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Jay Tripwire
Bio
For more than three decades, Tripwire has DJed professionally across over 200 cities worldwide, moving through basements, warehouses, afterhours rooms, and clubs that don’t market because they don’t need to. He was a long-standing regular guest at London’s Fabric for 18 years, brought back not by obligation but by necessity. He continues to mark 13 years at Flash DC and an almost confrontational 23-year residency at Vancouver’s Gorgomish Afterhours—a room where stamina replaces spectacle and the unprepared are quietly filtered out. His sound exists beyond classification. As the Canadian Ambassador of all sounds underground, Tripwire draws from minimal structures, raw pressure, and long-form hypnosis rather than genre boundaries. Every record is built with analog synthesizers and drum machines, machines chosen for their instability as much as their tone. Drift is allowed. Errors are preserved. In the booth, it’s vinyl or uncompressed WAV files on CDJs—no sync, no recordbox, no laptops- no safety rails. His extended sets are infamous exercises in patience and control, moving from the freshest unreleased material to obscure vintage bombs that feel less curated than recovered. Beyond the dancefloor, Tripwire’s presence is unavoidable. He has appeared on every major podcast in the underground, and his documented trail includes over 300 interviews, reviews, and articles, mapping a career that never slowed long enough to become mythology. Operating under aliases including Jay Tripwire, Mr_Barcode, and others, he has released an astonishing 426 vinyl records, earning 68 number-one chart positions, numbers that stop sounding impressive and start sounding diagnostic. Against all logic, the machine is still running. Averaging 15 releases a year, Tripwire recently delivered six consecutive number-one records, proving that obsession, when sustained long enough, outlives fashion. This is not a legacy act. This is sustained pressure. The underground, still breathing
