Tony De Vit

Tony De Vit ranked among England’s most celebrated DJs well before his untimely passing in 1998. His polished, trance-infused strain of high-energy house helped animate the British club landscape throughout the middle of the decade, thanks in part to long-running sets at the after-hours venue Trade and on London’s Kiss FM, as well as to the two imprints he operated, Jump Wax and TDV. Employed full-time as stock-control manager at a thermal-insulation plant from the mid-1970s onward, De Vit first began spinning records on the gay-club circuit in 1978. He maintained a nationwide schedule of gigs through the 1980s and, in 1992, secured a residency at Trade, where his fusion of Belgian-hoover trance and updated disco found favor with an underground gay clientele that typically favored mainstream dance sounds.

By the mid-1990s De Vit had collected multiple DJ awards and had joined the Kiss FM roster once Carl Cox and Judge Jules moved to Radio One. He also entered the studio, issuing the singles “Burning Up” and “To the Limit,” both of which reached the British Top 40. The chart success led to an extensive remix slate for De Vit and his studio partner Simon Parkes, whose clients included East 17, Michelle Gayle, and Louise. In 1996–97 he launched Jump Wax and TDV, released two editions in the Global Underground mix series, and delivered his major-label debut album Trade, a recording that captured the atmosphere of a night at his flagship club and later appeared in the United States on Priority. At the height of his profile, De Vit succumbed to bronchial failure in a Birmingham hospital in 1998.