Behind the decks

David Krec is a DMC Middle East Open Champion who also happens to love playing all kinds of music. While his turntable skills have earned him a championship title, most of his career has been spent doing something less competitive but no less challenging: making people dance.

1. Early years

   A musical foundation

   Music was always present while he was growing up. His mother introduced him to piano lessons, although David was not particularly enthusiastic about them — especially solfeggio. Still, those years gave him a musical foundation and an ear for harmony that would prove valuable later.

2. Age 15

   A different kind of instrument

   At fifteen, he saw a DJ perform at a school party. What caught his attention was not the spotlight, but the way one person could change the mood of an entire room simply by choosing and mixing music. Unlike piano lessons, this was something he wanted to explore for himself.

3. Age 18

   Behind the decks

   By eighteen, David was already making a living behind the decks and had become the most in-demand DJ in his hometown. During those early years, he began developing the approach that would later define his sets: creating mashups, moving freely between genres and treating every performance as a story rather than a sequence of tracks.

4. Open Format

   Connecting music & people

   That instinct has remained with him ever since. David plays Open Format not because he wants to cover every possible genre, but because he genuinely enjoys music in all its forms. For him, the interesting part is discovering how seemingly unrelated tracks can work together.

   His career eventually took him to Moscow and on tour across Russia. He performed at venues including Gipsy, Izvestia Hall, The Toy, Soho Rooms, Kotel’naya and Lookin Rooms, as well as at the BMC1 Festival in Cyprus.

5. 2019 → 2022

   Dubai becomes home

   From 2019, Dubai became a recurring part of his journey, as he travelled there to perform at private events. By the end of 2022, what had started as a regular destination became home when David relocated to Dubai permanently.

6. The room

   Reading the crowd

   Over more than fifteen years and countless sets, David has performed for very different crowds, in venues of every size and with completely different expectations. Some nights, everything clicks within the first few tracks. Others require more patience. Experience has taught him not to depend on a fixed playlist, but to pay close attention to what is happening in front of him.

   He enjoys finding unexpected connections between tracks, introducing something nobody expected to hear and discovering how far he can take a set once he has earned the crowd’s trust. His own musical taste is always part of the equation, but never at the expense of the room.

7. Since 2016

   The craft of turntablism

   Alongside club DJing, David has spent years developing his craft as a turntablist. Since 2016, he has practised scratching, beat juggling, tone play and other techniques that demand a very different kind of preparation from a regular club set.

   Some routines take months to get right. That process suits him. David has always enjoyed competition, and turntablism gives him a space to test both his creativity and technical ability.

8. 2025 → 2026

   DMC Middle East

   In 2025, he placed second in the DMC Middle East Open category. He returned the following year determined to improve on that result.

   In 2026, David Krec became the DMC Middle East Open Champion.

   Winning the title was an important milestone, but it did not fundamentally change his approach to DJing. A battle routine and a club set belong to two very different worlds. One is built around precision and technical execution; the other depends on reading people and responding to them in real time. David enjoys both.

9. Today

   The music & the people

   Today, after more than fifteen years behind the decks, he still finds something interesting in every new crowd: the challenge of an unfamiliar room, the satisfaction of a difficult transition finally coming together and the occasional opportunity to play a track nobody saw coming.

   He is particular about his work, enjoys a good competition, has a soft spot for rock music and still believes that a great DJ set should ultimately be about the music — and the people listening to it.

No fixed genres. No fixed formula. Just the right music for the right room, at exactly the right moment.