Italiano
Born and raised in the London suburbs, Alan is the son of a Welsh Coal Miner’s daughter and a Transport Workers Union official. Exposed to Black music by the likes of Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong and Mahalia Jackson at a very young age, he was also influenced by the musical tastes of his sister who was a Disco DJ in the 70’s and by his older brother who would leave him boxes of cassettes when home on leave from the Merchant Navy. This introduced him to acts as diverse as Santana, Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd and The Velvet Underground as well as the Philadelphia Sound that had a huge influence on him.
In the late 1970’s Alan was a big fan of The Clash who introduced him to reggae and dub. This eclectic background began to express itself when Alan started DJ’ing at Student Union bars at Kingston Polytechnic (South London) in 1982/3. From here he got his first paid residency at The Swamp in Croydon, a pioneering proto-house night where his fellow resident, Tony Thorpe of the Moody Boys, introduced him to more diverse electronic music by the likes of A Certain Ratio, Durutti Column and more, as well as teaching him how to use a pair of Technics properly!
By 1984 Alan was living in Brixton and was a regular at The (original) Fridge, The Wag Club, Mudd Club and the roving Dirtbox warehouse parties, and within a year or two was DJ’ing at The Catwalk warehouse parties and at dub and reggae parties in the area. By 1990 he had shows on Pirate Radio stations CCR (Brixton) and Star FM (Ladbroke Grove) and was soon helping out at BBC GLR where he presented a club guide on the Dave Pearce Show, thanks to his wife Janet James who worked for the station. These contacts lead Alan to take up music journalism and he quickly landed a column in respected Black Music magazine ECHOES. His ‘Inside Trax’ column ran for over ten years.
In 1991 Alan started working as a Studio producer at Kiss FM in London where he produced the evening and weekend ‘specialist’ shows by the like of Paul ‘Trouble’ Anderson, Danny Rampling, Judge Jules and many more. During this period Alan met studio owner Peter Cooper-Smith with whom he set up Hott Records, one of the first dedicated House Music labels from the UK.
The first release on Hott was the ‘City Moods’ EP by EC2 released in 1992. EC2 was Alan and producer/musician Richard Green. They did a few more tracks together until Richard left and Alan teamed up with Richard Yori (at the time a member of pioneering trip hop combo Hustlers Of Culture) and became Splice Of Life. They did a few tracks that did quite well on the underground, ‘2000 Black’ in particular, and started getting remixes. They were amongst the first UK acts to do remixes for the ‘cool’ US labels – Vibe Records, Eightball, SubUrban, ES-A, King Street and others.
For the next ten years Alan was a regular on the International DJ circuit, playing all over Europe, particularly in Italy where he was managed by Tony Humpghries manager Maurizio Clemente and played in clubs the length and breadth of the country, from Bolzano in the Alps to Calabria in the South and all points in between. He also played regularly in Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Greece (Zakyhnthos in particular), Switzerland, Slovenia, Croatia and did two (three?) Tours of the US where he played at AquaBooty in New York, The Red Dog in Chicago, The End Up and Remedy in San Francisco, ReBar in Seattle and lots of other very cool spots. He was also the first UK DJ to play at the WMC in Miami, playing at Amnesia in 95 with Roger Sanchez. With his wife Janet he also ran a club night in London called Soul Movement for about 5 years, offering a true underground alternative to the so called ‘super clubs’ that dominated at the time. He also helped run Global Dance Distribution and continued to produce and remix under various names including Tinderbox, Ghettoblaster, AK 47 and others.
Sometime around 2008/9 Alan began to feel the train of constant travelling and the ‘DJ lifestyle’ so in 2012 he relocated to his wife’s parents homeland of Antigua where he still lives. For the first 5 years Alan found himself back behind the decks, playing at the only proper club on the Island, Abracadabra, co-incidentally owned by two brothers from Naples! The around 2017 he quit DJ’ing permanently and began doing different things. But music soon dragged him back in and he started producing again. Now with remixes on various labels and an album’s worth of tracks signed to Italy’s prestigious IRMA Records, it feels like a whole new chapter is just beginning…
the album “Tracks From The Tropics” is released by Irma Dancefloor on February 18, 2022.