DJ Tea & 2 Sugars is a friend of Amsterdam Vinyl Club and plays regularly at our shows. With a box of guilty pleasures and a spontaneous setlist, he always gets the room jumping!

An interview with DJ Tea & 2 Sugars

What are you going to be playing for us at Amsterdam Vinyl Club tonight?
I'm going to mix it up a little bit. There are going to be a lot of different genres. I've got Northern Soul, some disco, some high energy – a little bit of cheesy stuff, you know! Guilty pleasures, that's what I'm about. But it's all positive stuff – for me, that's the best thing about DJing.

Has music always been important to you?
My background is a mixture of Caribbean and South American roots. My dad used to set up a sound system in our street back in Jamaica and played all sorts of music – we'd hear a lot of lovers rock, which is something I'll play tonight. The music was all positive and meant to get people up and dancing and feeling good.

Growing up, I also heard a lot of strong female singers – my mum was into artists like Dusty Springfield, and I like to incorporate that where I can.

How do you choose your records for a DJ set?
I just have a mixture of records and I don't really plan what I'll play. I never think, "I'm going to play this," or "I'm going to play that." I normally just have a crate of records and then I see where it takes me. If you take bolognaise and pasta and you throw it against the wall, then you see what stuff sticks and what doesn't – that's my approach!

Have you been buying vinyl for a long time?
Since I was a kid. The first record I bought was a disco track – 'Knock On Wood' by Amii Stewart. I loved the song when I heard it and ran to a store called Woolworths in the UK – I remember going to the casher and saying, "I'd like to hear that track." But she played the B-side and I was like, “Nope, it's the A-side I want!” But I still have that record all these years later.