! This tune was really something else though. It was everything the Plumps meant to me captured in the one single track, but taken to the next level. I’d even go as far as to call this track ‘psychedelic’. It was also just so euphoric, which is what rave culture and dance music has always meant to me, euphoria. I used to love melting minds with this back in the day. So good!

Feel It (Original Rude Boy Remix) – Diamond Lights

This is taken from a brand new side project of mine called ‘Original Rude Boy’ which is all about ‘90s influenced breakbeat and rave music with a contemporary edge. It’s basically me drawing on my early influences and giving them a current flip. I love making these tunes as it all comes quite naturally to me and it’s sort of like, ‘oh damn I haven’t heard that used in a tune for a while let’s bring that back!’! This remix is on the slightly more housey end of what I do as Original Rude Boy but I’ve loved dropping this at the end of my sets as it brings back so many memories for me of what it meant to be a teenager raving for the first time in the early ‘90s. I tried to capture that feeling of complete abandonment and oneness that was part of those early raves. It was such a good time in dance music. Oh, and as you can hear, I had to throw some acid in there!

Barcelona (RED Remix) – D. Kay & Epsilon feat. Stamina MC

This was a remix I did with two of my closest mates, Tom Howell (aka Q45 / Diamond Lights / Yes Yes Records) and Lefroy Verghese (DJ Ritual). We finally made some time to get in the studio together and drink loads of red wine (hence the name). This was one of those records that just came together really easily. We were so stoked with the result and it was amazing to see this become a bit of a breakbeat anthem at the time. I’ll never forget dropping it at Field Day in Sydney and seeing a few thousand people sing along! It was always such a great track to end a set with, happy vibes!

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