TuneAttic: find music, know music
TuneAttic: find music, know music
TuneAttic: find music, know music
TuneAttic: find music, know music
TuneAttic: find music, know music
TuneAttic: find music, know music
John '00' Fleming John '00' Fleming is a pioneering and hugely influential British trance DJ and producer. Fleming was one of the first wave of British dance music DJs until cancer but his career on hold.  He returned as a champion of the trance underground and has reinvented himself variously as a Hard Trance, Progressive Trance and Psy-Trance artist, always shying away from the commercial mainstream. He runs his own record label JOOF.
John '00' Fleming scales of success
John '00' Fleming timeline

 

'Lost In Emotion'
React 1999)
'Reactivate 14'
(React 1999)
Residency @
Sunny Side Up

Early Years: 1998 to 2006

John ‘00’ Fleming’s DJing career started out right at the outset of the of the dance music era.  Fleming first landed a residency at a local Worthing night club in the eighties and went onto DJ alongside visiting DJs such as Carl Cox, Fabio and Grooverider at the club's 'Interdance' night. Fleming also DJed in Ibiza as early as 1987 and played at many of the seminal acid house events of the late eighties, including Raindance and Fantazia.

But in 1990, just as his career was beginning to build Fleming was diagnosed with cancer, aged 20.  He spent two years in hospital and undergoing chemotherapy, and then moved to Florida on the US west coast to convalesce.  Whilst in Florida Fleming picked up DJing again and played regularly at the Cameo Theater in Miami and various gigs along the east coast.  A year later Fleming returned to the UK to restart his European DJ career.
Fleming’s return coincided with the start of dance music’s ‘golden era’.  But while fellow pioneers such as Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling, Sasha and John Digweed were rapidly acquiring near-super star status, Fleming effectively had to start from the bottom on the pack again, his early years’ experience apparently counting for little following his illness-induced sabbatical.

But Fleming turned his circumstances into an asset.  He rebuilt his career on London’s underground fledgling hard trance scene with residencies at clubs such as Sunnyside Up and Trinity.  As a result Fleming quickly built a reputation and fan respect as a ‘clubbers’ DJ’, someone who lived and breathed undergound dance music. 

Fleming’s Sunnyside Up residency culminated in the mix compilation ‘Sunnyside Up: Chapter 1’ (Passion Music 1999) mixed with fellow Sunnyside resident and hard trance pioneer Darren Pearce.  Fleming’s first mix album had come a year before though with issue number 13 in the seminal Reactivate series: ‘Reactivate 13’ (React 1998).  The following year he went on to mix ‘Reactivate 14’ (React 1999).  From this point on Fleming’s reputation was established and ever since he has released at least one mix compilation a year.

Though Fleming’s DJ career was on the up, his production career had been less high profile.  He had started producing in 1998 but his breakthrough release came with ‘Lost In Emotion’ (React 1999).  ‘Lost In Emotion’ showed a lot of the characteristics of his DJ sets, mixing fast paced hard trance drums and bass with an anthemic and uplifting, but driving arpeggiated lead line.

By 2001, as the underground hard trance scene began to go more mainstream and blur into the burgeoning hard house movement, Fleming transformed his musical style, abandoning fast paced uplifting melodies in favour of deeper, more percussive progressive trance sounds.  Fleming’s 2000 BBC Radio 1 Essential mix sees him making a statement of intent with his new sound and in doing so creates a high quality tour-de-force in progressive trance.  Whilst some DJs who had abandoned mainstream trance in favour of progressive pursued excessively percussive anti-trance sounds, Fleming’s new sound was still clearly trance but of a more complex, subtle and sophisticated flavour. Fleming followed up his Essential Mix with a similarly genre defining compilation mix ‘Progressive Euphoria’ (Telstar TV 2001).

Fleming’s progressive switch wasn’t a bolt out of the blue.  Increasingly his remixes had stood apart from the pack, notable for their intricate soundscapes and brooding arrangements.   Even before the progressive backlash had kicked in, Fleming had helped build the foundations for a more intelligent but melody-grounded form of progressive trance that would ultimately pass the baton onto 21st century progressive trance. 

In 1999 Fleming set up his own record label JOOF which focused on melodic progressive trance and continues to be successful to this day.  JOOF was one of the first dance labels to embrace digital downloads.

Fleming continued to DJ, remix and produce regularly, including the single ‘Arizona’ (Nebula 2002).

'Oxygene'
(Joof Recordings 2009)
'Heaven & Hell' (Joof
Recordings 2009)
Sunburn, Goa,
India 2009

Later Years: 2007 to present

During the mid-nineties Fleming’s career began to meander but during this time he reinvented his sound once again, this time edging from the pacier end of progressive trance to Psy-Trance, which itself had emerged out of Goa Trance.  It was Fleming’s embracing of Psy-Trance that served as the platform for a Renaissance in his career, driven in part by the successful compilation ‘Psy-Trance Euphoria’ (Ministry Of Sound 2008) and its follow-up the following year.

Just as Fleming’s progressive period hadn’t come out of nowhere, Fleming’s adoption of Psy-Trance was actually a return to his musical roots, with early Goa Trance artists such as Juno Reactor and Astral Projection being some of Fleming’s formative trance influences.

The other key strand of Fleming’s refound success was his long term collaboration project 00.db with Ricky Smith of The Digital Blonde.  (The name 00.db refers to ‘00’ and Digital Blonde).  Fleming had first featured one of The Digital Blonde’s remixes on ‘Reactivate 14’ (React 1999) and the two first produced together in 2001.

00.db’s breakthrough, and somewhat unexpected, mainstream success came in 2009 with their debut studio album ‘Heaven & Hell’ (Joof Recordings 2009).  The album broke into the national UK Top 40, no mean feat for a Psy-Trance and Ambient album.  The same year the duo released their remake of Jean Michelle Jarre’s ‘Oxygene’ (Joof Recordings 2009), a project they had spent close to a year working on together.  In 2010 they released the follow up 00.db album ‘Angels & Demons’ (Joof Recordings 2010).

Despite a lower profile than some top-tier DJs, John ‘00’ Fleming is nonetheless one of the key figures in the history of trance music.  If his career had not been interrupted by cancer he would probably have followed a similar career trajectory as Paul Oakenfold.  But his enforced sabbatical has helped define Fleming’s career as a champion of trance music’s underground, a crucial counterweight to the mainstream.

John ‘00’ Fleming’s first DJ gig was when his school headmaster asked him to DJ at a school under-18’s night.