The upcoming birthday bash on December 1 may be a celebration of 20 years of the DJ’s Revolver Sunday residency, but the T-Rek has a history with the club that goes right back to the beginning.
“As much as the Sunday residency is 20 years old, I actually have a 30-year history with Revolver,” Tarek Smallman – AKA T-Rek – tells me over the phone. “I was working in the building when it was a music store and rehearsal room, and actually quite literally helped to build the nightclub.”
It’s an apt metaphor for a DJ just as prolific as the nightclub he has been calling home even before it opened its doors to the dance-hungry public. Before the first beats of bass bumped their way through the corridors and staircases, through the side rooms and bathrooms of arguably the most iconic club to grace our city, T-Rek was already there.
T-Rek REVS20
- With Honeysmack (live), b00g$, J’Nett, DJ Ransom, Digital Primate, Luke McD, Mike Callander and Spacey Space
- Sunday December 1, from 7pm
- Revolver Upstairs, Prahran
- Tickets here
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This Sunday, December 1, he’s back again. Forget the ordinary Revolver Sunday residency – that is if any of them could even describe themselves as ordinary. This upcoming party to celebrate 20 years of the DJ’s Sunday residency slot will be nothing short of mammoth.
Reflecting back on the last twenty years or so of his “very long and twisted history” with the infamous club venue, T-Rek says that he does have a favourite memory or two that springs to mind. But – he adds, laughing – “most of that stuff’s not for publication.”
“I love Revolver,” he says. “I love playing there and I’m always aiming at trying to have a better set than I’ve played the week before for well over 20 years now.” That in itself – that transcendental feeling of a sublime set where everything feels good and right, like some kind of wizardry is at work– is what T-Rek remembers most clearly.
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“It’s really any of those times where you just have a magical set and then by the end of it, you know, there’s lots of people that have turned up, friends that you were and weren’t expecting and just magical things happen.”
If complacency is the enemy of success, then there’s no doubt as to why T-Rek has risen up the ranks of the city’s, even the country’s most successful and respected DJs. The music producer, DJ and musician’s hunger for progress in his craft of music-making has him on a mission to always want to be better, to find new sounds, and to break new ground.
“I’m just constantly digging for music,” T-Rek says,“whether I’m casually listening to Spotify or walking past a shop that’s got music coming out of it. I’m sort of collating and collecting music all day, every day.”
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With a catalogue of every piece of music he’s ever collected at his fingertips, the selection process of what to play when the dance floor is full and the lasers are beaming lights across the shadowed bodies of the upstairs’ room should seem at least a little daunting. For any other DJ, anyway.
“I don’t actually make any real plan as to what I’m gonna play at any given night or how I’m gonna play or what style,” he says. “I’ve just let the crowd in the moment dictate what I’m doing and kind of try and get lost down these creative avenues. And that’s an unending thing. At some point, it all just falls into place. It’s almost like you’re not doing it anymore. You’re just being told what to do.”
The dance floor and the energy it emits may be the only thing that can tell T-Rek what to do or how to do it. When asked if it was he or Revolver who selected the all-star cast of Naarm’s best DJs to join him on the lineup for T-REK REVS20, he laughs. “Oh, hell no,” he says, “[Revolver] didn’t get a say in that.”
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Joining T-Rek on Sunday, December 1 will be Honeysmack (live), b00g$, J’Nett, DJ Ransom, Digital Primate, Luke McD, Mike Callander and Spacey Space. “Well, it’s not really a hard sell,” T-Rek continues. “I mean, all of those people playing there have a history with Revolver.”
These DJs don’t just have a history with Revs, but with T-Rek himself. “They’re friends of mine but were very much big influences on me when I was coming up myself,” T-Rek says. “It was really just calling your best friends who just so happen to be some of the damn finest in the country as far as I’m concerned,” he adds.
In addition to the club show on December 1, T-Rek is also releasing a 20-song retrospective album and a piece of collage art for the infamous Revolver poster wall. The three-part art project is an attempt at honouring the last two decades of magical sets and transcendental music.
Truthfully, though, the best way to honour T-Rek’s treasured history with Revs is showing up on December 1, ready to party for another 20 more.
You can get tickets to T-REK REVS20 on Sunday December 1 here.
