Darren Hall
Darren Hall is a name rising through the ranks of the world renowned Irish trance scene.
This Dublin born dancefloor destroyer grew up in the 90's listening to pirate radio and the dance music that was then breaking into and topping the UK Charts. He first set his eyes on a vinyl player in his grandad's converted attic, this fascinated the youngster who went on to buy his first set of belt drive turntables at 14 years old. As with most young bedroom DJ's at that age his first crowd was at local house parties. A young Darren was also toying around with the Dance Ejay music production game, this sparked a creative side which he would go on to explore in more depth later.
As a keen trance DJ and soon to be club addict, Darren broke his club cherry with Italian legend and Dublin crowd favourite Mauro Picotto. The lizard man was the first big name DJ that he heard live at The Ambassador Theatre Dublin when he was 16 years old. Since that special night he never looked back, with other stand out sets being Marco V and Scot Project at Godskitchen at The Point.
While soaking up the Southern Irish club culture in its prime, the harder side of trance caught Darrens ear in a big way and he started buying these type of records. The UK hard dance movement was exploding and he was annually going over to England for the infamous Tidy Weekenders to revel in the sounds of his new favourite DJ's such as Alex Kidd, Dark By Design and Kidd Kaos.
After these important years of experience on the dancefloor and practicing his craft on the decks, which were now technics 1210's, Darren took the next step at 20 years old when he bought Ableton Live 6 learners edition. After reading the whole manual and diving in at home, he decided to learn from the professionals and enrolled in a music production course in college in Dublin which he passed with flying colours!
Production wise Darren started with hard trance and hard dance, releasing on smaller labels such as Gearbox Digital, Digitally Infected, Friction Records, Infexious and Implosion, while gigging around the multitude of hard dance club nights in Dublin. After a while this sound and scene pretty much imploded and the sound changed, Darren found his way back to a more European trancey and techy sound, but still hard edged, always hard edged!. This was the sound he was originally influenced by as a young DJ and clubber but with a more modern production focused sound, the new era of trance and its various sub-genres was here to stay. Darren set his studio sights on this new sound and it wasn't long until he was releasing on labels such as FSOE Clandestine, HQ Recordings, Redrive Records, Radiation Recordings.
Support has been coming in from names such as Paul Van Dyk, Scot Project, Sean Tyas, Tempo Giusto, Stoneface & Terminal, RAM, Shugz, David Rust, Renegade System, Ashley Smith, Daniel Skyver, Ucast, Kutski, Ganesh, Pete Delete and many more.
Outburst presents Prism Volume 3 mixed by Mark Sherry, Scot Project and David Forbes featured Darrens track 'Got 2 Keep' on the German hard trance god's disc. Add to that other credible digital comps, appearances on Spin 103.8 National Radio in Ireland, RTE Pulse, plus the hottest live streams from USA to UK, Argentina to Australia. Darren's most successful track to date has been 'Second Wind' on HQ Recordings which picked up over 100k streams on Spotify. The Dubliners own unreleased reworks of tracks by Walt, Marco V, Sinead O'Connor and Tukan have done maximum damage in his own sets and playlists of international big hitters.
Having already played alongside DJ's such as Scot Project, Bryan Kearney, Sean Tyas, Orjan Nilsen, Jordan Suckley, Alex M.O.R.P.H and Mac and Taylor, the groundwork has been done for Darren to step up into the limelight in 2022 and beyond. What makes him stand out is his musical knowledge, unrelenting passion for production and DJ presence in the booth, making Darren Hall a serious contender in the next wave of Irish talent.