Tuesday Tunes: Andy Norman
David Akermanis | May 11th, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Andy’s love affair with djing and clubs began back during the mid eighties after seeing the previous success of his older brother. At first just a lover of all forms of music his taste soon moved toward Soul and Dance music. You could regularly hear artists like Luther Vandross, Earth Wind & Fire & Loose Ends blearing out of his bedroom at home.
Andy’s journey started while running the legendary independent dance music record store ‘Vinylmania’ in Ealing, West London, during the late 80’s beginning of 90’s. The store became one of most well known and respected in the South East of England. During the late 80’s Andy struck up a friendship with Mark the creator of the now successful dance music compilationlabel Hed Kandi, at a small West London nightclub called Haven Stables also in Ealing.
He started working with label founder Doyle back in 1989; it was around that time they both began running local club nights that later went on to be legendary in West London. The early nights were named, ‘Freestyle’
and ‘Colours’ but the most popular and the now very well known night was ‘Back To Love’. These nights ran for a number of years. During these years Hed Kandi was born and one of the first releases went under the same title as the Back To Love night.
While working together with Doyle on their night, Andy worked as the resident dj at Heaven Stables on a Saturday nights. He enjoyed some great years there and forged a number of other partnerships with a couple of other club promoters and broadened his dj horizons.
Andy worked on the London club circuit under another DJ alias for a number of years, working at a number of top club events; The Crazy Club, Black And White Productions & The Wide Awake Club amongst others,
along side the likes of DJs Carl Cox, Brandon Block, Alex P, Smokin’ Jo & Fat Tony.
Another noticeable period during Andy’s djing years was a long relationship with the Epping Forest Country Club in Chigwell, Essex. Working as a resident for a few years kept Andy very busy and opened many more opportunities to work at some other venues in the East London and Essex area, namely Charlie Chans, Faces amongst others.
Well respected for playing numerous dance music styles over the years he has also played for a number of the UK’s top recording artists as The Pet Shop Boys and Jamiroquai.
At the turn of 2000 Andy went on to team up with Doyle at Hed Kandi after the label’s first year to assist on the label’s growth. In that period he provided significant input into a number of quality album releases for
Hed Kandi and the more soulful sister label, JazzFm records.
More opportunities arise and the chance to venture into radio while working with Hed Kandi was seized upon and the Hed Kandi radio show becomes a firm favourite with a new clubbing generation. He’s known as one of the voices behind the mike presenting radio shows that have enabled the brand to become the global phenomenon that is today.
Currently one of the main resident DJs of ‘Team Kandi’ Andy continues to grace some of the world’s greatest nightclubs across the globe; Australia, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, Russia & North America are just a
few of the many destinations where Andy has brought his dj style along with the sound of Hed Kandi. Still a part of the Kandi radio team, Andy presents a radio shows on Ministry Of Sound Radio.
He based his DJ style upon being somewhat of party-crowd pleaser, “If you play to the ladies, you are all but
guaranteed to have a great night!”.
As for future and some would say long overdue, Andy’s decided it’s about time to make the move into the
recording studio and produce some of his own music.
During the 1990′s, he grew interested in the Detroit, Chicago and New York house movements. He absorbed and digested the different sounds of electronic music throughout that period, helping him to shape,develop and influence his own unique style. Satoshi’s production skills have matured enough today, allowing him the freedom to create, and as a DJ, to mix a variety of dance music styles together such as Techno, House, Click and Acid. In the same way he releases on many well known labels such as Yoshitoshi ,Urban Torque, Force Tracks etc…
Where does a passion come from? How does it get to the point where once you find it, its all you want to do? Well in Macedonia at a tender young age of 11, Dimce found his passion when he was skipping classes to seek out music at his local record store. What he found that he liked best, was house music. At about the same time Miki, being the creative person he is, found his passion creating music while playing around with production software on his home computer in the early ‘90’s.
