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Stars are born, not made. And this is exactly of comes to mind when we think of Portuguese DJ and producer, Kura. He’s 27 years old and has already under his belt several releases for labels such as Hardwell’s Revealed Recordings, MYNC’s Cr2 Records, Tiger Recordings, Flashover Recordings, Armada Recordings, among others, and lots more on the way. Add to this his remarkable charisma and talents on a DJ booth and you have the key ingredients to make it in today’s competitive and worldwide EDM scene.
It’s rather curious for a DJ that names Axwell, Nicky Romero, Hardwell and Alesso as his main references when it comes to music production to have been introduced to dance music through Carl Cox’s Fact 2 compilation. But facts are facts! Kura was 11 years old when his attention got captured by a classmate’s Walkman playing “Fact 2”. This was the first electronic dance music CD bought by young Kura, and the EDM exploration begun. By the early 2000s he started going out to clubs and his attention grew sonically to the disco filtered frech touch of Martin Solveig, Modjo, Black Legend, and of course, to the big beat of his musical heroes, Daft Punk. Growing up in such musical diversity had an effect on Kura: he loves music whether it’s underground or commercial, as long as it’s good and strong, he’ll surely and happily play it. The high school’s radio station was just one step ahead and that’s where Kura begun to choose records and play them for an audience.
By 2005 he landed on his part time job at a skate shop near the beach on the outskirts of Lisbon. Luckily for the rest of us there was a DJ booth at the shop and when no one was around, Kura would play and practice on it. Opportunity was just around the corner and Kura started to organize parties, just to play, in Cascais’s club, Coconuts. His first DJ residency came along and he became Bahaus resident DJ for 3 years. Having to play regularly before a crowd created the emergency for music production – “I needed my own edits. I needed to change what I didn’t like or thought wouldn’t work on a dancefloor” – he states. His first bootleg was a hit among his peers – Sydney Samson’s “Work It” on Hardwell’s remix crossed with Bob Marley – made a dancefloor stomper and soon after his fellow DJs were asking him for the bootleg. More edits came along and his music production skills were starting to be noticed. Kura upgraded to Logic Pro 8 and made his first original track, “Russian Guitar” that was picked up by none other than Portugal’s first and finest label, Kaos Records.
His name grew as a DJ and he was invited to play as a resident DJ at Lisbon’s Kapital, and then at the summer club, Tamariz, and then to Gossip, a 1.500 people capacity club in Lisbon. Production wise his tracks and remixes were coming out regularly and the invitations to play in other clubs started to come in, it was time to leave his residencies and focus on a freelance career, and that’s what Kura did. As his productions got stronger his invitations to play in bigger better clubs grew.
The international breakthrough would come with his track “Brazil”. Roger Sanchez picked it up from the thousands of promos he usually receives and played it on his infamous Release Yourself Radioshow. But it wouldn’t be only Roger Sanchez to notice Kura’s music production talents, Thomas Gold would also play Kura’s “Polaris”, “Love Will Find You”, a remix of “Nightrain” as well as a bootleg of Adele signed by Kura on his radioshow. Besides these Kura also got support for his tracks from Hardwell, Nicky Romero and EDX, amongst many others.
By early 2012 he had caught the eye of many in the industry and was invited to join the Swiss based agency WDB Management. With an array of new tracks to be released in the near future and DJ gigs to show his dancefloor conductor skills, Kura isn’t just a promise, he’s a true certainty. Make sure you follow him at www.facebook.com/kuradj - www.soundcloud.com/kurapt
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