Funk & Soul After Par­ty with Ash­ley Beedle

ASH­LEYBEE­DLE a.k.a

• Black Sci­ence Orches­tra • X‑Press 2 • Bal­lis­tic Broth­ers • North Street Crew • Afrikanz on Marz •

Ref­er­enced in Daft Punk’s song as one of the ​‘Teach­ers’, Ash­ley Bee­dle first began DJing dur­ing the 1980s and made a name for him­self dur­ing the hey­day of Acid House. In the ear­ly 1990s, he teamed up with Rob Mel­lo and John Howard to form the first incar­na­tion of the Black Sci­ence Orches­tra, signed to the leg­endary dance label, Junior Boys Own. After releas­ing the sem­i­nal club clas­sic ​‘Where Were You?’, BSO’s pro­duc­tion unit mor­phed and evolved with Uschi Classen and Marc Wood­ford and tracks like ​‘Strong’ and ​‘Philadel­phia’ were released as well as the 1994 debut album ​‘Wal­ter’s Room’ and deep house clas­sic ​‘New Jer­sey Deep’. From there, his pro­duc­tion skills went from strength to strength.

While work­ing with the Black Sci­ence Orches­tra, Ash­ley start­ed anoth­er project known as The Bal­lis­tic Broth­ers with Dave Hill, Uschi Classen, Rocky & Diesel spawn­ing the ​‘Bal­lis­tic Broth­ers vs The Eccen­tric Afros’ Pt 1& 2EP plus ​‘Black­er’ (a favourite of Prince’s) and the 1995LP, ​‘Lon­don Hooli­gan Soul’. In 1997, the Bal­lis­tic Broth­ers released their sec­ond album, ​‘Rude Sys­tem’ while at the same time, Ash­ley was work­ing on a mul­ti­tude of projects includ­ing Black Jazz Chron­i­cles, Roots Revolutions

and Ris­ing Sunz with Uschi Classen and Phil Ash­er. Run­ning par­al­lel with the Bal­lis­tic Broth­ers, Ash­ley was a found­ing mem­ber of the group X‑Press 2, with fel­low DJs Rocky and Diesel per­form­ing on 6 decks and 3 CDJ play­ers. They scored glob­al dance chart action through the 90’s and 00’s with tracks

such as ​‘Muzik Xpress’, ​‘Say What’ and ​‘Lon­don Xpress’ and chart­ed at #2 in the UK Top 40 with their glob­al hit ​‘Lazy’, their col­lab­o­ra­tion with Talk­ing Heads’ David Byrne which earned Ash­ley an Ivor Nov­el­lo award. X‑Press 2 also released two albums, ​‘Muzik­isum’ and ​‘Makeshift Feelgood’.

From the late 90’s onwards, Ash­ley con­tin­ued to remix and pro­duce, releas­ing the mile­stone ​‘Grass Roots’ com­pi­la­tion in 1999 and between 2001 – 2003, Ben­t’s ​‘Always’ + ​‘Mag­ic Love’ and The Streets ​‘Weak Become Heroes’ all received the Bee­dle remix treat­ment. Ashley’s remix of Elton John’s ​‘Are You Ready For Love’ cat­a­pult­ed the song to No.1 in the UK Sin­gles Chart. In 2005, Bee­dle remixed Bob Mar­ley’s ​“Get Up, Stand Up” with Dami­an ​“Junior Gong” Mar­ley’s ​“Wel­come to Jam­rock” to cre­ate the

mash-up ​‘Stand Up Jam­rock (Ash­ley Bee­dle Remix)’ which the Mar­ley fam­i­ly loved so much they end­ed up includ­ing it on the Bob Mar­ley com­pi­la­tion album ​‘Africa Unite: The Sin­gles Col­lec­tion’. The track went on to chart at #1 on the Jamaican Nation­al Charts.

Since 2015, Ash­ley has been work­ing as part of the ​‘North Street’ remix/​production col­lec­tive with North Street West own­er and musi­cal genius, Dar­ren Mor­ris and Ram­rock Records/F*CLR boss, Jo Wal­lace as well as solo remix­es. In 2017, Ashley’s remix­es of Stan Serkin’s ​‘Save Me’ and Glenn Davis’ ​‘Body & Soul’ remind­ed the inter­na­tion­al dance music com­mu­ni­ty that he is a force majeure in the world of

remix­ing and pro­duc­tion and his remix of Mama’s ​‘Unmask Me’ was vot­ed the No.2 best sin­gle of 2017 by DJ His­to­ry and became the late, great Andrew Weatherall’s

theme tune.

Despite every­thing that 2020 has tried to throw at him, Ash­ley has already fin­ished a pletho­ra of projects

includ­ing a Bent remix, two Groove Arma­da remix­es (release date mid 2021), Smooth + Tur­rell remix­es, Lady Black­bird remix (vot­ed no.1 remix of 2020 by DJ His­to­ry) and the Glenn Davis ​‘Spe­cial’ remix. As well as host­ing his incred­i­bly pop­u­lar ​‘Heavy Dis­co Spec­tac­u­lar’ radio show on World­wide FM, Ash­ley has been work­ing on his solo ​“Defy­ing Foes” LP, plus ​“The House of Ash­ley”, an EP aimed square­ly at the (vir­tu­al) dance­floors, the Afrikanz on Marz con­cept album and the reunion of the leg­endary Black Sci­ence Orches­tra. X‑Press 2’s anthem ​‘Lazy’ ft David Byrne is fea­tured in the Spike Lee direct­ed movie ​‘Amer­i­can Utopia’