Liverpool isn’t short of DJs. It’s seems that every week another name appears on a flyer, a conveyor belt of wannabees and hopefuls that aim to clutch a constantly shrinking limelight and stand out amongst the competition. Nights come and go, throwing forward the best mates of the fledgling promoters grabbing their ten seconds of exposure from beyond the bedroom, with very few clutching anything more constant. But one DJ has done that consistently for over seven years at the epicentre of the city’s dance music scene, That DJ is Dash.
Since playing his first set in The Lemon Lounge in 2002, Dash has thrust himself into the music scene of the city’s electronic underground with endless voracity. Involved with the Monkey Business partys that took over Nation’s Annexe back in 2003, he played alongside Oliver Ho, Ben Sims and Stereo MC’s before becoming embroiled in his own In Stereo promotion at Hannah’s Bar. That led to the request from fledgling breakbeat institution Superfly to join them, where Dash contributed to their stint as one of the most riotous and well loved soirees in the city’s dance music scene, peaking at a series of packed shows in 2006/7. Oh and there was the small matter of being crowned the UK Corona champ in 2005, fighting off stiff competition from around the Nation at the final held in London’s Ministry of Sound before representing the UK at the global tournament in Marrakech. The scouser had gone global.
Yet Dash always had an ear beyond the hedonism of Liverpool’s clubs. Equally adept as a bar DJ, he became involved with Cream Resident Andy Mac’s SoundMob agency, charged with finding the best DJs to play at the multitude of clients the company had. He also became a key component of their licensing arm, translating the same keen ear for a tune that made him the doyen of the dancefloor into sourcing the most accurate soundtracks for advertising campaigns and building venue centric playlists. The talent seeped through to music production too, with a selection of unreleased bootlegs causing a stir amongst the jocks lucky enough to snaffle a CD-R, and leading to further interest and encouragement in his productions which should see a further development in the near future.
Now he’s reaching the pinnacle of his powers and local notoriety. A frequent player at the city’s biggest night Chibuku Shake Shake, both at their raucous main events in the Barfly and at their beguiling afterparties in Korova and Magnet, he’s played alongside the great and the good of the dance music fraternity. Erol Alkan, Fake Blood, Popof, Justice, Simian Mobile Disco, James Lavell, DJ Yoda and Norman Jay are some of the artists Dash has rubbed shoulders with in DJ booths and festival tents. It’s this versatility which manages to rub off stylistically, with Dash just as comfortable playing old school hip hop classics side by side with rolling disco grooves as he is dropping turbo charged electro and rump shaking techno beats. It’s that ability to drop flawlessly mixed warm-up sets for the titans of modern electro, peak time offerings that barricade clubbers with a crescendo of synth driven mindfuckery, or journeys through the funk fuelled moments of dance music’s past at afterparties which make Dash such a mouth-watering proposition for the country’s promoters.
2008 reflected this with a raft of great gigs falling at his feet. Cavorting at Chibuku (memorably with the midnight set on NYE) was just half the story, he also played the afterparty for global superstar Mark Ronson’s Sunday Best gig, the Strongbow Rooms at Weston Park’s monolithic V Festival and an illustrious party alongside Yousef, Tom Middleton and the Stanton Warriors at the MTV European Music Awards Official aftershow. Alongside this he’s played for Audiojak in Lincoln, Slippery in London, and plug in Sheffield. 2009 is blitzing through at a similar pace, Dash dropped a scintillating first set in the Annexe for Chibuku’s ninth Birthday celebrations and the summer’s bookings are beginning to take shape, positioning Dash further forward in the acid house race to dancefloor domination. Watch this space...
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