MAD DEE JAY Biography
Mad Dee Jay took his first breath on the dirty planet Earth on the March 14, 1979 in Yerevan at 18:27PM local time, and was given the name Ashot Babayan.
His love towards music was able to watch already in early childhood when he tried to compose some tunes on old “Belarus” piano (which is still his favourite one till today).
In the school he started to listen to the first rap & hip-hop tracks, which penetrated the thick and unbeatably-invisible wall of USSR prejudice and west-world taboo.
Unfortunately there was no any possibility of making his own music, though his will and plans were huge. But one thing could afford any Armenian youngster – paper and pen. Ashot started writing his first rap rhymes in early 1994, in the same year the stage name Mad DJ was chosen (nowadays he’s also known as M.A.D., Maddy Nuff and Toscha Steinberg).
At the same time grew his interest and passion towards electronic music which seemed to be so hypnotizing and colorful.
On the October 17, 1997 is the first great achievement: project X-PHOBOS was established with Mad’s three true friends – Mighty-K, Sam Apollo and CJ Alexx.
X-PHOBOS was too underground for Armenian society, but staying deep in the underground they could gain enormous sympathy and lots of positive emotions from the younger generation.
It was a great sphere for Mad to develop himself, as X-PHOBOS was a real multistyled project.
He took part in every event from private parties to DJ-Festivals, also being a radio DJ at one of the leading radio stations of Yerevan.
The year 2000 was a year of big changes, and in Mad’s case, mostly negative ones. At the peak of his career, everything disappeared in the army for two years…
In 2002, X-PHOBOS was officially separated into solo projects, cause many social (and not only) reasons made the project’s work as a whole, almost impossible. Mad kept his head up and decided to take a time-out and live in Europe for a while. Mad took his time and worked solo, making his musical experiments in pretty wide range of genres including some trip-hop, deep house fused with minimal, nu-phunk and electro-jazz.
After his return in March 2006, Mad Dee Jay and his friend and colleague DJ Garry Spectrum (Garry Mkrtchyan) launched a producer-duo – MAD and SPECTRAL. | read more
