Famous former British
happy hardcore DJ and producer.
Noted for producing many "rips" - happy hardcore versions of existing songs, mostly '80s pop. His tune Time, based on the Cyndi Lauper song Time After Time, is a perfect example, as is "Guardian Angel", based on the Beatles' Let It Be. Artistic merits aside, his better-known songs were generally considered to be very well-produced, although some attribute this to his engineer, Trixxy, a talented producer who also produced, with Brisk, some of happy hardcore's most famous anthems.
Vinylgroover's mixing capabilities were often regarded as adequate but not spectacular when compared to other genre DJs such as Brisk or Sy, but the strength of his name recognition and potential to draw a large audience ensured him a fair deal of bookings.
His tracks, while often popular, were not critically well-recieved. They added to the perception of happy hardcore as an unoriginal, silly, and artistically dead genre. This is thought to have contributed towards the so-called "death" of happy hardcore as a viable genre in the England of the late 1990s, as many happy hardcore producers and DJs quit or switched to other genres. (Vinylgroover himself quit happy hardcore to work with speed garage under other names.) While fans with a sense of historical perspective will note that the genre has been proclaimed exhausted, irreversably tainted, and "dead" pretty much constantly since 1993, his individual contribution has made Vinylgroover one of the two great happy hardcore popularizers of the late '90s that fans love to hate.