Gotham City Radio-Becka & John Selway-Mar.4

Sat. March 4th-Gotham City Radio With Becka & John Selway


Once again, DJ Becka and techno label Gotham Grooves of NYC are back to bring you ‘Gotham City Radio’ on Livesets.com.

Airing every Saturday, from 12:00pm – 3:00pm EST(eastern standard time) 18:00 – 21:00 CET(central europan time). Alongside Becka's weekly tune selections, we will be featuring international and local guest dj's and performances for your enjoyment. We hope to help kick start your day or evening, depending on where you’re tuning in from. Just go to www.livesets.com and follow the links at the top right.

This week, John Selway will be stopping by the studio in between tour dates to play a special set on our show…..

From classical beginnings to a present that defines the impending, John Selway moves people with electronic music, teetering them just at the edge of now. While transcending genre, instrument, and performance media, he has maintained force, inspiration, and a vanguard position in electronic music.
John budded in ultra musical surroundings. Both parents attended Julliard and were highly accomplished vocalists and pianists who centered their careers on teaching music once John was born. His classical education started with violin at age 4, and piano at 5, the former of which he studied intensely for the next 14 years. At age 11, John met a Moog Modular synthesizer covering the entire wall while accompanying his parents on a teaching workshop. Several entranced hours later, John left knowing that his musical future was in synthesis. His parents recognized the interest in non-classical sounds and bought John his first real synthesizer, the Juno 106, at age 12. Soon after, John supported his parents home multi-track recording initiative and become their studio engineer.
Of course, when not working with his parents, John was quickly learning modern production techniques and composing his own music, emulating the sounds he heard on the hometown Washington DC airwaves. Early inspiration came from breakdance and electro hip hop sounds and later New Order, Skinny Puppy, and the Cocteau Twins. John also took interest in punk and the local DC hardcore and ska scenes which eventually led to a highly successful band, I-Spy, while in high school.
Almost overnight in 1988, acid house entered the picture and dramatically realigned John’s musical interests. House and techno took over and single-mindedly he pursued the sounds, rhythm, and style of this emerging music. Just a few months later John discovered Roland’s TB-303, TR-606, and TR-909 collecting dust on the local music store’s back room shelves. By 1990, with the technology in hand, the discovery of Warp Records, Detroit techno, and Chicago acid house, as well as regular record buying, Selway’s musical fate was sealed and his classical period officially over.
With friend Carlos Vasquez, Selway started one of his first techno projects dubbed Chaotic Sound Matrix playing live at one of the first-ever Washington DC raves. By 19, way ahead of his freshman class at SUNY Purchase starting a music composition and studio engineering major, Selway had already released his first house record co-written with Deep Dish’s Ali Shirazinia and Sharam Tayebi under the name Moods. At SUNY Purchase Selway met Oliver Chesler (a.k.a. The Horrorist) and together they attended the Futureshock parties at New York’s infamous Limelight. Under a year later, the two headlined the same night playing live techno as Disintegrator. Under various monikers Selway and Chesler produced hard techno records first on Direct Drive and later Industrial Strength Records. With Industrial Strength’s worldwide distribution artists like Sven Väth and Riche Hawtin took notice and Selway’s status in the scene began to build quickly.
Already the multi producer life had begun. Concurrently while at SUNY Purchase, Selway was producing deep house with Deep Dish, hard techno with Oliver Chesler, trance with Brian “BT” Transeau and Ali Shirazinia under the name Prana, and even a downtempo project with Satellite Records co-founder Scott Richmond named P.R.L. The P.R.L. collaboration spawned a track “Tarenah” which was licensed to the massively successful first Café Del Mar compilation. By 1994, as the Industrial Strength releases gained notoriety, Selway was invited to join Carl Cox in the studio, and by the end of that year he already totaled 18 releases on various labels including Plus 8 and Tribal US/UK. In 1995 after 3 years and progressively less and less time for school work, Selway left SUNY Purchase to pursue his music career full time.
In 1995, wanting to expand beyond typical “four to the floor” dance music, Selway started Serotonin Records with Prototype 909’s Jason Szostek centered around what Jason called “syncopated electronic funk with a futuristic, forward-thinking spirit.” Together the duo sweated blood and tears until Serotonin was spearheading the Electro revival, before Gigolo, before Electroclash (Serotonin was the first label to release Fisherspooner). As the live electro act Synapse, Selway and Szostek toured Europe even opening the Waterclub in Moscow in 1996. Once the Electro revival gained momentum, cross pollination and cooperation between Serotonin, Detroit’s Le Car and Ersatz Audio, and Munich’s Gigolo and Disko B awarded Selway global exposure and an audience outside of dance floor house and techno. Selway also started the CSM sub label for deep and minimal sounds which connected him to people like Heiko Laux of Kanzleramt Records as well as Zip and Sammy Dee of Perlon. John and Jason leveraged their exposure to compile and release one of the first locked groove loop compilations with 70 loops from 50 different artists including everyone from DJ Hell to DJ Sluggo.
Via Serotonin, Selway met NYC techno compatriot Abe Duque and joined the live ambient techno super group Rancho Relaxo All Stars, playing events stateside and touring western Europe. Through Abe, John hooked up with Disko B bookings and started to build his European reputation as a techno DJ bolstered by releases as Semblance Factor on State of Mind Records and Abe’s Tension label, which garnered excellent reviews in Musik, Jockey Slut, and DJ Magazine. Later, both Selway and Duque released work on Rapture Records as well as sharing A&R duties for the Undercover subsidiary label.
In 1998, Selway began working with Swedish DJ/producer Christian Smith. The prolific partnership spawned tracks and remixes for labels like Rotation, Primate, and Smith’s own Tronic. The duo released the Metropolitan EP on Intec containing the cross genre dance floor anthem “Move” which bestowed them international acclaim and licensing to countless dance music compilations. Following the success of “Move” came global DJ touring and widespread demand for John’s production and remix work. John’s ties with Sven Väth were solidified with the Cocoon nights at NYC’s legendary club Twilo while Cocoon Booking now empowered global touring to audiences in the thousands. Smith & Selway continue to produce and remix tracks on labels like Hooj Coons, Drum Code, and Underwater, now 20 releases and counting.
2001, after 10 years of music production, Selway released his first full length artist album, “Edge of Now”, domestically on Ultra and overseas on Feis encompassing most of his musical styles: electro, techno, house, even a touch of trance. With Ultra’s help, “Edge of Now” helps Selway expand his domestic notoriety beyond just that of techno DJ/producer to an iconoclast of electronic music defying classification. Closely following, 2002 saw the first ever Selway mix CD “Lightwave” on the prestigious Journeys by a DJ series showing the deeper side of techno, while in 2003 Selway released a second mix CD for DJSets.com modeled closer to his live DJ sets: sharp, clean, and ruthless.
Currently, momentum continues to build. To provide an outlet for his continued interest in 80’s electro and italo-disco, Selway started Memory Boy Records where he develops artists in that retro and future-retro style. Together, Smith & Selway grow to superstar status and hone their crossover techno / house / progressive sound. Demand for production and remix work comes from every corner of the dance music industry. Collaborating with various other artists, Selway continues to indulge his varied musical interests producing everything from hard techno to italo disco. At 31, after over a decade and almost 100 production credits, John Selway is just getting started.


Tune in, sit back, relax, and enjoy the sounds from Gotham City…….

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