Jason Swinscoe

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Jason Swinscoe is a British musician, DJ and producer, born in 1972. He started playing the guitar at the age of six, but never received formal musical training. Instead he studied fine art at the art college in Cardiff, where in 1990 he founded the band Crabladder. In 1994 he became a DJ on a pirate radio station in south London.

Music and breakthrough

Swinscoe then went to work at the London label Ninja Tune. There he fell under the spell of electronic music, abstract hip hop, nu jazz, drum and bass and ambient. In 1999 he founded The Cinematic Orchestra, the group that made him known. The first album Motion appeared that year, followed by Every Day (2002) and Ma Fleur (2007). Ma Fleur contains To Build a Home, with the singer Patrick Watson. The group also made new music for the silent film Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov.

Influence

The name of the group already says a lot: the music sounds like a soundtrack to a film you have to imagine yourself. Swinscoe works like a director, combining samples and electronics with real jazz musicians on double bass, drums, piano and brass. In doing so he was one of the makers who gave jazz a new audience in the late 1990s, through the clubs and DJ culture rather than the jazz club. Swinscoe also lived for a few years in Los Angeles, New York and Paris.

Listening

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Mixtape 5: Jazz Festival^NL Reader