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Music

Check Out Catalan Main Man Coyu in the Mix

The Barcelona boy's given us the lowdown on his earliest clubbing experiences ahead of a set in London this weekend.

Coyu is a DJ known better to his mum as Ivan Ramos. The Barcelona born, self-confessed "techno warrior" has released records on the likes of Noir, Bedrock, Cocoon, Diynamic and Get Physical, as well as his own Suara Music imprint. Think big, bold, contemporary techno with a splash of feline fun and you've got Coyu. The man loves cats. Just look at that photo above. He can't get enough of them.

Anyway, Ramos is set to play London's EGG this Saturday alongside Markantonio and Robert Capuano so to get us hyped for that, he decided to put together an hour of impeccably mixed peaktime techno for us. He's also given us the lowdown on his earliest memories of nightlife. Read that and check out the mix below.

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I've been going to clubs since I was 13 or 14; my memories from way back then are hazy — I don't really have that many, I guess I was a typical teenager. I went out with my friends every single night, like you do back then. I never came home sober a single night. Yes, I was only 14 — is that bad?!

Around this time we would spend summer holidays at my parents' summer apartment in Malgrat de Mar, on the coast of Barcelona. We had some shacks there where you could get drunk for no more than 350 pesetas (which is around 2 euros). The old pesetas times! The music — as you can imagine — was completely rubbish but I guess it wasn't a bad introduction to the club scene. Not so long after this, I started to go out to real clubs where you could hear some decent house music. Though it was still mixed with mainstream pop stuff it was closer to what I was in to. My friends liked to go to those clubs to flirt with girls, and so did I but the music was really really important to me. I was about 18 when I discovered the real club scene in Barcelona. It was amazing.

I remember my first weekend going out in the city: I spent the Friday night at a summer festival where Steve Lawler, DJ Chus and Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez were playing. There were three stages and around 3,000 people there — the atmosphere was incredible. Electric. That was a totally new experience for me.

The day after, I went to Nitsa for the first time. Adam Beyer was DJing, playing raw, fast, dark techno. That was a proper experience. Back then I was more about house than techno. Those aggressive kickdrums and mental synths were something new to me and i fell in love with techno immediately. Nitsa was the best club in town back then, and 13 years later, it still is, in my opinion.

_That place became my mecca and I spent every single weekend there for years. It was the place where I learnt to love electronic music. Months after that experience I decided to combine my first year of university with a 7h job for just one reason: to buy two turntables and a mixer. A few months after that I was playing my first few shows in Barcelona. _That first night at Nitsa was instrumental in it all, it was the gateway — Nitsa made me into a techno warrior.__

Fresh from label showcases in Ibiza and guest spots at Space, Coyu headlines Familia at EGG LDN this Saturday, with Markantonio and Robert Capuano - 5th September. For tickets and more information head here.

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