BEHIND THE HUNT: DJ PANIC

Start The Panic! Artist/DJ/Producer from Neophyte Records and Foolish. Worked his way up from 1991. Panic was one of the first really well-known hardcore DJs in the Netherlands and played at many parties worldwide. Thank you for always supporting us!


DJ Panic, born as Dennis Copier in 1975, was hardly 16 when he performed at a dance-party for the first time; back in 1992 he was asked to play at Pompeï, a small youth-club with a capacity of only 250 people in the south of Rotterdam and wasn’t so crowded when he began. They were already playing early hardcore, but mainly very inaccessible records. "I changed that very rapidly by playing known and more accessible tracks. It worked, as the numbers in attendance increased from 4 to 200 within a month!”. The following year, Dennis started working at Mid-Town Records as a sales person in one of the stores; a perfect place to keep track of all the new records and meet the big players in the scene.

A little while later the Forze DJ Team was founded, consisting of DJ Paul Elstak, DJ Lars and DJ Panic. Being a part of the Forze DJ Team lead to an appearance at Terrordome in January 1994 for DJ Panic, who was only 18 years old at that time. “Terrordome was the first big event I played at. I was so nervous before my set because it excited me very much playing for 6.000 ravers. Imagine yourself standing behind the decks in a monstrous hall for the very first time… the buzz it gave me was incredible”. The following years, he toured all over Europe, United States and Japan together with Paul Elstak and Lars.

In the meantime, Dennis also spent numerous hours in the studio together with Paul. One of the tracks that came out of the studio during this period was the E.P. “May the Forze be with you”. “It was a great and particularly busy period. Our names were plastered all over flyers, leaflets and posters, and there was nobody who did NOT want to book us”. The Forze DJ Team split up in 1998. “We out-grew each other; everyone started doing their own thing”. Dennis got closer to DJ Neophyte whom he met at the events they both performed at. Since 1996 they have been producing under their guise Hard Creation, resulting in the classic release and mega floor-filler “I will have that Power”, back in 1999.

Dennis spent a lot of time in the studio with Neophyte, Evil Activities and Paul Elstak which resulted in more hits like “Be Quiet”,“Bigger than ever”, “Up Yours”, “Hate!”and “Never fall asleep”Besides his productions and remixes for various labels, Dennis is also responsible for compiling and mixing high profile compilations such as A Nightmare in Rotterdam, Hardcore to the Bone, Decibel Outdoor,  and his albums: “Start the Panic, “15 years of Panic”, “20 years of Panic”! In collaboration with Jeroen “Neophyte” Streunding, he also managed respected record labels such as Rotterdam Records, Neophyte Records, Forze Records, Terror Traxx, Seismic Records, Foolish. All this together makes him a very busy every man, especially since he’s also showing his excellent dj skills all over the world every weekend. He’s performing in countries like Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Australia and the USA. Having performed at events like Tomorrowland, Decibel Outdoor Festival, Defqon 1, Pussy Lounge, Intents Festival, A Nightmare in Rotterdam, Mystery Land,  Global Hardcore Nation, Megarave, , Masters of Hardcore, Project Hardcore and many more, there simply isn’t a playground this sympathetic DJ is not familiar with! Weither it is a Freestyle, Hardcore or Early Rave set.

Panic has also got his own concepts “Paniek!”and “Start the Panic”  where he will be playing long hour sets. Start the Panic is an early rave/oldschool concept where he only plays music from the past. Paniek is a freestyle concept with lots of entertainment bringing you dancers, confetti, C02 and lots of different music genres like: Hardcore, Early Rave, Raw Style, Drum’n Bass ,Hardstyle.



PANIC in the Sharklife Football t-shirt playing b2b with THE VIPER in the Brabanthallen on Masters of Hardcore 2016. Check out his work: https://soundcloud.com/djpanicnl

Thanks to:
Panic, The Viper, Masters of Hardcore


Video:
Brandon "BRN" Baan

Instagram:
@djpanicnl