Dom & Roland

Dom [and Roland] always had the music in his bones with his parents being opera singers and having been taught both piano and trombone at school. Growing up in London with the early rave scene, he soon got into production when a friend told him that all he needed was a sampler and a computer to get going. With the current crop of bedroom producers using Akai s1000 samplers, Dom, wanting to be different, went out and purchased a Roland S760 and hence the name was born.



Dom started releasing records through No-U-Turn records in 1994, a small independent label that at the time was gaining a large amount of respect from the then famous radio DJs of the day including the now highly credited Grooverider, who helped him out immensely at this time providing almost blanket coverage of Doms music on his shows. On the strength of this early success and regular airplay, Dom persuaded his bank manager to lend him enough money to upgrade his home studio to professional standards.

Shortly afterwards in 1996 he was discovered by Moving Shadow Recordings and signed a three album deal with them, his reputation further cemented when Dom was chosen to collaborate on their 100th release, Distorted Dreams (SH100) along with Rob Playford, and Goldie.



Doms success continued to grow as did the drum and bass scene, which was now becoming a global affair. He was now DJing himself all over the world on a regular basis , had released records on most of the major drum and bass labels , and was frequently asked to do remixes of dance and rock tracks , many that he would turn down on the grounds of not liking the originals ! He did accept a few and when he was asked by electronic pioneers Art of Noize to choose a track from their back catalogue, he couldnt say no.



When he wasnt travelling to distant places, Dom now found himself engineering and producing tracks for other Drum & Bass DJs/Artists who did not yet know how to use studio equipment themselves. During this time Dom mixed and produced various Drum & Bass classics at his home studio including Mutant Revisited and Sonar with DJ Trace, and others with Fierce and Edrush,including the Edrush Metalheads EP,as well as making various tracks with Optical (already an accomplished engineer himself) before he started Virus . It was in fact Dom that first introduced the Virus boys to one another . Moreover it was for this first collaboration with Trace, that Dom created the now legendary Tramen break - a break that has been sampled and used in Drum & Bass tracks by other artists ever since. The late John Peel was also a great fan of Doms work and asked on a couple of occasions to record with him, although unfortunately due to their separate busy schedules this dream was never realised.



Autumn 1998 saw the long awaited release of Doms first album, Industry - to unanimous public and critical acclaim. This album was so popular on its first two weeks of release that it went in at No.3 on the Music Week Independent Album Chart, with only Tribe Called Quest and Lauren Hill beating it to the top slot. Several BBC documentaries also used sections of this album for their theme music including Merseyside blues, a popular police reality series in 1999.



In 2001 Dom, alongside Derrick May and Surgeon, were commissioned to each write five exclusive pieces of music for Midnight club one of the first games to be released on the Playstation 2, these tracks were also subsequently released on Moving Shadow including the mighty Imagination a seminal track Dom will always be remembered for, and that has been remixed countless times since. Dom has continued to write music occasionally for Rockstar and other games companies.



He continues to DJ all over the world and does annual tours to the USA and Asia as well as playing throughout Europe nearly every weekend. His third (and quite possibly best) album Chronology came out in May 2004 to yet more critical acclaim. He featured quite heavily in the music press around this time including a five-page studio feature in Future music in their November issue.



In late 2005 Dom started his own record label Dom and Roland Productions to release collaborations between himself and the crème de la crème of drum and bass artists. Now on the third release the label is going very well with a lot more releases already planned for 2006.



Dom remains to this day at the forefront of music technology and has always found himself happiest in the studio with his equipment. He is proud to have never sold out to produce the more pop-orientated coffee table drum and bass, and remains at the pinnacle of the underground scene. He is highly respected as a result, even outside the drum and bass circle. He also now helps music software/hardware companies like Native Instruments, Focusrite, and others, with testing and ideas for new and exciting innovative products in his spare time.