Steve Reaver, the artist that formally known simply as DJ Reaver has been actively involved in the dance music industry in Sydney for 14 years. His achievements and influence upon the scene in this time have been unique and numerous.
From a young age Steve Reaver learnt music in a classical environment that encouraged music. His early influences involved styles his parents played in their band, this generated the passion that was required for him to start producing his own music, break new ground and define what was expected of a DJ with such talents.
Considering himself a music producer ahead of a DJ, he has always used DJ’ing as a way to promote his own music, and in doing so during the early 90’s Steve Reaver exploded onto the DJ scene and began to play and promote his own music, initially with a residency at ‘Cloud 9’ where he used this night as a springboard to launch his DJ’ing career and demo his music to the masses.
Steve Reaver was then able to start his own independent record label ‘Digital Access Records’ and release several of his own tracks including the rave anthem ‘All-Right’ which released on Sony’s hugely successful music compilation ‘Strictly Techno 2’, with top spinners like John Ferris behind this track as early as Prodigy NYE 1996 it was only a matter of time before it was signed to a major label. This led to Reaver also releasing several other tracks and in 1998 released the club anthem ‘Get Off’ which was later remixed in 2000 to become one of the years harder style essential tracks.
During the period, 1990-1999, Steve Reaver also worked hard at performing his energetic live sets which began with two computers and a DJ mixer. He would mix material live the same way a DJ would. From here the show began to grow from strength to strength, and eventually became a full sound rig live on stage, culminating with the ‘Prodigy Dance’ event in June 1999 for a 5000 people strong crowd.
Steve Reaver has performed live at well over 50 rave and dance parties in his career, which include small events such as Quality Beats, Area 51, Wonderland, and range to large rave events such as the Field Of Dreams series, the Smurf Village series, the Prodigy series and of course his own parties The Happiest People In the World series.
Steve Reaver is well experienced in the art of event promotion, from the beginning he was actively involved in operating Cloud 9 and from here he gained enough experience at running an event he was able to hold his first party, ‘The Happiest People In the World’. This party went on for two sequels ‘The Happiest People In the World 2 +3’ and became one of the most memorable events of the decade. Steve Reaver was also responsible for ‘Dreams’ series of parties and had an active involvement in running several other big parties.
More recently Steve Reaver has been working on purely production, his studio has grown into a professional rig and his abilities have expanded with it. He has been involved with music production for local artists such as ‘Bradford Street’ and ‘Brett Mavric’ in addition to working on his own material. He was instrumental in creating a remix of the INXS hit ‘What You Need’ which earned him first place in the INXS remix contest and airplay on Nova 96.9 Sydney. Steve Reaver is currently involved with a new records label ‘Dance Beats International’ and intends to release his own material and promote other local artist through this label.
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