Artists

Dundee boy Mike McDonald, celebrating 20 years as a DJ this year, is no stranger to DJ’ing at festivals having played at some of Scotland’s finest including T in the Park, Rockness, Homelands, Belladrum, Groove and Scotland’s newest festival, Carnival 56, which took place on 12 and 13 August this year . He also played the 10,000 capacity Colours Masters of the Millennium event in Glasgow in the Ministry of Sound arena before house music pioneer DJ Pierre. Mike still dines out on the tale of Pierre trainspotting one of the tunes he played!

Mike is no stranger to Inverness, a place he calls his second home, having been resident DJ at Blue/Soho/Motion for 9 years from 1998. His first gig in the Highlands was at Club Zone in Dingwall, and he was then asked to play a set in Blue on a Friday night. He played every second Friday before becoming Saturday night resident a year later.

He’s played gigs for the Filth team at the Ironworks, most recently with Andrew McGibbon and Mark Mackenzie, for Ross Lyall’s tribute gig in March 2017.

In August 1998, Mike launched the Dundee Dance Event (DDE) with 17 DJs playing in 10 venues. The event ran again the following year before Mike decided to spread his DJ wings and play at clubs around the country.

In 2011, Mike relaunched the DDE with a group of 30 DJs playing in 10 venues. This year’s event in April had almost 150 DJs playing in 24 city centre venues – the biggest event of its kind in the UK.

The same year Mike relaunched the DDE, he played his first gig at Belladrum festival alongside a sax player, percussionist, bass player and two vocalists, under the guise of Phono. He still classes that gig with the Phono team as one of his career highlights. Although the infamous boat parties on Loch Ness come pretty close – but not quite as close as the flames licking his nose when DJ’ing at one of the wigwam after parties and a cane chair was thrown on the fire pit along with exploding glo-sticks!

However, he lived to tell the tale and you can catch him returning to the north to do his thing for Shenanigan 2017.

Listen below to Mikes recent mix from Scotland’s newest festival – Carnival 56