Biografia
London born Justin Berkmann turned fulltime DJ in New York in 1987. After an eighteen month spell, training in the Art of Djing with the Masters of House, in the hallowed clubs of 1980's Manhattan, he returned home and founded the club Ministry of Sound where he was Resident DJ & Artistic Director from its inauguration in 1991 until late in 1994. Justin's style these days is the electronic side of dub house, which he ignorantly describes as Electronica. For more blah please read on.....
Raised in a 1960's house where his Tyrolean father's latent wartime tendencies manifested themselves in a total ban on any modern music, combined with having an Uncle as famous and disturbed as Anton Bruckner, insured Justin's complete training in the classics. But secretly he listened to Punk. During his lengthy stay at a school in Highgate, Justin followed bands around the country including The Damned, Crass and the pre-Malcolm MacLaren Adam & the Ants. Aged 13 and barely playing a bass guitar, he formed a Punk band called Underage with Adrian Woolfson and Zak Starkey (who had already inherited Keith Moon's final drum kit), also using the same hallowed basement studio to practice as North London Raiders a.k.a. Madness, gigging all round London and eventually disbanding when they were all no longer under age.
After school he moved to France doing a complete apprenticeship in the Wine Industry (1981-1985), making, bottling, selling, shipping and of course drowning in fine wines but at the same time, starved of any decent tunes. So frustrated to distraction, Justin became one of these annoying young men with his car stereo turned up too loud.
Moving to New York City in 1986 sorted his life out, when he discovered Paradise Garage and his mentor Larry Levan. There he found his true calling, to play House music in clubs as loud as possible. Living and working illegally as a bar tender in New York for the next 2 years, Justin had access to the weekly radio shows by the House Dons: Tony Humphries on WKRS and Merlin Bobb and Timmy Regisford on WBLS and with Larry and his students manipulating the texture of the sound on the perfect RLA system every week at the Garage. He started to buy his music from Manny at Vinyl Mania and got himself a residency Djing at A.D., an all-night lesbian danceclub on West 8th Street. Soon he had taken over the night, opening it up to Garage core members and renamed it The Closet. He then formed a DJ group called Sensible House, with DJs Jimmy Breslaw (.uk) Terry Bristol (.us) Junior McLeod (.us) and Matthias Heilbronn (.de), which played around the house and club party circuits eventually becoming residents with Abby Mota's Hedonism in various locations such as the infamous Milk Bar and eventually they took over the console at Nell's on Tuesday nights. Justin also went on to become Resident at Home at Rutherford House (14th&2nd) and Brutal at The World (1st&1st) playing Acid House alongside the likes of HipHop giants Afrika Bambaataa, Spoonie Gee and co-Resident the Duke of Denmark.
Soon after the Paradise Garage had finally closed its doors in September 1987, Justin returned home to London and started to DJ at the Summer of Love Acid House raves, like the inaugural Hedonism 2, the Tony Colston-Hayter's epic megaraves Back to the Future and Roger Goodman's Apocalypse Now; soon after creating a Friday night mixed S/G night Heaven Garage but always with the intention of building a Paradise Garage type club in London. That happened after he met Ray Maudesley and consequently the old Etonian Entrepreneurs, James Palumbo and Humphrey Waterhouse. After two years of total all out non-stop work, Ministry of Sound opened its doors in September of 1991. Being Artistic Director, Justin was responsible for the club's name, that famous logo*, the site location, the design concept, and found the virtually non-existent sound company Richard Long & Assoc. in New York. Austen Derek (at that time Dakota inc.) installed one of his legendary RLA designed 6 stack sound systems with a sound so clear and powerful that it created transparent sound with peaks around 130dB. With the pull of such an important and powerful sound system, Justin was able to tempt out of retirement legends like Larry Levan and Francois Kevorkian, pioneering the importing of foreign DJs on a weekly basis and was himself resident DJ. He was fortunate enough to work alongside most of the greats, touring the entire UK & Eire for over a year with co-residents Tony Humphries, CJ Mackintosh and occasionally the (at that time) up and coming Sasha. Larry Levan missed his first 2001 gig by a week and then overstayed his visit by three months, spending time with Justin adjusting the sound system and teaching his invaluable knowledge on the texture of sound. Justin also pioneered the Sessions CDs with Jim Masters, sharing A&R duties on the first volume for Tony Humphries. Ministry of Sound Part One (1991-1995) was probably one of the finest clubs of all time, good enough to create the laurels upon which it still sits today. After too much stress from running the biggest monster in clubbing, Waterhouse left to become a Balearic sheep herder, and so eventually Justin's own position became untenable, and in late 1994 was eliminated in a bloodless coup. He rejoined for a short period in 1998 during the booking period of Justin James, putting on the World Cup party series involving a very entertaining football match between English and Italian DJs. Justin played for under-strength Italy. England won 9-7, mainly because they had and used 20 substitutes.
Since then, Justin has been working independently, traveling the globe, going already to 25 countries in 5 continents, playing his rather intense style of House to established and virgin markets alike. His weird and wonderful experiences like most DJs are too many to mention here, but one extra special event was the honor of playing the e-Werk float at the, until then, exclusively-Techno Berlin Love Parade in 1996, where Justin ended up playing the entire route, covering over a million people in a 5 hour set and introducing them all to the sound of House music.
Outside clubs, Justin has made over 20 recordings, including two remixes, one for Arista (with Bert Bevans) and Milk & Sugar (with Torsten Stenzil & Dieter Sin Plomo); two co-productions, 'Addictions' with Peter Pritchard on Media UK & 'Fire' with Pufo on Plastic Fantastic, with another one on very limited (250 copies) edition white label, Coupe d'Etat 'How come you gone?' with Marino Cicero, a legal nightmare of a track, using a two and a half minute sample of Janis Joplin, that became a cult record for some legendary DJs like Frankie Knuckles and Danny Tenaglia!
Apart from that lunacy, he also created a music based philosophy based on the blending of various eastern & western philosophies mixed with House music and called it Qaraj' and set up a web site that attracted over a thousand followers in its first month. And that was in 1997! Qaraj' had been his own personal philosophy based on concepts of Taoism with the structure of Islam but deifying House music and so he declared himself the Hujja, and therefore in charge. The site was swiftly removed before offending anyone capable of declaring a Fatwah. Then in 2002, he set up a DJ agency with Michele Baldini and used the Qaraj' name, which Justin then left in 2004. Justin also wrote a column called Qaraj' Qorner for the Loaded magazine web site Uploaded (1998-2000) until the magazine was ruined when they changed ownership.
More recently Justin has assisted in the opening of the new Ministry of Sound in Singapore, including the installation of the main sound system. Today he is based in Naples, Italy.
(* note: the Original Ministry of Sound logo was designed to the instructions of Justin by Mark Woodhouse of Third Planet Ltd.)
|
|
|
