A Chat with Jason Midro

As a young lad, Jason’s musical career and even genre preference was formed by training in classical music. He credits his understanding of each instruments contribution and place in an orchestra to a lot of his success in the production arena, combining sounds with an understanding of the role each has to play. He to this day relies on classical grounding when it comes to creating a modern symphony with digital media and synthesised sounds. Of course the evolution of software making production easier, and cheaper, means the possibilities of music composition is ‘only restricted by our imaginations’.

Having heard the progressional change amongst many genres, Jason admits that he still ‘fucking loves psy trance’, where it began and the ‘doofy, minimal’ sound it is today. He has toyed with Drum n Bass, HardStyle, and House, always partial to phat rolling bass lines. ‘House is tricky’, he says. In the beginning it was very Detroit Techno based, very underground, and has moved to include the really classy vocal house that over time has connected with the commercial world. The reason being, it’s just so good! Jason, when he does dabble in playing house to crowds, adds a real trance element to it. Once again the classical intuition takes hold, with trance music enabling the melodic nature and ‘full spectrum of emotions’ so prominent in classical music.

 No doubt we’ll be privy to an awesome act here in Darwin, as Jason admits that he loves the joint and has always entertained a responsive and cool crowd. Be wary though, he’ll be playing ‘pretty fucking hard!’ Probably because its simply what he loves, or because he feels he has to outdo Melbourne act DJ Lisa who plays before him, ‘I’m going to get on and play even harder because you have to upstage the girls don’t ya’ (laughs). Keep an ear out for track of his own, The Australia Track, a massive hit and crowd pleaser in Melbourne and internationally, and probably a little patriotic on good ol’ Aussie Day. He ‘loves to play his own shit’ (don’t we all!) but confesses he can’t be too self indulgent cause there’s a lot of good music out there. Any tracks he plays however would have been carefully chosen from the hundreds he managed to smuggle onboard the aircraft to avoid weight limits, thankfully Darwin weather only permits limited clothing anyway!

His advice to young DJ’s? It’s more than downloading a few tunes and having lots of CD’s. It’s about passion. Spend all your wage on records, learn and develop technically, but more importantly to make it big, you’ve got to have charisma and pull of the crowd.

Look out for Jason’s collaborative doco (it’ll be finished some day soon!) taking you back into the music scene many years ago, showcasing the foundation of club culture today. ‘The rave scene in Melbourne was fucking unreal, and unless you were there, I’m sorry, you have no idea’.

Jason admits openly that some gigs can be a touch overwhelming. As you can imagine, playing to crowds upwards of 30 000 at Summadayze festivals and the like, with massive, MASSIVE sound coming from that tiny, little needle, the pressure is certainly on. 'Bump that needle, scratch that record and your fucking with peoples heads in a big way!'

How does he keep his cool?? ‘I say to myself “Alright Jase, have a look out there, have a look at what your doing. This is your dream and your living it”. I pinch myself and make myself capture that time and remember the moment. Fucking hell… Wow.’