John 00 Fleming is a certified legend of the global trance scene. Growing up in the UK, he was at the forefront of the development of trance music from an underground dance abstraction to a full-blown mainstream genre. Having established his own trance label in 1998, J00F Recordings, Fleming grew with the genre and in 2014 is still a powerhouse on the scene, with hisGlobal Trance Groovespodcast and his global tour playing eight-hour-long J00F sets. Ahead of his Australian visit, Fleming begins by grappling with the fact that Australia was once behind in the development of dance.
“There have been various changes since the early days of dance music,” he says. “I think there were multiple reasons why Australia and other territories were behind, because you had a physical product like a CD or mix compilations – [as a label] you could only hit certain territories at certain times because you only had certain stock and you could only handle the press and media [of a specific territory] at one time. So you would focus on Europe, then North America, then South America, then Australia – not necessarily in that order, but me running a label, that is how you would target it.
“By the time you got to Australia, whether it was first or last, that predicted when that release would be getting played in clubs, on radio. And I think the music magazines worked in the same way, where they’d hit where they would sell the most first, and they’d dedicate the exports three to four months down the track, so that’s when you guys [in Australia] would get it.”
Technology has allowed the tyranny of distance to be overcome, but it hasn’t all been for the better. “I felt years ago that Australia definitely mirrored the UK scene,” says Fleming, “but if you fast-forward to today, I think that you have a more generic scene; that is really sad. Everyone knows what is going on, up to date with Twitter, Facebook and mixes. I really miss that Melbourne used to have its own scene completely different to Sydney. In the UK, you had different scenes in the north and the south. Spain had its own great club culture. Belgium had its own scene. The east coast of the States was different to the west coast of the States, but now this generic EDM sound is huge – not that I am a fan of it. It is just this big mainstream sound that is around the world.”
It seems only appropriate at this juncture to ask Fleming if he is disregarding the much-lauded ‘Melbourne Sound’ – a phrasing of hard dance that has seen Will Sparks become an international superstar.
“That hard dance sound? I don’t think that it is unique to Melbourne,” Fleming says. “I can name you loads of cities where it is. I am aware of him [Sparks], and it’s not unique to him and it is not unique to Melbourne and that’s unfortunately where it’s gone wrong.
“Say with techno, you had all these different flavours – Richie Hawtin had his sound from Canada, North America, and then you had Dave Clarke, who had his sound that was from Europe, and then you had Carl Cox. If you mentioned a DJ’s name you could define where that sound was born, and there was generally a story behind it, like [at] a club – this goes back to the Pump days when Pump took off and you had certain clubs in South London who were supporting it … You had the Northern Exposure nights that were Sasha and Digweed. You had Bristol sound. And that’s gone, which I feel is a sad thing.”
However, Fleming is doing his bit to keep it real. His latest mix is with legendary UK DJ Guy J, and it’s a deeper brand of dance.
“I have always played pretty deep, so if anything I am getting back to my roots and I am allowing myself to do that on the J00F edition tours that I am taking around the world, where I do extended sets. Because where I was struggling for a little while was that when EDM exploded I hadn’t changed what I did – I always played deep, but with this EDM thing everyone was playing full-pelt big room sounds. Even in my trance scene that I born and bred and I love, I was struggling to play alongside these guys who had taken the EDM route, so when I was playing alongside these guys they were just full-power radio tracks with vocals and big crescendos, and when I came on it would just go flat. So I ended up having to play high-energy stuff to keep up with them, but then I was getting tagged as full-on psytrance which is only a small part of what I do musically, and the rest of that deep stuff was getting missed out.”
In line with his mantra, Fleming promises to keep things fresh when he returns to Australia in November for Earthcore.
“At Earthcore I will be feeding off the crowd and playing all the good music [I’ve] found,” he says, “maybe even as recently as that day.”
John 00 Fleming is playing at Earthcore 2014 alongsideHallucinogen, Shpongle, Boris Brejcha, Da Vinci Code and many more atPyalong, Victoria fromThursday November 27 to Monday December 1, tickets online.Also appearing at Chinese Laundry, Saturday September 13, tickets online.
