John Truelove
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John Truelove (b. 14 February 1968) is a British record producer, DJ, performer, music publisher and music entrepreneur.
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[edit] Career
[edit] Bootleg Beginnings
John's professional life in music started with the creation of the Love/Rock bootleg which fused a number of acapella tracks with current instrumental dance tracks. The most successful of these was "You Got The Love" which was fused with Jamie Principle's house classic "Your Love" (often incorrectly credited to Frankie Knuckles). Having pressed, sold and distributed the bootleg himself and then seeing the dancefloor mayhem it created wherever he went around the UK, he determined to clear the rights in order to legitimise the release. Having secured permission from the owners of Candi Staton's vocal performance he re-recorded the Jamie Principle element and sought a record company to release the finished master. In the face of complete disinterest from the established UK music industry he was on the point of setting up his own company when a fortuitous meeting with James Horrocks (formerly founder and director of Rhythm King Records) in a London record shop (Trax Records, Greek Street, Soho) led to a deal with the newly formed React Music.
[edit] Chart Success
The song entered the UK Singles Chart at 30 in February 1991, climbing inexorably over the following 5 weeks to reach #4, earning a silver disk (200,000 sales) in the process. The follow up, "Rock The House", with John this time sampling the vocals of Miami house songstress Nicole, didn't enjoy the success of "You Got The Love" but managed to creep into the lower regions of the top 75.
[edit] Business Beginnings
By now John had formally set up his own production company, Truelove Limited, and was concentrating on signing artists to develop and then license on to other labels or to release himself. in 1991 he also established his publishing entity, Truelove Music.
In 1992 John was recruited by Dave Balfe, former manager of The Teardrop Explodes and owner of Food Records, to set up a new electronic dance label funded and distributed by EMI. Two labels followed: iT and Synthetic. The most notable feature of this period was John's enlisting of Sister Bliss (later to form Faithless) for her first remix (Merry Xmas by D:Code) and signing Goldie (as Metalheadz). John's relationship with Dave Balfe ended in acrimony in early 2003 after the release on another label of his new track as The Source "Sanctuary Of Love". A bitter court case followed in which Balfe tried to lay claim to ownership of John's track.
[edit] Truelove Label Collective
Under the cloud of this ongoing litigation, which was finally resolved in John's favour in 1994, the seeds of the Truelove Label Collective were planted with the birth of a label in collaboration with Dave Clarke. Magnetic North was a label designed to circumvent the sort of experience John had recently suffered. Starting with a manifesto wrritten by Dave and wife Laura Jane it promised the artists free expression, and no intereference from the label. 13 12" EPs and an anthology album followed until Dave's DJ and recording commitments took over. In the meantime John had set up a new label, Truelove Electronic Communications (TeC), to record and release the sound he had been hearing at Trade, the first after hours club in London.
The artists signed to both Magnetic North and TeC proved to be too prolific for the labels and, as an answer to his frustrated artists, John offered to set up and manage labels on their behalf with partner Steve Simmonds. This became the Truelove Label Collective which continued to grow organically, adding labels continuously (peaking at 18) until its dissolution at the end of 1999. Many of the labels were more successful than their parent imprints, with Russ Gabriel's "Ferox" and Baby Doc and The Dentist's "Dream Inn" labels outshining, in terms of sales at least, Magnetic North and TeC respectively.
The Stay Up Forever label joined the Collective in 1995 and quickly spawned its own offshoots such as Cluster, Hydraulix and RAW, and the very successful "It's Not Intelligent, It's Not From Detroit, But It's Fuckin' Avin' It!" mix compilation series. When Truelove Label Collective was dissolved the Liberator Dj's used John's template to form their own Stay Up Forever Collective.
[edit] More Chart Success
1997 saw a completely reworked version of "You Got The Love" (the Now Voyager Mix). Released in February it scaled the charts again, this time reaching #3. Demonstrating John's passion for breakbeat, the version was slower than the one released in 1991 and used orchestral strings, piano and a 'wall of sound' mix approach. John then signed to XL Recordings for the follow up "Clouds", a cover of the Chaka Khan track, sung by her sister Taka Boom. The song entered the UK Singles Chart at number 38.
It was to be another 9 years (2006) until the third release of "You Got The Love". Signed on to Positiva/EMI by Resist Music who were just establishing themselves from the ashes of React Music and therefore were not yet in a sufficiently strong financial position to release it themselves, the single peaked at number 7 in UK Singles Chart. The radio version this time, which was a slowed down re-arranged version of the Now Voyager Mix, included live strings scored by David Cullen and performed by the London Session Orchestra, and backing vocals by Beverley Skeete.
[edit] Current
John continues to write and record, he is still signed to (React Music's successor) Resist Music, and runs his various companies and campaigns on behalf of dance music at industry bodies.
[edit] Performer
[edit] As a DJ
Having established a strong presence for his companies in the hard dance market, and with a considerable number of his own releases as Lectrolux proving popular with DJ's, John was increasingly asked to DJ. From 1997 onwards he toured the world as a hard dance dj, often with his partner of the time, the former fashion desgner turned DJ and record producer, Rachel Auburn. He played clubs and event in South Africa, Japan, Australia and New Zealand as well as in the UK.
[edit] Live Performance
In 2003, determined to contradict his maxim "live techno is an oxymoron", inspired by The Chemical Brothers and also as an experiment on behalf of the other techno producers under his management, in 2003 he developed his electronic solo act 'Lectrolux' to be performed live. He created a 60 minute film with filmmaker Dick Jewell, fully synchronised to his music, to accompany his performances projected onto large screens . Debuting at London's prestigious Brixton Academy in December 2003, he then toured it through Australia in early 2004 to good reviews. Subsequently he helped both D.A.V.E. The Drummer and Guy Mcaffer develop the visual aspects of their live perforrmances.
[edit] Business Interests
[edit] truelove.co.uk
John was fascinated with new technology from early on, and the Truelove companies' web presence (truelove.co.uk) began as early as 1996 with a page to advertise the release of Daniel Poole's World Sound Systems released on the new TLC label designed for CD album releases. It grew into a huge sprawling website covering the massive range of music and people that the truelove companies have been involved with. The digitisation of the now huge Truelove catalogue was started in 2004. Since almost all the releases were in analogue format (vinyl mastered from DAT) this has proven a mammoth task which is only half complete (as of February 2006).
[edit] Truelove Music Publishing
[edit] Background
Since 2000 John has concentrated his efforts on building up his music publishing company, Truelove Music. He had originally established the company in the face of disappointment at the performance of the major music publishers to which he had been signed. Using his love of technology he developed systems to track and monitor royalty collection on behalf of his writers (and of his own repertoire). By 2004 he had, through shrewd acquisition of repertoire and development of his roster, built up the Truelove Music catalogue to over 1000 songs. Swift expansion followed.
[edit] Growth
Through an active policy of both taking on the administration of other publishing catalogues and signing new songwriters, by the end of 2005 the Truelove Music catalogue had more than doubled to nearly 3000 songs. Aware of dwindling record sales afflicting the whole industry, he turned his focus to developing music for film, television and special projects. With a roster of successful musicians and composers already signed he became a kind of executive producer, directing their change of emphasis from the 6 minute dance track to the 30 second commercial. The inclusion of "You Got The Love" as the final cue in the final episode of HBO's Sex & The City was a welcome result of this change of emphasis.
[edit] Campaigns
He campaigned though the 1990's for the UK statutory societies, the Performing Right Society and the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society to take dance music more seriously. Success came following a Uk Government monopolies and mergers commission enquiry which found that dance music had indeed been unreasonably treated. As a result Maritz Research is now commissioned to conduct an ongoing survey of UK licensed premises i.e. premises licensed by the PRS where copyright music may be played, whether from a radio, on a musical instrument, over a sound system, in a pub, a hotel lobby, a hairdresser's or a club. The researchers list what music is being played and for how long and the data is used as an analogy by PRS to pay royalties to its members. As a result Truelove Music and other dance music publishers, where they had been receiving almost no club performance royalties, saw a notable increase in income from this source for its active dance music repertoire.
John took an active role in a campaign to abolish the Classical Music Subsidy, which had the effect of subsidising Classical Music performances with a levy taken from performance income derived from Pubs Clubs and Discotecques. He gave evidence (1999) to the UK Parliament's Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport on this issue.
[edit] Membership and affiliations
John has sat on a variety of panels and committees over the years, including the Specialist Music Group, and the Copyright Group at the MCPS PRS Alliance. He is a panellist on Live Connections a part of the PRS Foundation which gives grants to new electronic music. Truelove Music is a member of the Performing Rights Society, the Music Publishers Association, ASCAP and BMI. Truelove.co.uk is a member of Public Performance Limited.
[edit] Tortured Artists Ltd
The nurturing and development of talent is a frequently occurring motif. John's artist management company, Tortured Artists Ltd, was set up with then partner Steve Simmonds in 1996. Steve left in 1999. Since that time it has looked after the careers of a number of artistes and producers. In early 2006 it was managing D.A.V.E. The Drummer (Henry Cullen), Micky Modelle, and a semi-retired Rachel Auburn. Because of his creative background John has always striven to help the artists in his care creatively as well as with their business matters.
