Yes, the competition was fierce, but Space has spoken and the ultimo winner of DJsounds’ Space Ibiza DJ competition has been announced as 22-year-old Lewis Ryder from London. So Lewis wins a 2009 DJ residency at the mega-club – and, as an additional bonus, he also gets to play this year’s Space closing party! ‘Touch me, I’m famous!’ said a delighted Lewis. ‘Seriously, though, it’s beer-guzzlingly good news. There were lots of great contestants, so it is an honour to be chosen as the winner … It looks like Space will definitely be the place for me in 2009, and I can’t wait to get back in the booth!’ Check out the clip for more on the four heat finalists. They were as follows: Heat 1: Lewis Ryder from London, UK. Lewis DJs regularly at events like Jaded at The End in London and since 2006 hosts his own night, Hindsight, at clubs like Egg. Lewis’ productions have been winning support from the likes of Nic Fanciulli, Laurent Garnier and Hernan Cattaneo, and his track used in the DJsounds mix, ‘Empty Draw’, was released on his own label, Bigger Deer Recordings, in August. Heat 2: Carlton (aka Boltongroove) from Lausanne, Switzerland. Carlton has been DJing for 10 years and has enjoyed a five-year-long residency at D! Club, Lausanne. He learnt to play the piano when he was four, but only started producing electronic music a few months back and now plans to start his own label, Boltongroove Records. To date his productions include ‘Electric Blood’, which featured in his DJsounds mix. Heat 3: Matt Cooper from Leeds, UK. Matt has been DJing since 1999 and first won support from Mixmag as a Future Hero and from Galaxy FM on their Nu Breed radio show. In 2005 Matt started a residency at KissDaFunk and hooked up with the infamous Dirty Disco crew in Leeds. Production-wise, the track that Matt used in his DJsounds video mix, ‘Triptup’, is his first finished production. Heat 4: Matt Phantom (aka Phantom Geek) from London, UK. One half of the successful breakbeat duo Phantom Beats, Matt Phantom also works solo as Phantom Geek and is a resident DJ at Big Chill events in London. Matt’s due to release some tracks as Phantom Geek – while a downtempo album under the name Rococo Nice is also forthcoming. In his DJsounds mix Matt used his own track called ‘Chasing the Bass’. Space Ibiza’s artistic director, Juan Arenas, concluded: ‘All the participants have been great and it has been extremely difficult to chose a winner, but Lewis has shown us a great passion with his fresh music and most definitely has a lot of future in this business.’ DJsounds thanks everyone who entered the competition! Words: LRC