Zone Magazine Issue 037 Spring 2023

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Vinyl, Digital or CDJ’s and why? Oh! now this is a topic that raises its head almost weekly in PHC, I generally file it alongside the whos better? Sasha or Digweed argument. You have to be neutral in some things when your managing a group the size of PHC and I don't generally comment however as we're talking here I would say overall it doesn't really matter what the medium is, its the music your playing that matters, that's what is really important. Ive used vinyl, Ableton and Rekordbox. All three of these mediums have their merits.. Rekordbox you can carry your whole record collection around on a flash drive. Ableton, the creative possibilities are endless, I used this a lot when I was playing eighties/nu-disco gigs, radio shows, and finally vinyl. There really is just something magical about a box of records and a set of turntables plus very little really that can go wrong, the worst you might get is a needle jumping! as opposed to digital which when it goes wrong, it goes wrong! Do you think working in the record store helped you in the music industry? Yeah 100%. I can categorically state that working in music was hands down the best job ive ever had. I worked for the UKs largest independent retailer – Andys Records. I started there after finding myself between jobs and it was initially just over the christmas period working behind the counter in one of the flagship stores. I ended up getting a permanent position and within 2 years became the company buyer covering 40 shops all over the country. The company was well known as a supplier of classic rock and chart at the time, when I was offered the buyer postion it was like working with a blank canvas, we ended up with 20 stores that performed well with dance music and 10 of those had a record deck and sold vinyl. I was given a budget and access to all the major accounts plus the opportunity to source independents, On a weekly basis I was dealing with Universal, Virgin, WEA, BMG, Pinnacle, SRD, Vital, Unique and Amato. My job was to presale all dance releases and allocate out on a store by store basis. What that then ended up doing was giving me access to contacts within the industry which in turn opened up doors for promotional material, launch parties and travel. I worked on instore promotions for the early GU albums, Ministry of Sound, Fantazia, Renaissance plus the S&D albums Communicate and Expeditions. I've still got one of the window displays for the first Northern Exposure album. Another really big market for us were mixtapes the grey area of the music industry. We sold bucket loads, literally hundreds a week. We stocked all of the Boxed releases as they were released, all the big tape pack rave brands and I had a really good relationship with Stuart from Eclipse Coventry, those tapes were one our biggest sellers and earned me a couple of decent bonuses! Met and dealt with a huge number of people during the 8 years I was with the company, dance went on to be our biggest growth category. How does the Acid house scene differ from what followed? Acid House was a reaction, its arguably the biggest, most spectacular youth movement we've ever seen. Eighties Britain was not a great place for the younger generation, a lot of things were stale and people were miserable. Without that explosion in music and ecstacy culture who knows where we'd be now. I often wonder if we'll ever see anything like that again? Festivals, super clubs, small clubs or house parties, and why? Personally Ive never really been a fan of big festivals, although I know the younger generation seem to really embrace these which is great.. As for superclubs, they had there place but I would say that my best memories of the early nineties aside from acid house and early raves would be the likes of The Eclipse in Coventry, Renaissance in Mansfield and various nights in London, The Brain springs to mind which was the precursor to the legendary Love Ranch, visited The Wag and used to be a regular at The Astoria. I guess you would class these as pre-super club. We were really lucky where I lived we had a lot of underground parties going on with some decent DJs. The Milky Lunch guys in Norwich were one of the first to bring Sasha down to Suffolk to a venue called the Waterfront that was an amazing low key affair in a proper sweatbox venue. One weekend you could end up on a Thames boat party and the following week be dancing in a disused church yard. I guess what Im saying is aside from some of the big raves I preffered the smaller club setting events. What I would add aswell is that you can't beat a good house party with a set of decks, that really can be a very messy affair! What years do you recon where the best in the scene to date, and why? Ha! I think you know what I'm gonna say to that.. It would be the nineties, after acid house we got to experience the culture that exploded from the movement, the evolution of the dance scene that followed was so exciting. You can trace the influences for prog right back to 1990 with tracks like Age of Chance – Times Up and Djum Djum – Difference, things moved along, evolved and genres were created. If I had to pick specific years I would say 92-96 were my personal favourites, some of the music, labels and clubs in this period were magical. Oldskool, neuskool or a bit of allskool? As I mentioned earlier Ive not really listened to a huge amount of new music, Wasim my partner in PHC is into a lot of the newer stuff though. He'll always flag up bits he thinks I might like and what I have heard recently has been absolutely amazing so I am taking the time out to listen to more of it. I make a point now of checking out DJs like Harry Lemon, Anthony Pappa, Chris Scott, Steve Parry, Dave Seaman, John Graham and most recently Sasha & Digweed again. The thing about running a music group the size of PHC is you discover new 'classic' tracks all the time and as the group grows in size and the age demographic changes your seeing tracks from for instance 2010 that younger members are posting that to them are classics. Theres always something new to be discovered in music.
Where do you see the future of Electronic music? I personally don't like the gentrification of dance music but it was always going to happen and thats where much of the scene seems to be heading, all the big stages, wind machines and pouting lips side of it is not for me, sometimes it almost looks like an individual has been manufactured as a brand which is so far away from the ethos of original house music. From my own point of view Ive only dipped in with newer music over the last few years, my heart lays with classic prog and thats why I enjoy running PHC. What I would add though is that the current music seems to be finding its feet again with a more punchy prog style, labels like Forensic are releasing tracks that are recapturing that classic spirit without sounding dated. Its been encouraging to see Sasha carpet bombing events again and I know from some of our DJs and members that they all feel musically the scene is gaining strength once again after the whole covid thing. I hope that there are plenty of smaller parties out there, thats where future will be built. Tell us about Progressive House Classics, it started as a radio show correct? Yeah, thats correct it did start life as a radio show over on the OldSkoolAnthemz platform. I used to do a 1 hour show on a Thursday night, that would be recorded and at the time I think I upped them to Soundcloud. What I then decided to do was set up an accompanying group on Facebook where I would post the links. I ended up with about 500 members in the group which I thought was amazing and things started to develop from there. At that time you used to be able to directly contact all members with a group message and I started including download links for classic Sasha, Vertigo, Welly mixes, it was kind of like a newsletter that went out. This was the point I met Wasim Afzal who is now my partner in the group. We became friendly over a period of time, Was joined as an admin and it was him that said we should push the group forward, see what we can do with it. Over the next couple of years we started to expand and I think at the point we reached 3K we decided to bring Marcus Harriman onboard who was this madly passionate music buff, we nicknamed him the 'Oracle'. As time moved on the membership started to swell, we set up the PHC Instagram account which was just for random one off pics and the Blog where we archived media in relation to prog and the nineties dance scene. Things grew from there. When we started to move up into double figures Marcus decided he wanted to step back from his admin role. He made a hugely important contribution to the building of PHC and although hes no longer with us the door is always open should he wish to return. We're now lucky enough to have two great 'mods' alongside myself and Was. Judd Bean and William Noglows are two incredibly passionate guys from the States, Judd is a lawyer in Florida and William is the guy behind the Super Progressive imprint and he's currently working for Danny Tenaglia. Between the four of us we keep things ticking over. The group is now at the 31K point which is way above what we ever dreamed and with that size membership comes a level of responsibility to provide a safe, friendly and enjoyable browsing experience which I like to hope we do. We have our ups and downs as do all groups on Facebook but we're vigilant and try to get on top of stuff the minute its flagged up. There was an option sometime ago to take groups private or keep them public, we decided to stay public which means we see far more traffic but it has to be policed so its something we review once a year. Overall its been one hell of a ride! What affect did lockdown have on you, good bad, or both. Did you learn anything from it, on a personal and pro level? As a family we just got on with it and for the most part I was working, looking back on it though the overall personal experience was negative because at the time we really didnt know where things were heading. Within PHC myself and Wasim immediately decided that we would up the input on the blog and that we would look into doing some live streams which I think became the norm for many peoples weekends. We were really lucky and ended up working with Anthony Pappa, TILT, DJ Vertigo, Barry Jamieson, Marcus Stubbs and Harry Lemon, plus we did a couple of our own where myself and Was did a Saturday drivetime type show which was all done on vinyl. The whole live stream thing was very positive and with the aid of the chat rooms we all got to interact. I think its great that you can still catch live streams via Mixcloud/Twitch even now, some decent ones around. What does the future hold for Jay and PHC? We're 15 this year which is mad! To celebrate we're doing a selection of radio takeovers with the guys at Subcode radio, the next one of those is at the end of June. Our first one in March got a great response, the whole PHC team put together mixes that covered a 6 hour period and going forward we hope to have some guests appearing on those. I've got a 2 hour guest mix coming up on Mixpub Radio which I think is airing sometime in July plus we will most likely do a couple of live vinyl streams. Other than that we're just gonna keep moving hopefully providing a group platform to like minded people sharing and discovering great music. Last words? House! Enjoy music and have fun.. Long Live Progressive
Page 1 and 2: ISSUE 037 SPRING 2023 - Lemon8 " Be
Page 3 and 4: WELCOME ISSN 2009-8014 (Online) ISS
Page 5 and 6: LONDON HOUSE MUSIC WHAT THE HOUSE 3
Page 7 and 8: Exclusive DJ Mix FREE Exclusive DJ
Page 9 and 10: " We’ve already been working with
Page 11 and 12: Paul, you recently celebrated 30 ye
Page 13 and 14: " Ive been releasing music for 25 y
Page 15 and 16: " I was lucky to be around the club
Page 17 and 18: OUT NOW
Page 19 and 20: " I think my favourite nights were
Page 21: Tell us all about your Djing and re
Page 25 and 26: DBM - Real Dream (1991)- [UMM] UMM0
Page 28 and 29: Who is Harry and who is lemon8? Har
Page 30: Festivals, Superclubs, small clubs
Page 33: Digital, vinyl, or CD’s and why?
Page 37 and 38: Stuart Paterson & Terry Hobbs
Page 39 and 40: " The festival scene is where every
Page 41 and 42: Emma Noble Tito Pulpo & Terry Hobbs
Page 43 and 44: Stuart Paterson & Terry Hobbs Dave
Page 45 and 46: The Headliners Crazy P (DJ SET) Cra
Page 47 and 48: " Most of the gigs I have had where
Page 49 and 50: What label has been the best to wor
Page 51 and 52: WIND DOWN SHOW PRESENTED BY AMARE N
Page 53 and 54: Who are we chatting to today? Digit
Page 55: Tone Rangole & Jay Lehman 2015 ibiz
Page 58 and 59: featurelabel __________________ Wor
Page 60 and 61: First off, how are you doing guys a
Page 62: You started off as Paper Recording,
Page 66 and 67: DJ CHARTS - spring issue 2023 Jens
Page 68 and 69: featuring ANA BE fly released 15th
Page 70 and 71: Albums - Dance Deejay.de / Vinyl /
Page 72 and 73:
Vinyl + Digital Albums - Dance TECH
Page 74:
30 YEARS A DJ available now to stre
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Zone Magazine Issue 037 Spring 2023

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