At the age of Fourteen I got my first set of decks, and have never looked back since. Shortly after getting my decks, I handed a mix tape into Dj Nice (Chris Ball) who ran Reds club, (now Oasis) and got my first break at the under 18’s night. By the age of fifteen I was Djing at over 18’s events at Club 2000 in Spennymoor.
…. Oh yeah…my name is Andrew Best (Zippy) and I am 26 and I still run Oasis which I started in 1996 with long term friend and Dj partner Ric Metcalfe and Ross Woodward...(Frostie) Oasis is still regarded as one of the most established nights in the North East and is still going strong thanks to the faithful regulars.
Alongside Oasis, I have Dj’d at just about every influential club in the North East and west including the After Dark, Judgement Day, Hanger 13, Elavation, Timezone, New Monkey, Vibe, Energize and Raveolution. I have also Dj’d alongside talents like Scott Brown, Unknown, Asa & S1, Joey Riot, Dj Kurt and Hyperbass. Production was the next logical step for me, which I started around 2000/2001 with long time friend Michael Burns. We started making down tempo first really, then moved onto trance then prog house.
We got our first signings with “Stabilized†on Conf-Dance and “Overlight†on Minimal Records, both under the “Gazor†guise in 2003. The year before I had the opportunity to work with Chris Scott (Lexicon Avenue) and produced “Dark Light†by Indaba, which received massive airplay by the likes of Sasha & Digweed and was signed to Prolekult and featured on Danny Howells’ Renaissance Masters album and Ibiza DC10 vol. 2. Having these releases under my belt, it was time to set a label up!! So Trixy and I set up Square recordings and had a side each on SQ001, which just about sold out. Hopefully there should be more releases from the Square HQ!!
I have also just embarked on a new project called “Nebula†with engineer Ian Appleby and Dj Haston. Watch out for another project involving Trixy, Stretch, Francey and Tazo!!!
