Jon Dasilva is visiting Nerd Network at Nolla this Saturday. So we had a little chat with the old Haçienda resident from Manchester.

 

What do you expect from your first Helsinki visit?

The city has an uber cool status in the minds of many in the UK and I kind of come from that perspective...

 

When did you start to DJ and how come you started?

I started around 86…my interest in New York Disco had started earlier from all the Post Punk Funk / Punk Disco material coming out in the late 70’s early ‘80’s, but all was crystallized by an article in an underground magazine produced by the writer Sheryll Garrett (who would go on to write “Adventures in Wonderland” and edit the Face magazine) called “Collusion”. The article was by Steve Harvey and covered the DJ’s of the NY Club scene like Francois Kevorkian and Larry Levan. It totally inspired me hearing how they put sets together and used split/panned EQs and just the whole “art” of mixing…all stuff that is part of DJ culture internationally now, but at the time and for a good decade later was unheard of outside of the States…Anyway! I started doing parties at University (Film/Art) without 1200’s , on basic equipment but with a Revox A77, doing little edits and using the machine to dub stuff out. I had a DJ Crew, a collective, which was my ex girl friend and a 16 year old local kid called Damian Harris…he went on to create the label Skint Records and had a few hits with Fatboy Slim…blah blah blah!

 

You were a resident at Hacienda for many years, can you tell us any fun stories from back then and maybe describe the Hacienda atmosphere?

It was a club like no other…certainly at the time. All in house productions with a sense of creativity found no where else in the UK at the time…and of course there was the aura of Factory Records and New Order that surrounded Manchester at the time which gave a sense of difference to city, and of course, the club.

The really big difference came in ’88 with the convergence of House/Acid House, a drug savvy local music scene spearheaded by the then unheard of Happy Mondays and their droves of hedonistic “scally” mates, a club built on New York aesthetics and the aforementioned chemicals…as Tony Wilson said, we, as DJ’s just pissed petrol on the fire…The scenes were incredible…gone was the polite dancing to your favourite hits…it went to total clubbing, queues round the block at 8pm and madness from get go…

Typical of the atmosphere of that time at the Hacienda was the infamous Technique Party…At the end of the Summer of 88 New Order finished mixing the album “Technique” at Peter Gabriel’s “Real World Studio” and decided to celebrate with a “little” party. I had been supplying Barney with tapes of new House music for a few months…the band, save Peter, were total House heads…so the party bus left the Hacienda and descended on a sleepy little village in Somerset and the high tech studio hidden on the outskirts…60 Acid House scalliwags, 3 DJ’s and everything they desired to keep the party going for 12 hours….all happening in the live room of the studio with a freaking river running through the room under a glass floor…it possibly changed my DJ life more than any other night, it got so twisted…

Most of the other stories I have from the Hacienda are generally unprintable.

 

If you would recommend 3 tracks from the Hacienda time which would it be?

 

Ok! Jeez…the thing about the Hacienda and the scene in general then was open mindedness of both the DJ’s and the crowd. So early Detroit Techno was played alongside Soulful House, Hip Hop with banging Acid House…if it worked you played it. The genre-fication of the scene was on the way but then it was a free for all, for me, certainly. I mixed in Latin batacada tracks and dub disco, mid set; Can, Fela Kuti, Dub Reggae in the first hour or so…sprinkling the set with Sound FX and accapellas….they define the club to extent but I know the era is remembered mostly for the Techno and House. I’ll give you three records I personally played first in the club…how’s that?!

 

Shalor “I’m in Love”

A Guy Called Gerald “Voodoo Ray”

S.L.Y “I Need A Freak”

 

Where are you standing musically nowadays compared with your Hacienda years?

It seems in many people’s minds I am defined by the 90’s scene…couldn’t be further from the truth! Sure in the 90’s I explored the connections between House and Disco with The Disco Universe Orchestra releases, and discovered a love of breaks with countless remixes and originals…but I didn’t stop listening and creating in 1999!….I may have disappeared from view, and that’s another story, but I didn’t stop buying music (!) and enthusing about what was going on. So I feel a little wiser but still locked into a scatter brain aesthetic that makes sense of so much musical madness. In simple DJ terms I am still a House DJ with a taste for the unusual, the twisted Disco et al

 

Nowadays you are based in Stockholm and living a nice family life there. But you are spotted every now and then in Stockholm nightlife. How would you compare the Stockholm nightlife to the Northern English?

Well yes I moved to Stockholm for family reasons…but it has been a really good move for me musically as well…as I mention later I have started a very productive collaboration here…and have met some really great people as well. The scene is very different from Manchester but as yet I wouldn’t want to make any comparisons, as I’ve really only been here 6 months, save one, that they are both villages, musically speaking…which is nice! But, yes I like the scene here…you can definitely sense it is growing into something less concerned with Berlin or London or New York even…

 

You have produced and remixed numerous tracks in the past, any new upcoming projects?

I have a band project as yet unnamed, with Kicki Deckert and Jonas Nilsson, that we started 3 months ago…first gig in 3 months…Electro Pop meets Scott Walker kind of sums it up…I am really excited about this one!

 

There is a collaboration with Justin Robertson that is ongoing and another with Buckley from Back to Basics that is planned.

 

There are a few house tracks on the go and remixes on the block…I’ll play you some stuff on Saturday!

 

I’m working as musical supervisor and composer on an art house movie based in Manchester, that starts filming in the Summer, called “Rose Gold”.

 

Can you name a couple of tracks we might hear at Nolla on Saturday?

Treasure Fingers - Keep Up - (Dub)

Ramadanman and Appleblim - Void 23 - (Carl Craig Re-Edit)

Azari & III - Into The Night – (Prince Language Remix)