Alex Downey aka MorpH
Morphing Into the Future,
We read a lot about how club-land is returning to its roots. While the 1990s were a time when dance music was constantly expanding, commercially and creatively, since the millennium the term superstar DJ has been quickly discarded in a fluster of embarrassment, many large clubs have slimmed down or vanished, and almost all the dance hits that hit the Top 40 were cheesy pop-trance cover versions.
Dance music hit a plateau. For some, mostly those who were in it for the money, this means its time to find a new horse to ride. For others, though, like Alex Downey, AKA MorpH, this is where it gets exciting. The media keeps on telling us that dance music has returned to the underground, dived back to its acid house roots for a real party, but they never tell us who or where. Alex Downey, DJ, club-promoter, record shop-founder, website host and electronic visionary, is a good place to start.
"Its not about being underground for the sake of it", explains Alex, "The more, the merrier, and all that, but it is about sorting the wheat from the chaff". Club-land has become bloated in the UK but we've ridden through the tough times and those left standing tend to be the ones that actually care about the music.
Alexs manifesto, he half jokes, is "Everyone loves techno they just don't realise it yet". His enthusiasm for the music is infectious and fired up with youthful charm. He's played alongside everyone from Richie Hawtin to Josh Wink, Carl Cox to Laurent Garnier, and his experiences have made him realise that while he's a techno-boy at heart, its the spirit of entertaining the crowd that moves him.
He's played everywhere from sprawling festivals to art-house events at the ICA; he's been known to drop the deepest of techno and yet has worked as an A&R source for smart house imprint Loaded; his recent expeditions in Japan have culminated in large crowds refusing to go home but he can be found playing on week nights to crowds of less than 200 in dingy seafront venues; he's as happy playing Ben Sims' word-of-mouth 'Split' bashes in London as he is warming up for Dave Clarke at the Boutique in Brighton. Bottom line: Alex Downey is in the business, putting the funk n' sparkle back into machine music.
The name MorpH came from all that early 90s optimism about what the dance music revolution could achieve, Alex explains rather sheepishly, "It may be a mainstream culture now but back then we hoped it would open people up to new ways of thinking and being; a transformation from the inside out".
While he uses meditation to relax and speaks of dancing to techno being a primitive tribal instinctive thing, Alex is far from a whimsical hippy. The [covert] organization, of which he was a co-founder, was a dance music success story. The [covert] record shop in Brighton, was open for 11 years, and was a centre for south coast techno / house activity and the base for www.covert.uk.com, a web site that in its prime had more than 10,000 members and a huge following amongst those who do their record shopping online. Unable to compete with the download culture we see killing the vinyl industry today, the shop ceased trading in June 2007.
With music in his blood, Alex is the son of the late Alan Downey, a professional trumpet-player who toured with everyone from Maynard Ferguson to Shirley Bassey, recorded for film and TV (including the Bond films) and whose prolific compositions/arrangements were regarded as works of genius.
Born and raised in Kingston, south London, Alex arrived in Brighton in 1993 to do an architecture degree but was soon sidetracked by seeing the likes of Derrick May and Dave Clarke at the Zap Club. Before long he was resident DJ at a notorious 24 hour café on Brighton seafront, a true post-acid house den of iniquity. From there he has spent the years dedicating himself to making the crowds, however large or small, dance, dance and dance some more. Hes DJed at such diverse parties as Wiggle, Split, Stompa-Phunk, Labyrinth, Retro_vert, The Big-Beat Boutique, Optical, The Essential Festival, Tribal-sessions and has even been heard on Kiss FM, but just as important to his career arc are the hundreds of smaller parties and long-forgotten club nights that rocked hard and kept the lifeblood of the scene pumping.
Alex's style behind the turntables defies categorization. For him techno isn't a dogma so much as a spirit of electronic freedom to adapt and embrace new styles. Where techno can drift into boys own head-nod territory, Alex makes the girls forget its a techno night and get wigglin', and lets the boys dance instead of shuffling or pogo-ing. Tech-house, techno, deep house, minimal, electro, yes, they're all in the mix, but were talking a serious throbbing rhythm, not bang-bang-bang; were talking disco-dancing with attitude. "The original Detroit techno guys wanted to make computer music that had warmth, humanity and soul", Alex explains, "and I think sometimes DJs today can forget that. Its a very forward-thinking music and its about to have a renaissance".
Whether the techno revival is due or not, for those who want to discover or rediscover what such music can bring to the dance-floor, whatever the ostensible taste of the crowd, Alex is the guy to deliver the energy injection. Its not about barn-sized clubs and pricey dress-codes for the new wave of return-to-roots acid housers, its about the ability to make the space in front of the turntable, whatever its size, feel like the place you want to be
One of Brighton's treasures, solidly, confidently attending to business while other media-hyped storms have come and gone, is about to be discovered
