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My dog's a DJ - The John Askew Interview
Reported by Tanya Daly
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Submitted 23-04-03 23:09
John Askew, a man of many words (most of them starting with F) has been a resident at Future@Ministry for going on 2 years. He is also the producer behind the amazing "Vellum" and manager of the radio activities of a renowned DJ, whose name we cannot mention. (“It's uncool to trade on another’s fame”). He may only get noticed in the club parking lot, and not yet have a formidable collection of groupies, but he is hot, musically. He may sound cocky in this interview but without his witty, straight up personality behind these words, you may misunderstand him. Don't. If you are into sophisticated trance with a meatier sound, then John Askew is a DJ you're gonna love. And if you don't know who he is, take this opportunity to find out. You'll be glad you did.
Most parents bring their kids up in the countryside hoping to have a wholesome country boy who has no interest in the madness that the city has to offer, especially the evils of clubbing. Yes sirree, John's mother was hoping to raise a nice lawyer or a doctor but instead this lad from Wiltshire, an area where a lot of outdoor raves began, would look out onto Hackpen Hill from his bedroom window and see strobe lights going off every weekend.
"I have some amazing photos of some unbelievable raves. I got into it at about 17 or 18. I used to be in a rock band, in fact numerous rock bands. I used to play guitar and there were always arguments, you’d turn up at a gig and the singer wouldn’t show or the drummer would turn up without his drumsticks. I just got fed up. My best friend, who I actually met at a Universe rave, got me into DJ’ing. It appealed to me as a way to perform without having to rely on other people."
Now 8 to 10000 pieces of vinyl later, he is finally breaking real ground, releasing more of his own material, running his Discover label, and now having DJ’s that he has admired for ages calling him up.
“Things have really accelerated in the last 3 months.”
Despite having been a resident at Ministry for so long, he still suffers those annoying little incidents, like when he was recently booked to play this year’s Homelands festival. On the official press release it stated (about the Future Heroes/Radio One stage): "Future heroes line-up to be confirmed. We can't tell you who they are at the moment because they are still at home in their bedrooms practising.”
“I thought it was amusing because I had been DJ’ing longer than anyone on the (main) line- up.”
"It’s been a long slow uphill slog. Very. There were some very good highs early on, I played at Club UK which was a really good thing for me. I had a residency in the West Country at the UFO club, which was probably the West Country’s coolest club. At the same time, there has been a helluva lot go wrong, I cant count the number of gigs I’ve turned up to and there have only been 3 people there. You know the usual s*** that every DJ has to go through and I’m certainly not one of those people that has not put their time in - so to speak, and I certainly don’t think I deserve more than anyone else. But I f****** hope I get it." 
“I’ve had some incredible lows and some incredible highs in the last 10 years but I’ve never been bored. I hate all the money and the politics. I wish it was about quality music instead of politics and money which seem to have taken poll position for a lot of people.”
I think that is what we all hate about this industry. What else do you loathe about the superficial side of the music world?
“I don’t like people who, when they become big, they take for granted what it is that they are doing. I don’t like people who are essentially famous for playing f****** records and act like rock stars. It’s all well and good for Slash or Axl Rose to smash up a Marshall stack on stage but people who think they are gods just because they play records, other people’s records in clubs, disgust me. If you were being paid £10,000 to go in and play records for 2 hours, you ought to consider yourself privileged and should act accordingly.” 
My prediction of there being a bunch of prematurely senile clubbers running around in the near future is confirmed by the fact that John can barely remember his first real gig. Which is kind of like forgetting the moment you lost your virginity, right?
"You haven’t seen what I’ve done in the last 10 years to screw up my memory. I can barely remember where I parked my car tonight!" 
"It was at an Acid House rave in West London called Woody's." (Now a very poncey bar) "I think it was in early ’94 or late ‘93. It was empty but I still shat in my pants. It was really cool though. I met the guy who ran the night because he bought a drum machine from a friend of mine through Loot, and he came over and started talking about music and what he was into. He was putting on a night and I blagged a set."
Fate, eh! Who says it’s always a bitch?
How things have changed from those days of being such a dribbling mess at illegal raves that he would take the needle off the wrong record and not even realise it, put it back on the slip mat, ruin the needle and get kicked out. (Are there any DJ’s out there that have not taken the needle off the wrong record? Pollmaster, we need a poll!)
“There is nothing bad I could say about being a resident at Ministry. I think being a resident at Ministry has been a substantial stepping stone, I don’t think it’s helped my career dramatically and I’d like to think that what is happening to me now would’ve happened anyway since 90% of what is happening is on the back of my music production. There is absolutely no doubt that I’ve met certain people through playing at Ministry, and that’s given me a chance to be on the same bill as some big DJ’s in the UK.”
“There is nothing better than when the main room at Ministry is rammed, the sound system is unbelievable.”
I have to agree that it is pretty cool! Luckily Dave Pearce likes to play early so all the clubbing tourists can go home, leaving the real clubbers.
Who wants to be a DJ? Ooh, ooh, I do, I do!!!
"I don’t know anyone who doesn't DJ. My dog DJs."
Who wants to be a producer?
"It depends on what kind of scale you want to become big. On DJ’ing alone you can become very big in your own country, but I think to break in on an international scale, if you want to be the next Tiesto or the next van Dyk, you've got to produce. There are too many DJ’s. A club promoter is not going to take the risk of putting an unheard DJ on in a club. But if every DJ that is playing that club has 3 or 4 records from one artist and people are just gagging to hear their music, they are going to want to book them. I don’t think you are f***ed if you are not producing, but it certainly helps."
The music John produces is more technical than hard house and takes on average 2½ to 3 days working 14 hours a day to produce a track. And he won’t release a track until he has played it out in a club.
“How a track sounds in a studio is very different to how it sounds in a club. You might mix something and it sounds amazing in the studio but when you play it in a club, suddenly from out of nowhere the high hat is infinitely louder than it was in the studio, or there is load more bass than you originally thought, and you’ve got to compensate for that. And unfortunately the only way for me to do this is to play it in a club, go back, make changes, and play it again. I don’t change it in terms of content and arrangement, only in terms of levels.”
And of course everyone has that personal feeling about their music:
“I certainly don’t think that my music is better than anyone else’s, but I don’t think there are many people whose music sounds like mine. I hope my sets and productions are distinctive.”
And how do you like your notes, sir?
“I like my trance to be kind of not quite deep, not quite progressive. It’s kind of hard trance but in the way that it builds, it’s progressive. It subtly builds, not just drum rolls and circus fairground ride melodies that you get in so many s*** hard house tracks these days. I like music with depth.” “There’s a lot of techno I like. Techno is amazing, it took me a while to realise that. It used to be: “oh what is this noise”, but then I saw Jeff Mills and it was 'Wow!'”
(Actually that was a noise of appreciation but “wow” is close enough.)
“Going out to a techno night is one thing, but being at an event where there is other music as well as techno, and you can go out and have a 2-hour burst of it, is great. Some people see techno on a flyer and run a mile.”
I’m a fast runner, I’ll do two. Not a fan of techno. 
“When I play techno in clubs I kind of find myself humming and singing and thinking out melodies that would work well on top of it which is really what is missing. This sums up what I like, it’s got to have a f****** strong kick drum. If I find a track that is absolutely perfect but the kick drum is a bit s***, I won’t play it. Now I’ll probably do my own edit, add my own kick drums, my own bass drums.”
“I would like a lot of hard house if they didn’t have those little vocals in the fill-ins, the pitched up little voices that make you feel like you are playing an arcade game.”
“I think a lot of my inspiration comes from band orientated music, writing really nice melodies for bands, you can easily interpret it into dance music.”
The list of DJ's that John admires is extensive.
"They are people who inspire me, people whose ideas I’ve stolen." “They’ve each contributed in one way or another, I’ve seen them play and it’s been inspirational or their records have blown me away.”
His influences are many and varied, but there is never a hint of envy. How hard must that be when you are competing with the likes of Armin van Buuren ("He is genuinely lovely"), Paul van Dyk ("for production and DJ’ing, he's great!"), Nick Sentience (“is F****** amazing. I really like a lot of what he plays”) and Paul Oakenfold ("He was a pioneer in his time and now he is a glorified pop star. J Luckily the UK industry has grown tired of him so he has moved onto fresh pastures in America. I saw him twice in the last 4 years and he has been abysmal, and if I’d been the promoter of the club he was playing at, I would’ve had him thrown out. He has not bothered, and I mean not bothered, to mix.").
Real life inspirations?
"Pablo Gargano and Steven Lo Presti. They are an integral part of my career and I owe a lot to them. For production I really like Above and Beyond, Mirco de Govia and I love the record label Afterglow from Germany."
“My favourite DJ: Laurent Garnier, French DJ. He does epic 8-hour sets starting from ambient going up into house, disco, techno, trance. Amazing DJ. Seamless.”
"Two of my favourites are Adam Bayer and Chris Liberator who technically, is a genius."
Why techno-guru Adam Bayer?
"He is just a god at what he does, second only to Jeff Mills. He's really talented."
As for the man who brings us Future Heroes at Turnmills:
"I can only ever say good things about Fergie, he’s done a lot, and anyone who puts their own career to one side to help further the careers of people they see coming through, gets my thumbs up. I only ever have praise for Fergie, what he’s done to help me out."
“There are some wicked DJ’s from the underground scene. Beamish, he is wicked, although has he gone into hiding?” “I could name another 20”
Yeah but this is not the Oscars, and your name’s not Gwyneth Paltrow 
And so for the man who won’t consider himself successful until he can have his pick of 3 gigs every Friday and Saturday, what does the future hold?
"I’ve got a long way to go definitely. There are still hundreds of clubs in the world that I’d love to play and I’m kind of sitting here waiting and hoping that they will book me. And when I’ve played those I’ll feel like I’ve got to where I want to go. Production wise there is so much I want to do. I would like to remix someone great like U2. I love remixing especially when someone gives me a track where there is one element I love in it but I would never play it in a club because the rest of the elements I don’t like. I can add my own elements and make it how I want it. I write music that I want to hear in a club, rather then what I think people want to hear. I go out and dance. I am not one of those people that doesn’t get involved with that side of clubbing. I am still a clubber.”
Hear hear! 
“For the immediate future this is what I’m going to be doing but when I leave DJ’ing, I’m going to do it in a dignified manner. I’m not going to be one of those 50 year old DJ’s whose face has caved in and play to a crowd that is 30 years younger than them, and pretend to know what they are in to. I would like to have a very good innings of 10 or 15 years and then take a big step back and do only special gigs and go into artist management, running my record label “Discover”. I think there are a lot of DJ’s who are older and still amazing, Carl Cox is incredible. At the same time there are a lot of older DJ’s who have lost the plot and don’t know what they are playing. They don’t know whom they are playing to and just turn up to get the pay cheque.”
You have obviously got someone in mind.
“I’m not saying anything, they know who they are.”
Damn, I can never get interviewees to incriminate anyone.
Current Favourite track?
"Would it be a bit pretentious if I said my own? 'Fuck Private Ryan'". (Out later this year on Discover.) “Or the original mix of Unknown Source’s 'Najanema' on Afterglow.”
And John, what would you do without the F-word?
“Not make babies.”
Thanks to John for his time.
You can see John in London at RecoverWorld@Fridge on 3 May and Future@Ministry on 17 May.
Photo 3 and thumbnail: Lance Craig from After Hour
Photo 4: Discogs.com, The defiinitive database of electronic music
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Other Features By Tanya Daly:
Interview with Tomcraft
Heat:Evolution - Review
Euphoria@Heaven - Review
Swamp @ Bagleys - Review
Future @ Ministry of Sound - Review
The views and opinions expressed in this review are strictly those of the author only for which HarderFaster will not be held responsible or liable.
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