A master of all trades, a jack of none, when it comes to hard dance Phil York is running things right now. Producer of recent innovative anthems like ‘Don’t Panic’ and ’Antivirus’, a globe-trotting DJ, label owner of hard trance standard setter Tranzlation and promoter of Scotland’s number one hard dance night Nuklear Puppy, everything Phil is touching right now is firing on all cylinders and his DJ diary is perfect proof.
Northern trailblazers Good Greef, the scene dominating Tidy Weekenders, London’s leader Frantic, Storm and the Escape in the park festival are all stamped in his ’08 diary with debut tours of Argentina, Brazil & Norway adding to returns of his familiar stomping grounds Canada, U.S.A., Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Over the past year, Germany’s massive Q-Base festival, Coloursfest, Escape, Slinky, Bionic, Parlez- Vous and Freeformation are others that have benefited from Phil’s unique party starting touch.
It was seven years ago when an ascendant Phil and his partner Jason Cortez gave Edinburgh the hard dance night it was crying out for in Nuklear Puppy. Today, the much loved ’Puppy’ is the most reliably packed monthly hard dance night on British soil with the likes of Judge Jules, Lisa Lashes, Eddie Halliwell, Marco V, Alex Kidd, Kutski, Andy Whitby and the Tidy Boys regularly appearing at the event that handed them their Edinburgh debuts.
It wasn’t long before Phil rose to become a global headliner in his own right thanks to innovative boundary pushing productions that have appeared on labels like Tidy, Voltswagon and Masif. It was scene leaders Nukleuz that spotted his talent with ‘88MPH’ and ’Bad Idea’ before hard trance classics like ’Glide’ and the soaring ’Angels In Heaven’ put his own label Tranzlation on the map as the leader of innovative hard trance, Scot Project, , Lisa Lashes, Dave Pearce, Tidy Boys and even the late great John Peel, just a fraction of the DJs caning its early releases.
Nowadays if you think quality hard trance, you think Tranzlation – full stop. As labels drop like flies, Tranzlation continues to rise with Phil’s astute a&r picking up anthems like Technikal’s head-twisting ’Summasault’ and Dark By Design & McBunn’s fiercely euphoric ’Chasing Angels’ and E.P.’s like the Nation and Tech-Trance EP’s adding both a thumping European groove and rattling tech energy to Tranzlation’s trademark arm-raising euphoria.
Tranzlation, of course, remains just one very key cog in the machine behind York’s label empire. Gathering plays from DJs as diverse as Judge Jules and Eddie Halliwell to DJ Dan and Detroit legend DJ3000, Phil’s Bootek label has put the party back into pumping techno whilst Distinkt resurrects the golden euphoria of classic hard trance. Then there’s Phil’s Section 8 guise, which he uses for his tougher European sounds. Put simply, if there’s a stomping sound that’s makes people move then Phil’s got it licked.
And then some.
LATEST RELEASES