Dirty Inc's adventures in electro - we look back at their first yearThursday 9th October 2008 2008 has been a great year for Jason Hales and Jon Merrit, also known as Dirty Inc. The electro producers from Bournemouth have secured residencies with Slinky and Frenzy, as well as having top-selling tracks on the large download sites. It's their first birthday as a DJ'ing duo in November, and on the same night it's also Frenzy's 6th birthday... so what better time to look back at Dirty Inc's last year?
The story starts in November 2007 when Jon Merritt was asked to fill a slot at Frenzy in the second room. The second room concept was originally planned to be hard music, but Dirty Inc were destined to change that approach. That night in November, the first Dirty Inc electro set was played... the same night a residency with Frenzy was offered, and so the lads were on their way. Within the space of two months word had spread throughout the south coast and indeed further afield. Even Amo from the Tidy Boys had made special mention of Dirty Inc's demo CD, which helped the lads secure the backroom residency for Slinky's return to the Opera House in January 2008. The backroom was conceived as Yakuji Love, and Dirty Inc were the homegrown talent that would set the soundtrack for each event.
Radio interviews and live mixes were to follow on Fire107.6FM, and in March, Dirty Inc held their own competition with Slinky to find supporting electro talent. The eventual winner who would go on to line-up on the Opera House gigs was a familar Bournemouth DJ in Luke Dubyah. During April Dirty Inc's year went up yet another notch as their remix of 'New Jack Heights' on Nitrous Records reached the number one spot on DJDownload.com - and promptly stayed their for an unprecedented 3 weeks. Moving into May, Dirty Inc played various gigs around the UK and Bournemouth, including a very successful night for SubPop at Dusk Till Dawn nightclub - billed as "computer music for big kids" - which is what Dirty Inc are all about.
Dirty Inc's biggest gigs to date took place over the summer as they were on line-ups with the one and only Paul Van Dyk, and also were booked to fly all the way to Slovenia. It was in Slovenia that they played at the massive Extreme Dream open air festival of which video footage can be seen below: As with most ambitious producers and DJs, it was only a matter of time before the guys needed control over their own prolific output and so in August the Dirty Traxx record label was born. Jon and Jason have dubbed Dirty Trax as the home of top quality, filthy electro house music. Listening to their music, who's to disagree. Find out more about Dirty Trax on the website at www.dirtytrax.co.uk. Come September and October the boys were still making waves in the electro scene with guest appearances for Planet Slinky in Bognor Regis and on the university circuit. The rest of 2008 still has some surprises in store for the fans of Dirty Inc.
We hope you can join their first birthday celebrations at Frenzy on November the 7th where they'll be joined by their own hand-picked electro support acts including Luke Dubyah, Ryan Williams, and Mark Hawkins in the second room. It's fair to say that for Dirty Inc the fun is only just beginning... they're destined for big things. Just don't let them make a fry up. Photos courtesy of the very talented Charlie Raven. |
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