NYC / NJ / Hudson Valley
I'm Matthew — a record collector who DJs weddings in New York, New Jersey, and the Hudson Valley. About forty-five a year, from intimate dinner rooms to floors past two hundred.
What it sounds like
Roy Ayers, Curtis Mayfield, Gilberto Gil, Kokoroko. Soul and rare groove with Brazilian and West African on the side. The hour the room starts trusting the night.
Otis Redding, Patrice Rushen, Sade, Steely Dan, LCD Soundsystem. Songs you can sit with that still move. Not background, not a concert.
Earth, Wind & Fire, Donna Summer, New Order, Robin S, Peggy Gou. Disco spine with a new-wave detour and 90s house. The three records before the big one are the job.
Start here
The records I lean on while the room arrives, and what I'm trying to do with them.
Read the note →The hardest set of the night, and how I think about it. The case for taking dinner seriously.
Read the note →What actually opens a floor. Not the first big song — the three records before it.
Read the note →Brooklyn Grange · Sunset Park, Brooklyn, NY · Saturday, May 16th, 2026
A 75-guest wedding on a Sunset Park rooftop farm — a lovers-rock-into-deep-soul dinner spine, a choreographed Klaus Hallen Tanzorchester first dance, a disco-into-2000s floor, and Juvenile to close.
Read the field notes →A cocktail-hour set of deep cuts — Brazilian jazz, soul, and boogie — recorded live in one pass. Collector records that carry a room without leaning on anything the guests walked in already knowing.
A 75-guest wedding on a Sunset Park rooftop farm — a lovers-rock-into-deep-soul dinner spine, a choreographed Klaus Hallen Tanzorchester first dance, a disco-into-2000s floor, and Juvenile to close.
A wine bar dinner mix, recorded off the top of my head in one pass. Slow ramp, no edits, the small transition errors left where they landed.
75 guests inside Eero Saarinen's 1962 terminal. Ceremony under the ARRIVES / DEPARTS board, Korean Paebak in 1960s mod architecture, and a dance floor that sat empty for ten minutes before Bieber broke the seal — then a K-pop spine, three Katy Perry tracks, and a Birthday closer.
A 130-person North Jersey wedding where rain hit the ceremony, the floor held all night on a disco-to-millennial weave, a groom's-father Louis Armstrong request got parked at 8:05 to protect the dance arc, and three alpacas showed up at cocktail hour.
A 275-person Italian-American wedding in a hangar-scale industrial loft on the East River, with rain pushing the ceremony into the tent, a silent two-hour video reel running opposite the booth, and a dance floor that broke open on Cheryl Lynn into Earth, Wind & Fire.
West Coast invasion in the most quintessential NYC hotel. Behind-the-bar ceremony position, a column in the sightline, Reed's live Blackbird through a DI box, and a singalong crowd that held the floor from Golden to the Friends theme.
An open-format funk mix for restaurant gigs, lounges, and rooms where nobody asked for a playlist but everybody notices the music.
A Williamsburg hotel wedding where the venue speakers weren't going to cut it, the couple was extremely chill, dinner was in a candlelit cellar, no mic needed, and the entire room — family included — raged through the full length of All My Friends.
Collector records that still work on people. Not the ones that sound good at home on headphones. The ones that move a room full of strangers who've never heard them before.
How a floor starts trusting itself. It's not about the first big song. It's about the three songs before it that gave people permission to move.
Dance floor, mid-turn
Bossa nova, soul, rare groove, and a few left turns. The kind of cocktail hour set where someone asks "what is this?" three times.
Dinner has to keep the room alive without competing with conversation. Too quiet and the energy dies. Too loud and the room fights you. The set has to breathe on its own.
Disco into house. The tempo lift after midnight when the floor is already committed.
Cocktail hour sets the room's first temperature. The Meters into Say She She into Idris Muhammad. First hour. First signals. The room is learning what kind of night this is.
A smaller vendor room at Brooklyn Winery. Vintage-leaning selections, live audio, and the kind of groove adjustments that only show up once the room starts talking back.
Brooklyn Winery, Jan 2026
A split-location North Jersey wedding. Park ceremony, a Dennis Edwards dinner pivot that won over the old heads, and the last 45 minutes opened into millennial hip-hop, Gasolina, and a very clean late-night lane.
Fill out what you know — we'll take it from there.