An East London man, who has spent upwards of £5000 and joined an eight month waiting list to buy an E&S DJR 400 rotary DJ mixer, has no idea why he’s done it, reports claim.

Peter Richdale, a 28 year old graphic artist and self proclaimed “audiophile techno-head”, was left scratching his techno-head after he put down a hefty deposit and signed up to the long wait, last Monday.

Wunderground caught up with Richdale, at a pop-up gallery event held in a Vauxhall Vectra parked on Hackney Road, to ask him more about his decision.

Richdale claims he first came across the phrase ‘rotary mixer’ while reading an interview with Floating Points, “It was just there staring at me out of the page”, says Richdale, “from the way they were talking about it, I knew it had to be something cool. Plus DJs like Dixon, Craig Richards and Four Tet, all use them and if they do something it must be really good.”

On the following page of the magazine, Richdale described seeing a picture of the mixer. “It just looked so analogue you know? It had wooden panels, no colours other than black and silver and these great big knobs called ‘panoramic potentiometers’ just saying the words made me feel like the next Ben UFO.”

Richdale also explained that he had already binned his old Allen & Heath mixer, while shouting at it and calling it a “piece of modern laptop-DJ shite”, “I kind of regret it now to be honest,” Richdale confessed, “at least the head up display showed the BPM of each track and the faders made-sense, I have no idea how to mix using fucking panoramic potentiometers. I just thought it would make people interested in me and fool them into thinking I know my shit about techno and vinyls and that”.

Things got truly bad for Peter, however, when he announced his purchase at a warehouse dinner party, held especially for the occasion.

Rather than reaping the awe and respect he was hoping, Richdale reported that the triumphant moment turned ugly fast when his mate Dave asked why it was better than a fader mixer.

“For about a minute I just froze, my mind was going crazy. I thought they would love the mixer. I mean none of theirs have fucking wooden panels, but when I realised I had no idea I just lost it”, says Richdale, “I began shouting names of random DJs in Dave’s face and throwing old Jeff Mills records at the furniture. Someone piped up saying the connectors inside were digital and that was too much. The whole thing was a blur after that. I woke up in a park with ‘panoramic potentiometers’ scratched into my arm. I think that was that day when I realised I really didn’t know why I bought it.”

In relation to a number of similar cases, the makers of rotary mixers have begun to issue safety warnings = to limit their products to only those who can pass a high-level “house, techno & rotary mixers” exam, in which people must answer questions on topics such as Surgeon’s favourite shade of black and the model of Rudy Bozak’s first car – and who have clocked at least 300 hours in a solitary room listening to mixes by Theo Parrish and Ron Trent.