Progressive House Jay Kaufman
Jay Kaufman - The Fear (Progression mix) - Sonambulist Recordings 003

This was my first ever vinyl release on Derby, UK-based Sonambulist Recordings and was released in October 2001. The track was supported and charted by a lot of the better known progressive house jocks of the time.

discogs.com/label/Sonambulist+Recordings

There's a bit of a back story behind the writing of this record. Around the time this was produced Toronto, Canada (and arguably a lot of the Western underground electronic music world) was going through a massive progressive house wave. Sasha & Digweed, as well as other influential progressive house DJs held down a residency at now-legendary New York City-based club 'Twilo'. The sound was dark, druggy, tribal and euphoric.

There were a few key cities in the world pushing this sound and Toronto was one of them. Buenos Aires, London, Liverpool, Manchester, New York and a few other cities were really pushing this sound. With that, there were also several really well known club nights. Renaissance (still around today) were one of those nights that defined the sound, along with Cream in Liverpool, Twilo in New York and a roughly 800 capacity basement club I frequented every Friday night called Breathe at System Soundbar.

Breathe was the spiritual home for progressive house in Toronto. It's promoters Mike Greco and Jose Gonzalez were astute devotees to the genre and saw to it that even some of the more obscure artists from the genre got to play at Breathe - so much so that they often made their Canadian and sometimes even North American debuts.

Anyway, this record was written largely after a rather 'awe-inspiring' (ahem) night spent at Breathe. Somehow, I managed to come home after spending 8 hours in a nightclub and write the majority of this. I only remember this because the chord breakdown was something I'd sort of ripped off from another record I heard the night before, but with my own twist. I recall being unable to wait to get back to the studio in excitement, as I wrote this track in my head on the hour-long journey back to my studio in Waterloo from Toronto.

The pads are from a Roland JX-8P using the 'Soundtrack' patch that I tweaked a bit with the PG-800 controller. The kick drum is something I sampled from somewhere and put through my Yamaha A3000 MKII sampler that I spent $2200 on not too long before 2001 and is worth $100 now. The leads were re-sampled from the JX-8P, Roland Alpha Juno-1 and a few other sources I don't quite remember. One of the leads is from the sadly extinct TC Electronic Mercury-1 plugin that I used a lot back then. The drums outside of the kick are all samples I grabbed off of the Internet and from a friend who gave me a CD of classic drum machine samples. Finally the whispered sample of the man saying 'the fear' is from the classic sci-fi movie 'Dune', but I didn't say that.

I don't recall how I hooked up with Sonambulist. Even for the Internet being in it's infancy compared to now, I still managed to be heavily connected to people all over the world through my knack (and often annoying) of gab/schmoozing/blagging.

Somehow I managed to develop a relationship with Dale MacKenzie, who was part of Little Fluffy Records in Northern Ireland. He co-ran Sonambulist with Julian 'Jools' Foddey - a resident at Derby, UK-based night 'Progress'. At some point Dale became less and less involved with the label and dropped off the face of the earth, but not before I managed to help sign a few artists I found on then fledgling mp3.com website. I was originally looking to sign artists for my label that has never quite come to existence. Mp3.com was about 15 years ahead of it's time with it's business model - long before MySpace, Facebook, Bandcamp and all of the streaming websites out there. Sadly, it wasn't profitable and shut down.

Julian and I are still somewhat in contact, although like many others from that time he is no longer involved with music. Instead, he went back to university to become a special effects guru for a London-based design house that works on all sorts of Hollywood movie blockbusters. imdb.com/name/nm2575104 I dare say he's probably doing much better at that.

In the end, this record charted heavily on the then influential 'Balance Record Pool' charts, as well as the UK-based Buzz Chart and had Kiss FM radio plays from Graham Gold and a few others. Apparently it got some rather decent play on a Swiss station based upon the royalty statement from SOCAN that surprisingly showed up at my door several years later - $875 of it! It just goes to show you why it's essential you register with your local performing rights society! It was also short-listed for a Dave Seaman Global Underground mix CD, but I don't remember which one. Years later I found out the Cartouche remix of the track had made a compilation CD with the likes of Tiesto, Dave Clarke, etc.

My 'career' in music never quite took off, but this is the record that kick-started it all and sold roughly 1150 copies give or take a few. I've never quite been able to surpass this release. In today's digital age that would probably make it a number one on Beatport's entire site - which is really sad!