CK DECKSTERHAVEN
Minneapolis, MN – Progressive/Visual Design
CK Decksterhaven has been a club kid for more than half of his lifetime. At the age of fifteen his family moved from rural Wisconsin to St. Paul, and shortly thereafter he became a regular at First Avenue’s Sunday Night Dance Party. It was on these nights where he gained his first exposure to a wider variety of dance music than what he heard on the radio. His interest peaked he went to explore more of the underground sound.
Haven can remember going to his first rave in the fall of ’92 with a couple of high school friends. The event was held on the second floor of a bank building undergoing renovations and you had to walk around a giant hole in the floor to the main room. A number of acid house djs played and a three piece live pa. This was his first real experience with the electronic music counter culture.
The music was interesting and fun to groove to, and he would attend other events over the next couple of years, including some memorable moments when Thump Productions began putting moonwalks in there warehouse parties. However, the style of music that was really holding his attention at the time was the growing electronic industrial sounds of groups like Front 242 and Nine Inch Nails, which was played predominantly in the clubs.
This would remain true until mid nineties when he heard Sasha play at New York’s legendary Twilo and changed his life, and sent him looking for more when he returned home to the Twin Cities.
By the late nineties Haven was an avid trance fan having heard some of the best US talent of the era at parties across the Midwest, but he never considered becoming a dj himself until his friend Jeff Hunter (check out Jeffhunter.ws for his bio) told him that he had started to spin some of the Florida breaks sound on his KUMD radio program, The Harmonic Sideshow. The idea grew in his head, but knowing almost nothing of the skills and tools you need to learn and develop to become a successful dj, Haven bought a pair of worthless turntables and a crap mixer embarking on a sporadic journey of train wrecks and high pitch chord clashes over the next two years. At the same time he watched as his friend’s natural ear and talent continued to grow.
Jeff Hunter graduated from the University of Minnesota Duluth and returned to St. Paul where the two became roommates. This gave Haven the opportunity to work for the first time with real quality instruments, two technic 1200s and a Pioneer DJM 300 mixer. With some helpful coaching from his friend CK Decksterhaven began to develop some actual skill with matching beats and mixing melodies.
Around this same time the rave scene came to an almost grinding halt and the sound moved into the clubs, a kind of full circle for Haven returning to the venues he once frequented. When Sound In Motion began to throw its weekly Saturday night event, Plush, at the Quest nightclub, Haven’s friend Chad (also known as Skyy and who was for a short while Minneapolis’s premiere trance jock) was working as one of the club’s lighting directors. The two collaborated often to create large stage settings and light shows for the dance event and through this connection Haven was introduced to Jack Trash and the rest of his company.
When SIM moved Plush from the Quest’s Saturday night to Tabu and it’s Friday night, CK Decksterhaven was asked to join the production company and lend his particular talents to help make the night a success, lending not only his style of progressive trance sounds, but also his skill with stage and lighting design.
Nearly four years have passed since he started mixing with any kind of real hope at success, and during that time he has listened attentively to growing talents and ever changing sound of his major influences; Sasha and Digweed, Christopher Lawrence, Sander Kleinenberg, Gabriel and Dresden, and more recently Sandra Collins and James Zabiela. Taking their example, Haven has developed a style which pulls from the deeper side of house, trance, breaks, and even a little techno to create a sound with aggressive basslines layered under ethereal melodies.
