J. Digweed

What can you say about Digweed that hasn't been said already? The man has been around the block more than a few times and ages like a great wine. The older, Rennaisance era material was inspirational to people around the planet. Sets from that era still sound fantastic. Then he had a dark and moody era touching on some epic tribal house. Then as if to completely deny his past he starts hammering those phenomenal Kompakt tracks. Hands down, one of the best deejays period. He's got an ear for records that is uncanny, and when you throw in his mixing skills it's clear why his name is synonomous with excellent electronic music.

Digweed is surely one of a kind, he is a very versitaile DJ that seems to be able to blend both progressive, deep and tech house into a set without any problems at all. I went to see him when he played in Stockholm, Sweden and he rocked it with a dark and very hard tech house sound, not playing any of that progressive sound that one is used to hear from John Digweed. He is also responsible for finding Jonathan Lisle, the three deck super DJ and bringin him into the glorious and wonderful world of DJing.

John Digweed got me hooked since that day in 1992 or so when I bought that obscure cassette somewhere in Coventry to put in my car on the long road back to Belgium. The recording quality was poor, the Corolla tape deck worse, but the music …! It was so evergoing, always a bit dark, so extremely monotonously rhythmic and trancy all the way that it didn’t matter the tape autoreversed the whole time. Soon I start writing ‘Digweed Style’ on my records that captured that style (little did I know back then it was called progressive) and it would take me till 1997 to get my first CD’s of the man: the superb Northern Exposure series.
I don’t think too many artists, let alone DJ’s, managed to define a music genre all by themselves what makes the man even more respectable.

john digweed is a great dj, and has managed to keep the quality very high for well over a decade, not all his selections are superb though, combined with his old sparring partner sasha, the combination is mouthwatering, just listen to communicate, probably one of the best collections of progressive house ever recorded.