Jason UFO Bio.

Jason Holloway (DJ UFO) was born in Southampton, UK in 1971. A completely self taught musician and record producer, he started playing keyboards at the age of nine.

His early influences include The Police, Kraftwerk and in particular Gary Numans’ 1979 album “The Pleasure Principle”, and 1980 album “Telekon”.

By age 11 he developed an interest in drumming and attended drum lessons for a few months.

In 1982, with the release of Malcolm McLaren & The World Famous Supreme Teams’ “Buffalo Girls”, he became interested in the (new at the time) Hip Hop movement and began making rudimentary remixes of tracks selected from the Streetsounds “Electro” series of albums using a home stereo.

By 1984 he began djing in his local youth club playing Hip Hop, Electro and club music which lasted until 1987.

In that year he made contact with a new council funded youth project called “Beyond Graffiti”. Headed by youth worker Mike Banks. It gave young people the opportunity to explore graffiti art and music. With quite a substantial budget, Jason was approached by Mike Banks to consult on what music equipment to purchase for the project. He stayed involved in Beyond Graffiti until the project ended 5 years later. During this time Jason began teaching himself to play guitar.

He formed a band in which he played drums and performed covers of Guns n Roses, Pink Floyd and Nirvana songs. The band split within a few months and he decided to make a complete change of direction into dance/rave music. Along with writing partner at the time, Chris Rossi, he learned the basics of synthesis and sequencing using a Roland D-50 and a Commodore Amiga A500 to make early hardcore (circa 1990).

In 1991 Jason and Chris recorded their first vinyl release entitled “Nocturnal Grooves E.P. A four track release on the “Wax Factory” imprint under the artist name “Insomnia”. In 1992, again under the name “Insomnia” they recorded a release entitled “Raise The Roof”, on Theory Records and another entitled “Down To Earth on C.S.I. Records.

In 1993 Jason made contact with local DJ, record shop and studio owner Stuart Devlin (Stu J) and managed to convince him to let him use his studio as he didn’t own one or even know how to operate one himself. Stuart agreed and Jason and Chris started going in at night to learn how to engineer their own tracks. After a year of pulling all nighters and experimentation while teaching himself how to engineer tracks finally in 1994 Jason recorded his first release under the artist name U.F.O. (a name which Stu J came up with) called “Seduction” on Stu J’s label “Electric Kingdom”.

In 1995 he began engineering early hardcore tracks for himself and other artists including Jon Doe and X-Cess & G-Netic on Stu J’s other label “Man From Uncle”.

Jason teamed up with Stu to make “2001: A Space Anthem” which was the first release to utilise the “DJ UFO” name.

In 1996 he recorded four more releases for “Electric Kingdom”, a cover version of the theme from the t.v. series “X-Files”, entitled “X”, a breakbeat acid track, made with his long time partner Chris Rossi called “Return Trip” which was credited as “MR.Rossi featuring UFO”, “First Contact” and “Don’t Stop”.

In the latter part of 1996 he was approached by old school friends and top Hardcore DJs Jeff (DJ Supreme) and PAL (Ramos) and asked if he would be interested in working with them. He agreed and made 2 releases for “Man From Uncle” with Jeff called “Bounty Hunter” and “Rave Station”, which was an early example of the “Trance-core” sound, released in early 1997.

Also in 1996 he did releases with Ramos and Supreme for the hardcore labels “Fusion”, “Hectic”, “Hectech” and “G.B.T.” (Great British Techno)

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In 1997 Jason made the move to hardcore label R.S.R. owned by Ramos & Supreme. They moved into new premises in Southampton comprising a record shop at street level and a studio in the basement. While there he started to change his “sound” and slowly moved away from the “happy hardcore” sound of the time to a more musical trance influenced sound which would later come to be known as “Trance-core”.

In the same year, as well as record production, Jason rediscovered djing and played 2 tours of Australia.

Another DJ in the Hardcore scene,Jon (DJ Sharkey), on hearing Jason’s new productions, asked to make several tracks with him to include on his mix (along with several other UFO tracks made with other people) for the upcoming hardcore album compilation “Bonkers 3” (part of the Bonkers series of albums mixed by Hixxy & Sharkey. The result was 8 tracks out of the 19 tracks on Sharkeys Bonkers 3 mix were co-written, produced and engineered by Jason including the track “Sound Assassin” which was credited only as Sharkey.

During a years break away from music he worked for Stu J, who owned his own graphic design company, as a freelance graphic designer.

While designing artwork for hardcore DJ and label owner DJ Hixxy, realising that he missed making music, they decided to start working together on new hardcore projects in 1998.

After a couple of releases on Sonys “This Is Noise” imprint, they started work on new projects for Hixxys’ label “Legendary”.

1999 saw the first and only release on Jason’s label “New Infinity” entitled “Deep Inside”.

The label discontinued due to him devoting most of his time to producing new material for Hixxys upcoming label “Raverbaby”.

During 2000 Hixxy and UFO made various hardcore cover versions of popular trance tracks of the time under the (not so) secret name “Cover Up”. 2001 saw the very first Raverbaby release “Welcome” and “Its Alright”. During this period Jason still didn’t own his own studio and was commuting 20 miles to Hixxys studio every day. In 2002 he bit the bullet and bought his own equipment to be installed in his loft.

From 2002 through to 2004 he produced and engineered lots of tracks for unknown artists as well as maintaining a large presence on Raverbaby. In 2004 he built a separate building in his garden to house the studio and continues to produce and engineer from there to the present day.

In 2006 Jason founded his new label "Ufology Records".

2008 saw a renewed partnership with Jeff (DJ Supreme) making new harcore for the “Turbulence Hardcore (THC)” label and also various commercial remixes and projects for “Turbulence”, their commercial label.

Alongside those projects Jason made various trance tracks for top trance label “Slinky’

Jason continues music production of all different genres ranging from drum & bass to orchestral soundtracks to commercial pop music from his studio in Southampton, UK and tours many different countries such as Australia, Canada, USA, Japan, Spain, Germany, France, Ireland as well as playing major events in the UK such as Slammin Vinyl, HTID, Helter Skelter, Sundissential and Hardcore Heaven.