Phantom Photon is a producer, remixer, technician and disk jockey based in Amsterdam since August 2004. Recent efforts focus on incorporating turntables and a laptop computer using Ableton Live real-time mixing software. Before becoming interested in dance music, he worked as a sound engineer and DJ for Chicago non-profit radio station WNUR-FM

Real name?
Sam Kennerly

DJ name?
Phantom Photon

How did you choose It?
It's a secret. Hint: nothing to do with science.

Vinyl junkie or CDs?
I use mainly 12" vinyl and AIFF or MPEG-4 files.

How many records/CDs do you have?
About 500 CDs stored in compressed form on the computer, and maybe 100 records. The rest is all on the other side of the Atlantic, along with lots of old cassette tapes.

What style of music do you play?
Progressive house, tech house, trance, breakbeats, etc.

Where do you DJ?
All sorts of weird places. I spun at De Bijenkorf three days after I moved here. I've also played at an internet cafe, a hippie party at a house in the woods, a clothing store, and at a party full of deaf people.

Your ideal DJ gig?
Someday, I want to tour doing concerts in 5.1 surround sound with synchronized video and film effects. Anything that blurs the distinction between live and recorded music in an interesting way.

Last record/CD you bought?
Depeche Mode Remixes 04 (12" vinyl)

Current musical obsession?
Live effects and remixing - running records through filters, delay effects, loop tricks and such. I've been "warping" tracks in Live, training my little Apple laptop to DJ. And I'm learning Pluggo, which is a collection of plugins made using the old Max/MSP language.

Top 3 all-time dancefloor favourites?
Hmm... this list changes all the time, but here's a start:

Ashtrax – Aira Force (Lemon8 remix)
Long, weird, and silly, but I really like it.

Sourmash – Pilgrimage to Paradise (Timo Maas remix)
Aggressive with lots of strange noises.

Sasha – Wavy Gravy (Sandman remix)
Of course, my own remix.

Worst request?
"Do you have any Limp Bizkit?"

Favourite record stores in Amsterdam?
I like Outland and Nieuwe Nieuwestraat, which has like 9 record stores.
I've never seen so many record stores in one city before.

Favourite internet radio station
www.di.fm
www.somafm.com

Do you have your own website?
www.sandmusic.com