DJ style: “Energetic, any genre.”
Best known for: “Playing live trumpet and dancing like a lunatic.”
Fave tune of 2022: “Lockdown ‘Freakshow’.”
Rising star DJ/producer of 2022: “Restricted.”
For the horn-blasting, stadium-slaying dance star Timmy Trumpet, 2022 was a remarkable year. “I got married, toured more than ever before and got to do some crazy shit, like playing on Jimmy Kimmel Live,” he says.
Appearing on a talk show with nearly two million viewers is becoming a more regular occurrence for the Australian mainstage artist, whose fame now extends far beyond the dance scene. His track with Blasterjaxx, ‘Narco’, was recently selected by American baseball team the New York Mets for star player Edwin Diaz’s entrance music, raising Timmy’s profile among sports fans, and he performed the track live this August at the Citi Field ballpark. “It was surreal,” Timmy says. “The whole experience was something I’ll never forget. I’m a Mets fan for life, and Edwin Diaz is a legend!”
Timmy brought his mixture of live trumpet and big room dance tracks to a plethora of festivals and clubs this year, playing in Canberra, Miami, Paris, Malmö, Barcelona, and Pag in Croatia. An accomplished musician who first learned his chops playing jazz, few other artists working in the mainstage arena have attempted such an audacious combination of acoustic instruments and amped up beats. It’s this unusual fusion, Timmy reckons, that sets him apart. “I hope we’ll see a lot more of it in the future,” he says. “I performed with Mariano BO at Tomorrowland while she played violin, and it was one of my favourite moments on stage this year.”
The artist also put out a clutch of new club tracks over 2022, including a hard dance banger with Sub Zero Project, ‘Soft Ass Shit’, the turbo-speed, rap-sampling ‘Party PPL’ with 89ers, and a Faithless cover version, ‘We Come 1’, with Ben Nicky and Distorted Dreams. A cover of one of Bob Marley’s most famous hits, ‘Three Little Birds’, with Prezioso and 71 Digits, showed Timmy’s pop-friendly side, and link-ups with other EDM heavyweights such as Showtek, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike and Steve Aoki kept his name percolating. It’s hard to see how next year could be more momentous for him.
What’s the best DJ set you’ve seen this year?
“Hardwell at Ultra, Miami. So glad the king is back.”
Name one great festival you played for the first time this year…
“Ultra Miami, Korea and Japan. Amazing!”
What’s the longest DJ set you’ve ever played?
“Two hours. That’s an epic workout if you’ve seen what I do on stage.”
What’s one piece of studio hardware you wish you owned?
“Sennheiser Orpheus HE-1.”
What’s the last tune you bought?
“I can’t remember, that would have been 10 years ago.”
What’s the next big sound?
"Uptempo hardcore.”
