Steph Gyory is a Sydney-based writer, DJ, and cultural participant who has spent more than three decades inside dance music and nightlife.

Growing up and living in Sydney his entire life, he came up through record stores, warehouses, clubs, and DIY parties as a punter, DJ, promoter, producer, and record store manager — witnessing the rise, collapse, and resurgence of vinyl DJ culture from the inside.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Darlinghurst was home to more than a dozen specialist dance music record shops. Today, only one remains: the Recordstore. Established in 2003, Gyory is now its owner, continuing a lineage that began with BPM Records in the early 1990s.

He has played and promoted internationally, including appearances at Berlin’s Tresor nightclub and the Love Parade, and co-produced Sydney’s “party of the year” in 1999. He later helped organise the Keep Sydney Open movement in response to the city’s lockout laws.

For over 30 years, Darlinghurst has been his base — a place defined by music, anonymity, and belonging — and the perspective that shapes his writing.