Six-time World Snooker champion Steve Davis has been a fixture on the DJing circuit for several years now, but he’s now chalked-up another musical performance achievement: improvised modular synth jams.
Davis was recently on the bill at the Brecon Jazz Festival, performing alongside electronic musician Gaz Williams.
"What we do isn't jazz as such, but we are improvising and that's very jazz-like," Davis told BBC News.
What’s more, Davis says that his new obsession requires some of the same skills as his old day job.
"I also used to improvise whenever I played snooker because I never knew what the next shot was going to be,” says Davis. "So I’m still doing exactly what I've done all my life really."
Davis says that his first encounter with modular synths came at a club in Soho, after which he "began disappearing down that particular rabbit hole". Initially, though, he was a little confused.
"I remember thinking, 'that thing doesn't even have a keyboard, so where are the sounds coming from?’ I decided to investigate further and got totally hooked."
Davis is no stranger to festival performances - in fact, he had a slot at the biggest of them all, Glastonbury, as long ago as 2016.
Of his set in the Stonebridge Bar that year, Davis told MusicRadar: “Going down to Glastonbury we had no idea what to expect. We couldn’t have predicted how many people would come along, if only for the novelty value. It was a 500-capacity tent and it was mobbed. That was a shock. Hopefully people liked what they heard because we didn’t hold back.
“We had a great laugh. We gave out a load of tote bags. One had our take on God is a DJ which was Steve Davis is a DJ, it was tongue in cheek. To go with that we had one saying Last Night Steve Davis Bored Me Shitless.”
