The music scene is in mourning following the sudden death of a respected DJ who provided the soundtrack to hundreds of Saturday nights.

Andrei Mazandarani, 55, tragically died in hospital in Perth on Monday night following a brave, eight-week battle with gallbladder cancer.

Andrei, who went by the stage name DJ Andrei Maz, was taken to hospital in July suffering severe abdominal pains.

“The prognosis initially was, we’re going to go into pretty full-on chemo, and we’re going to get the tumour down to an operable size,” younger brother Anton told 7NEWS.com.au.

“That was the initial plan but literally every day, and as the week’s progressed, it was just bad news after bad news because of the complications.

“It was just brutally quick — from standing up and being fine to bed-ridden in the hospital in excruciating pain.”

Andrei was accustomed to chronic pain, having also lived with Crohn’s disease since his early 20s, and remained stoic throughout the battle that ultimately cost the beloved husband and father-of-two his life.

“He didn’t like the fuss, didn’t want everybody being sad about him,” Anton said.

“He was a real family man, just trying to shield his kids from what he was going through.

“He was — for somebody whose career was based on entertaining hundreds of people every weekend — actually pretty private.

“Even waiting for a more optimum time to let people outside of the immediate family know what was happening, unfortunately it got to a point where there wasn’t going to be an optimal time, so it has taken a lot of people, even people that are quite close, by surprise and shock.”

The lifelong musician, DJ and track curator’s career took him across Australia and abroad.

At 18 he bought a one-way ticket to London where he lived for 12 months, “attending legendary warehouse parties, wandering the streets of London during the poll tax riots, dancing all night at illegal raves and hitchhiking across Europe to witness the fall of the Berlin Wall”.

He returned to Perth in 1990 and co-started a band called Yummy Fur (later known as Six Mile High) with family and best friends, selling out venues, signing with Columbia Records, and eventually making the move to Melbourne and eventually the UK.

He moved back to WA in 2004 where he used his “encyclopedic knowledge” of music to star as an in-demand DJ.

Andrei and Anton famously ran “Death Disco” at Amplifier Bar / Capitol for more than a decade, hosting 620 consecutive parties across Saturday nights between 2007 and 2019, and enjoying the company of “some of our all-time musical heroes”.

After that he held down multiple residencies across the city, and Anton said proudly “there wasn’t a dance floor he couldn’t fill”.

“I think that’s a big part of the outpouring and the diversity of the people that have been saying nice things — he didn’t confine himself to just cool club stuff or the pubs and the bars,” Anton said.

“He could look around the room, he could see the demographic of the room ... and he would just know what to play.

“He’d mix it up ... and just keep everybody happy like an intergenerational, DJ wizard.”

Tributes have flooded social media, with many in shock over the sudden news.

“Andrei took me under his wing at the age of 21, taught me how to DJ and showed me the world of music,” Alex Taylor-Vivian said.

“Some people have heroes or idols. He was my hero and my idol.

“He was the best teacher and mentor anybody could ask for.”

Another said they had spent “way too many hours” in clubs and bars partying to a “Maz, or double Maz, soundtrack”.

“A solid egg, and staunch ... Condolences to the whole clan and no doubt very extended family,” Heath Bradby said.

‘A record for his kids’

Loved ones have launched a GoFundMe to help with funeral costs and assist his immediate family as they grieve.

“The circumstances are tragic and everybody’s still hurting a lot but that kind of generosity and people reaching out, even though we haven’t personally met a lot of these people, it really does help deal with the grief,” Anton said.

“Andrei’s led a really good life. It’s a short life, but it’s been packed with all these human connections and fun times and bringing joy and fun to people’s lives.

“(The tributes are) a record for his kids to go and see the kind of man that he was. That’s nice.”