Journeys by DJ

JOURNEYMAN - BIO
Tim “Journeyman” Fielding is a DJ and event producer with a highly acclaimed track
record innovating with formats and new technologies. His music style ranges across Nu
Disco to Deep House & Breaks with strong Jazz Funk influences. He is best known for
producing ‘Journeys by DJ’, the world’s first series of DJ mix CDs. Based in New York,
he works with a variety of artists and producers to create transformative experiences.
Tim began DJing as a teenager in Bristol, UK. An avid fan of punk bands and the local
subculture, he was hooked by the spirit of dance music after hearing Earth Wind and
Fire jam live on a jazz-funk show on Radio West. This led to throwing student bashes at
a cave-like club in Oxford where he operated the strobe and smoke machine with one
hand while spinning the likes of Talking Heads, Prince, Bohannon and New Order
with the other. His first big gig was at London’s club Heaven in 1986, when all these
influences were morphing into House. In 1988 he returned for Spectrum, the Balearic
melting pot that vulcanized Britain’s Acid House movement, and there he found his tribe.
With his first day job at Notting Hill’s Record Exchange, Tim started writing for
Mixmag and Soul Underground, tracing the roots of West London’s progressive house
sound back to its local influences in Dub. Teaming up with Smart Boys FM in ‘89, he
threw Club Sandwich at the Vauxhall Arches. He then joined Sean McLusky’s
iconoclastic club The Brain, which provided an early platform for the likes of Orbital,
Leftfield, Seal, Moby, The Shamen, Andrew Weatherall, A Guy Called Gerald,
Roger S, Billy Nasty to name a few. Tim toured under the Brain banner to NYC, Berlin
and Moscow, opening his ears to fresh sounds during a prolific period of inventiveness
on the underground music scene. On his imprint Brainiak Records, he released seminal
tracks by Ultramarine, Charles Webster, Infinite Wheel and Doi-oing, and notably
“Live at the Brain”, the first ever album of live MIDI performances.
In late 1992, following a revelatory moment in Glastonbury’s experimental sound field,
and many road trips to Manchester’s Hacienda with mixtapes of Tony Humphries’ Kiss
FM radio show, Tim launched Journeys by DJ (JDJ), the first series of its kind: wellproduced,
copyright-cleared, DJ-approved full-length mixes by John Digweed, Farley &
Heller, DJ Rap, Paul Oakenfold, Keoki, Danny Rampling, Rocky & Diesel, Billy
Nasty, Judge Jules and the mix album to end them all, Coldcut’s ’70 Minutes of
Madness’. Coining the term ‘Disco-ordinator’ to describe his role as editor/producer,
creative director and playlist sounding-board, Tim pioneered many of the mix album
methodologies that are now common practice, from the application of Pro Tools to the
correct way to rack the CDs in the store. Refusing to call them ‘compilations’, he fought
for DJ mixes to be recognized for the art of telling stories through music. JDJ eventually
gained the respect of the UK press with a Justin Robertson mixtape on the cover of
Select magazine, another first from the defining era of Electronica.
In 1995, Tim invested in The End www.end-club.com. The state-of-the-art London
venue had an indelible impact on DJ culture, providing a platform for the likes of Fatboy
Slim, Laurent Garnier, Carl Cox, Sven Vath and countless others, spawning its own
genre, Tech House, and giving serious clubbers a proper place to go 6 nights per week for
14 years. Tim remained a director alongside Mr C and Layo until its closure on a
splendidly high note in January 2009.
The mid-90s saw Tim fronting his own monthly at The End, Triptonite, touring with JDJ
around UK and Europe, and hosting his Thursday Dr Brainiak show on pirate station
Face FM. This evolved into www.interface.co.uk, one of the Web’s first dance music
‘radio’ stations. Focusing on development of the JDJ series, he reduced his gigs to
marquee events like Love Parade, Notting Hill Carnival and Cannes Film Festival,
and produced JDJ After Hours (released by Twisted/MCA in 1998), a series of deeper
jazzy mixes that anticipated the global trend for lounge club vibes; and the Ultimate
House Party series, combined sales of which topped 150,000 worldwide.