BIOGRAPHY - STUART PATTERSON

Stuart has been at the forefront of London's cutting edge club scene for over a decade. Through DJing, promoting club nights, fanzines, mix compilations or his record label his profile has continually risen since the 90s and he now takes bookings from farthest flung spots in the World from those who also crave proper house music, although as you will read Stuart's musical tastes really are all encompassing.

 

Since the mid-90s those destinations have included Russia, Norway, France, Germany, Thailand, America, Portugal, Turkey, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy, Ibiza and South Africa with many more countries and tours lined up this year.

But it was in 1998 when Stuart launched Saturday-nighter Soulsonic in London's Subterania with Leo Elstob that his career really started to gather pace. The club pushed the idea of 'real house music' at a time in the UK when it was the era of the superclub and all about branding, similar soundtracks, making money and playing it well safe. The music policy at Soulsonic has always has been serious but with an absolute hardcore party spirit.

They must have been doing something right as the club constantly pulled over 500 people every Saturday for 2 years and as well inviting all of the UK's finest house jocks had the likes of DJ Pierre, Dimitri From Paris, Kerri Chandler, Maurice Fulton, Mateo and Matos, Murk and Ron Trent travelling in from abroad.

The club spawned Soulsonic - The Mix CD, compiled and mixed by Stuart and released on Barely Breaking Even Records. Greeted with excellent reviews everywhere, those plaudits included Jockey Slut Compilation Of The Month and 7 magazine's Comp Of The Week, plus numerous editorial articles including ID's DJ Of The Month.

Around the same time of this release Stuart started Deviant every Thursday night at The Social, a basement bar in central London that started at 7pm and finished at midnight, but always seemed to feel like 3am on a Saturday due to the full on atmosphere inside. The night was started so Stuart and guest DJs could 'deviate' from their normal sets. A huge collector of music this meant funk, disco, hip-hop, R 'n' b, soul and many leftfield selections were the order of the day.


The Social is run by the infamous Heavenly Records mob and they liked the vibe so much they invited him to compile and mix the first Social Classics Compilation entitled 'Stuart Patterson Presents Deviant' The mix saw Dubtribe mix shoulders with The Clash and Terry Callier for a truly diverse selection. Once again the album was hugely well received in the press and was again Jockey Slut's and 7's comp of the issue. There where huge editorials plus DJ Of The Month in the highly influential Face mag. Due to heavy DJ commitments Deviant now runs monthly Thursdays at The Social but remains just as popular.

The third compilation that Stuart has released was at the start of 2002, the first in a series called 'DJs Take Control' - not based around any club night just on the DJ's selections of that time. A deep house mix with a slightly techy feel, it still combines that underlying soulful, funk and jazzy flavour that runs through Stuart's sets and once again gained strong reviews across the board.

All this added up to Stuart being invited to play further afield than London [where he has played over 100 venues and all of any note], regularly guesting at the UK's finest nights including Pressure at The Arches in Glasgow, Basics in Leeds, The Bomb in Nottingham, Bugged Out in Manchester, Chibuku in Liverpool and virtually any town in England which has a decent nightclub in.

His global DJing jaunts have come partly from his exposure in the press, plus through Worldwide sales of his record label Transfusion records. The label was launched in 1995 to try and create a house label that took risks and presented a slightly 'off- centre' version of house. Of the 32 releases to date artists like Phil Asher [Restless Soul], Maurice Fulton and Freil who had one of their tracks licensed by Masters at Work's Little' Louie Vega. Eight of the tracks where produced by Stuart himself and time allowing he hopes to get back in the studio really soon.

At the time of writing Stuart is holding down four residencies - monthly Thursdays at The Social, fortnightly Fridays at Cargo, London [Barrio], fortnightly Sundays at The Notting Hill Arts Club [Sundaysonic] and a monthly Friday in Barcelona at The City Hall with Murray Richardson. He also presents a two hour mix on the World's largest internet radio station Groovetech monthly on Thursdays [www.groovetech.com].

Stuart is also part of collective Faith who are responsible for dance music's finest fanzine Faith and some of the best and most loyally attended parties London has seen for many a year. In the immediate future Stuart is concentrating on his residencies and regular guest spots while looking to undertake some tours in winter '03 to some new [ and warm!] parts of the clubbing world.