A young DJ’s career has been tragically cut short after he accidentally smiled during a moody promo shoot.

Alan Jackson, a techno DJ from Birmingham but based out of Berlin, was reportedly enjoying a photo shoot atop an abandoned warehouse in the city when, what has been dubbed “Smilegate”, was said to have occurred.

“Put simply no-one likes to hire smiling DJs. The aesthetic is and always has been to portray the DJ as a dark, moody purveyor of futuristic techno,” explained an upset Alan. “You basically have to look like the recent death of a parent has caused you to question the futility of life and at the same time it’s raining and you’ve stubbed your toe.”

“If you look at any techno DJ press shot you’ll notice that each and every one of them look like they’re dying of consumption in a Dickensian slum while reading Schopenhauer and weeping,” he added. “Only bleaker.”

According to witnesses, Alan was being photographed on a local rooftop miming over some unplugged decks against a graffiti laden wall, otherwise known as the “DJ aesthetic”, when suddenly a fat pigeon shat into the ear of the lighting guy causing Alan to smirk slightly at the very moment the photographer was getting a shot.

“The photographer, not knowing too much about the cool-guy reserve that I need to employ as a techno DJ, decided to put the photo out but straight away the blogs went mental, saying horrible things like ‘he seems to be having mild fun’ and calling me names like ‘smiling-cunt-whistle’, ‘teeth-revealer’ and, worst of all, ‘happy,'” wept Alan. “People can be so cruel.”

Alan insists that after Smilegate he has lost almost the entire fanbase it took him years to build citing the fact that “no matter how many dark and wonky techno productions you make or black and white press shots you release, you’re never coming back from a smile”.

“I used to love Alan’s stuff but smiling in a photo betrays everything my highly critical, hipster appreciation of vaguely disaffected techno-fashion represents,” moaned one disappointed fan, who rated his disappointment at 11 on a scale of 1 to 10. “The second you act like someone who is having fun and enjoying what they do then you stop being a credible, serious artist.”

“I’m devastated because wearing black and looking aloof while leaning against a brick wall in monochrome is something I do all the time,” responded Alan. “I very rarely smile in real life so to have one captured on camera is crippling. I’ll never live it down, now anytime I try to get a gig at a hard hitting pretentious techno night everyone will just go “nah mate, you’re the bloke that smiled that one time, yeah?”

“Maybe I could get work in a less image conscious genre of electronic music but having done some cursory research I discovered there isn’t one,” explained Alan. “If I wanna play deep house I’ll have to buy a snapback and play 90s garage which I didn’t like in the 90s and don’t like now.”

“In order to play commercial electro house I’ll be forced to develop a massive drug and alcohol habit so that I can bear to listen to it,” he concluded. “That’s what happened to Calvin Harris and Avicii and is why they’ve had to be admitted to hospital…I’ll probably just get a job where you’re allowed smile like undertaker, radiologist or accountant.”