Sharif: Top Giza.

Sharif plays the DMC Championships this Thursday at the Family and the Groove Lounge on Saturdays at Fridays.

Sharif Galal has been at the helm of Triple J’s groundbreaking dance show, The Groove Train, for nearly eight years now, and in that time has helped form the musical tastes of a nation. He’s up in Brisbane for a while to lay down some tunes at the Queensland heat of the DMC Championships, as well as playing Saturday nights for a month at the new Groove Lounge, in Fridays nightclub.

“Yeah it’s great being up in Brisbane for a while,” he enthuses. “The weather is fantastic and I’ve been able to catch up with Costa from Three Hours of Power. We’ve been playing each other new music. We both really like good music of all styles, we’re all into good music here at Triple J, it’s just a matter of specialising. You can always spot good music, regardless of which genre it’s in.”

Have you found that Triple J has helped open up your DJing horizons?

“Of course,” he says. “It’s exposed me to a huge audience that wouldn’t have known my name otherwise, and to have a national audience is great. I started DJing 17 years ago, back before acid house in 1985. I’ve been doing radio since I was 14 and my first professional radio gig at Radio Cairo in Egypt was when I was 17. Then I went to Triple R in Melbourne, which is a bit like Triple Z up here in Brisbane, and then to SBS to set up SBI, which is another community station in Sydney. Then after that Triple J hired me, which was great. And they seem to be happy still. I’ve been DJing for longer than I can remember now.”

How would you describe your sound?

“You just look for good music,” says Sharif. “Someone who comes up with a new sound that’s really cool, you don’t not play that track because it doesn’t fit. You’ve got to find a way to work it in so it’s not a problem. As long as it moves you in a particular way, it could be haunting, it could be eerie, it just has to trigger a response. You need music that will stand out.”