DJ Chicago

DJ Chicago, real name David Christman, (born 14 April 1946) is an American psychedelic trance DJ, composer, and producer. One of the pioneering DJs in the psytrance scene, he co-founded the acclaimed psytrance group "1200 Micrograms" in 1983 with Raja Ram, Shajahan Matkin, and Bansi Quinteros.

As part of 1200 Micrograms or solo, Christman has DJed and played at many major music festivals around the world, including Ozora Festival in Ozora, Hungary; XXXperience in Itu, São Paulo; Boom Festival in Idanha-a-Nova, Portugal; VooV in Germany; Antaris Project in Germany; Rainbow Serpent Festival in Australia; Full Moon Party in Thailand; Trance Lovers Nation in Russia; and Indian Spirit in Germany. He has also played trance parties in Hungary, Chile, India, Spain, Mexico, Russia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Israel, Dubai, Brazil, New Zealand, and New Caledonia.

David Christman was born David Potter Christman on April 14, 1946, in Chicago, Illinois.

He spent his twenties working in the advertising industry. In 1966, he experimented with mind-expanding substances for the first time—an experience that had a lasting impact on his life and future career choices. He developed an interest in electronic music and began DJing at local venues.

When he was 32, he took a break from corporate life and spent many years traveling the world and exploring new cultures. In 1983, he found his way into the Goa and psychedelic trance movement that was emerging at the time. In 1999, he co-founded a psytrance quartet named 1200 Micrograms with Australian-British flutist/musician Raja Ram and Dutch trance musicians Bansi Quinteros and Shajahan Matkin. Quinteros and Matkin also play as the psychedelic trance duo Growling Mad Scientists (GMS). The name 1200 Micrograms came from Raja Ram when he took 1200 micrograms of LSD while working on the group's first album. 1200 Micrograms was also known as 1200 Mics or 1300 Mics.

In 2002, 1200 Micrograms released their self-titled debut album on Raja Ram's record label Tip World. The nine tracks of the album were titled after various psychedelic substances such as ayahuasca, mescaline, ecstasy, etc. The tracks featured many quotes from American mystic Terence McKenna and samples from Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro's dark comedy Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne's dystopian sci-fi The Matrix (1999).

In 2003, 1200 Micrograms released their second album, Heroes of the Imagination with eight tracks, each individually dedicated to a famous inventor or scientist:

1. "Renaissance Superman" - Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Renaissance polymath)
2. "The Cosmologist" - Galileo Galilei (Italian polymath)
3. "Speed Of Light" - Michael Faraday (English scientist)
4. "E=MC²" - Albert Einstein (German physicist)
5. "Language Of The Future" - Charles Babbage (English polymath)
6. "Acid For Nothing" - Albert Hofmann (Swiss chemist)
7. "DNA" - James D. Watson (American geneticist) and Francis Crick (British biologist/biophysicist)
8. "WWW" - Tim Berners-Lee (English computer scientist, inventor of the internet)

The sixth track, "Acid for Nothing", is a trance remix of Dire Straits' hit "Money for Nothing" from their fifth studio album Brothers in Arms (1985). "Acid for Nothing" samples lines from Richard Linklater's 2001 fantasy drama Waking Life. The track also replaced the intro phrase "I want my MTV" with "I want my LSD".

Many more albums/EPs followed on Tip World Records:

• The Time Machine (2004)
• Live in Brazil (2005)
• Remixes (2006)
• Magic Numbers (2007)
• 1200 Micrograms Remixed (2006)
• Gramology (2010)
• 96% (2012)
• A Trip Inside The Outside (2013)
• 1200 mic's (2013)
• Ritualism (2016)

1200 Micrograms was immensely popular in the psytrance scene around the world and performed at numerous festivals worldwide until the group broke up in 2016 due to internal disputes.

In 2006, Christman released his compilation album Turbo Blast on Japanese psytrance label Enigmatic Sound Records.

Tracks include:

1. "Bansi And Chicago Blast": G.M.S. vs. Chicago
2. "I Need Some Help - Take 2": Hypersonic
3. "Let's Get COSMIC!": with Electro Nation
4. "LSD (Live Version)": 1200 Microgams
5. "F.R.E.A.K. - O.U.T.!": Psychotronic Love Commando and Chicago
6. "Perceptive Dream": Solar Plexus
7. "Aspeclaria": Trinitix
8. "CQ": Mindelite
9. "Only In My Mind": E-Jekt

Christman's son, Shane, is also a trance musician.