NC: What made you decide on the name Eastside for your label and A-Sides for your alias?
A-Sides: The Eastside thing comes from the fact that I am based in the east side of London. For my name, it came from when I started listening to rave music or hard core, I used to listen to this guy called Frank de Wolf and he used to record these compilations called B-Sides and I used to really like what he was doing, so I decided to call myself A-Sides.

NC: Were you A-Sides from the beginning of your DJ career or did you have some dodgy names?
A-Sides: No, I went through several funny names. One dodgy name was Bass Jase…because my name is Jason and I like bass! It was during the whole hip hop trip around 1986.

NC: What sort of parties did you start off with?
A-Sides: My friend and I used to have a sound system and we used to play with various other sound systems. We used to call it the LTK Roadshow…we would go round to these delinquent house parties…Hype used to do it…He used to be called Dr. K and he had a sound system called Heatwave.

NC: Have you always been in London?
A-Sides: Yeah. I live on the border or London and Essex in a place called Hornchurch. That’s where I started and I am still there now. A lot of music comes out of that area. We have Underworld, just up the road. Suburban Bass, a big drum and bass label, Andy C and Ram Records, Strictly Underground.

NC: What was the evolution into drum and bass?
A-Sides: I started off when I was at school. I used to play the drums. I bought a drum kit and took it to the flat where I lived with my mum and twin sister. I used to just beat the shit out of the drums and it got to the point where I was trashing everything with my drum sticks, my mum’s pine table and I had to sell the drums because I was making too much noise. The I started getting into early electro music, basically early day hip hop, Herbie Hancock stuff. Strted playing that on these turn tables I bought, doing scratches. Got a mlti-track tape recorder and started making records out of loads of different sections of records. It was just simple multi track mixes. No sequencers like now days. It was all done manually, recorded on tape just over dubbing, over dubbing and over dubbing.

 NC: So your home was your studio?
A-Sides: In the early days, yeah. My uncle had a recording studio, making reggae music and he put me on a training scheme for a little while to teach me how to use microphones, record and mix and how to wire things up. Then I went out and bought a drum machine, keyboard and the first sampler came out, I had a decent of turn tables by then too and then it just evolved from there really, just kept moving and moving.

NC: How did you get into studio work?
A-Sides: In the late 80’s and early 90’s I was working with these rapper guys and making beats and they got me in touch with these guys at a record label and funnily I then ended up making a record out of it.

I then met a guy called Holla who gave me the idea of setting up a label and he suggesting being in charge of the distribution. I was happy with this and we made our records, did some work with a few other guys. Making hard house, rave music and moved into drum and bass. I then decided to start Eastside in 1996.

NC: How did you get into working with guys from Metalheadz and Tru Playaz?
A-Sides: The Goldie thing came through from a friend of mine Randall, another drum and bass DJ. I had done a trck that I gave to Randall, who passed it to Goldie who wanted to take it. It was sort of like a live jazz drum and bass thing. The Metalheadz thing went from there really. Three releases for Metalheadz!

On the Tru Playaz side, I’ve known Hype for a long time and gave him a few of my tracks. I’ve also done some solo stuff with him, recently on his new label Liq Weed Ganja.

I’m all over the place doing stuff with Zinc on his label too

NC: Have you done a lot of live shows with these guys?
A-Sides: I’m actually playing with the Metalheadz for the first time at Herbal in London. Lots of stuff happening at herbal. Grooverider has his Thursday nights there, Metalheadz and Dilinjer.

NC: How do you manage everything?
A-Sides: I dunno. I just do what I have to do and make time for everything. I won’t say it gets done perfectly, but it gets done. I’m not at the top, I’m not at the bottom, but I’m always in the middle, staying constant and I have been that way for the last fifteen years.

NC: You have been on the road for quite some time now. Where have you been and where will you be going forward?
A-Sides: I’ve been on the road for the last six weeks. I was out in Christchurch and Auckland in New Zealand. Then I was at the Two Tribes Festival (Australia), Melbourne and was in Adelaide last week. Then came to Hong Kong, flew out to Bangkok and was came back again to Hong Kong for the gig. I’ll be here for a couple of days and then fly out to London but head up to Birmingham to play at the Medicine Bar with DJ Krust. Then I’m off to Berlin with the Invaders doing their Transmission Tour. Then back to London at Herbal with Metalheadz.

View 0 Comments
Post a comment