About Me
Simon’s DJ career started in 1994 after a serious knee injury forced him to retire from playing professional football. He had been at Bradford City for eight years, and had also been a regular England International at schoolboy level. After receiving the news he would no longer be able to play again, the future seemed very bleak and depressing.
Simon discovered his passion for dance music and DJ’ing when he met and became good friends André Warner one of the early purveyors of the dance scene and resident at the famous Nottingham club Kool Kats.
In November 1994, Mix-Mag ran a feature for a one off DJ Competition, and still to this day is the biggest of it’s kind. After carefully constructing his set, Simon sent his tape to his selected club, Hard Times. It wasn’t until receiving a call three months later in February 1995 from Mix-Mag head honcho David Davies, that he got the news telling him he had won the Competition.
His tape was selected from thousands of entries, which were short-listed to 6 finalists, Simon's skill and musical taste was the chosen one.
Stephen Raine, Hard Times boss quoted "I knew in five minutes, "you could tell".
This led to his first appearance in a major club and resulted in a mind-blowing set that hit Hard Times in Leeds, which at the time had just won the prestigious title of "Club Of The Year". He played a main slot 11-1am, his set was so pulsating that the main room had to be closed and was subject to a one out, one in, basis. Stephen Raine quoted “I have only ever seen this happen to a handful of DJ’s before in this club, this is when I knew I had chosen someone specialâ€.
After that set he became a regular at Hard Times and saw him play along side DJ's such as Roger Sanchez, Murk, Todd Terry and Dave Camacho, as well as playing at their Mix-Mag and Muzik Magazine parties.
Ben Turner from Muzik Magazine reckoning and stating that "Simon James from Yorkshire - is not far behind some of the established jocks he's usually put up against, and won’t be long before he joins the elite list of the usual suspects†review from Muzik Magazine.
This led to Simon playing at some best clubs in the UK and Europe and took up his first residency at Jakkara in Edinburgh with Danny Howells.
A major step forward for Simon was being a big part of Renaissance, who have taken him to many of their UK residencies, such as Media, Nottingham, The Cross, London and The Leadmill, Sheffield playing alongside some of the biggest DJ’s in the world.
Over the years Simon has played regularly at clubs such as the legendary Hacienda, Renaissance, Cream, Ministry of Sound, Back 2 Basics, Fabric, The End,
Miss. Moneypenny’s, Republic, Progress, The Gardening Club, The Arches & Scala to name but a few, as well as events such as Homelands and Creamfields.
He has also enjoyed playing regularly abroad in America, Ibiza, Malta, Sweden, Norway & Russia.
His musical fusion ranges from a wide selection of house, whether it be twisted, jackin or funky, or as Simon call’s it, ‘sexy house music’.
“His sets would rock any club, anywhere in the world†- quote from Ben Turner Muzik Magazine.
A natural progression was to start producing, his production career started with his friend and one time collegue @ global beat records Darius Syrossian www.myspace.com/darius_syrossian under their Persica moniker. They pair soon became much sought after producers and remixers and worked with labels such as Satoshi Tomiie’s - Saw Recordings, Automatic Records, Brother Brown, Save to Disc, Germany. They also remixed a number of tracks for Universal Records, including the classic 80’s track, Visage ‘Fade to Grey’.
More recently he teamed up with Kevin Miller to form Rolasoul. Their debut release “Desire†on Plastic Fantastic. It received huge support from the likes of Sasha, John Digweed, Roger Sanchez, Satoshi Tomiie, Danny Tenaglia and Paul Oakenfold, who also played it Consecutively for a number of weeks on his radio show. The track was also included on three different compilations.
Their next single “Lost In Power†again received huge acclaim, this time being included on the Renaissance Masters Compilation by Hernan Cattaneo.
Simon has just taken up a residency at the Anam Bar in Islington, London which is described as one of the top 5 bars by the Evening Standard. He currently plays there once a month. www.anambar.comI edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.1
