ONES TO WATCH - Johnny D

If you’re a breakthrough DJ and producer there can’t be many more potent ways of realising you’re about to make it than getting booked to play a big gig abroad. Wheeling his record bag through Frankfurt’s departures lounge in March, the Eritrean-born, Mannheim-bred Johnny D walked to the check-in desk on one such crest of adrenalin. His destination was London’s The End nightclub, one of the UK’s underground House and Techno institutions. But when he slapped his passport for the attendant to verify, the dream very quickly turned into a nightmare.

Despite growing up in Germany, Johnny’s visa was not valid to guarantee entry to the UK. With a list of British dates ahead of him including clubs like Leeds’ Monocult and East London’s impossibly cool secretsundaze, the harsh reality of border laws putting the kabosh on his international career, couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Since releasing his first EP on the Frankfurt-based imprint in September last year, Johnny D has made one of the most effortless arrivals into the underground’s big time. All three tracks, Gualia, Katalpa and Manipulation, were heavily played by all of techno’s big league. His second single Walkman a few months later, featuring his own vocals topped the charts of DJs like Jamie Jones and Dan Ghenacia. His latest EP on Oslo lead by the icy cool deep house of lead track Orbitalife is leading the mantle of a revolt in the underground against plug in heavy minimal techno for deeper, warmer textures in house. Deep, dancefloor-focussed house is currently Europe’s flavour of the season on dance music’s more discerning dancefloors and Johnny D’s records capture the mood of tastemaking clubs like London’s Fabric or Frankfurt’s Robert Johnson perfectly.

The common thread running through every record he’s made is a faultlessly polished approach to his production. Johnny D makes records with the finesse of an old master like Carl Craig, each record delicately posturing its elements to afford it the most impact, and all of them delivering a nod to the organic tones and melodies of soul and jazz.

With a flurry of remixes about to hit shops and another EP on London-based Safari Electronique (one track of which features a sample of Nina Simone’s classic ‘Feeling Good’), his free weekends should be disappearing off his calendar at a frightening rate. “It looks like I won’t be able to go until I get my German passport,” he says. “The problem is the Consulate doesn’t believe I want to visit the UK just to play music and needs evidence to prove this first. But this is not easy to provide because my official music career only started last year.”

“It’s not the first time that I’ve had problems with my passport or my Eritrean heritage when crossing a border line. Particularly in the current climate of terror, it’s much harder to get one from one country to another.”

Johnny D’s family come from Eritrea in North East Africa. His parents fled the country in the 1980s to escape a 31-year-old war against neighbouring country Ethiopia. Despite the chaos of the country they left behind, his parents prospered in Europe. His family found political asylum in Germany, and his father found work as a mechanic before eventually returning to Eritrea to open a garage. His mother had small jobs here and there and studied at the same time before also moving back to Eritrea to work as a nurse in a hospital. Theirs is a success story barely imaginable to most Europeans, but one that came at a guilty cost.

Many Eritreans in Germany felt guilty about the friends and family left behind in Eritrea and put on parties to raise money to send back home. Johnny remembers these as some of the first pivotal experiences in learning about rhythm and party culture. “I was still a little kid and can remember that the parties were really impulsive and went on until the morning,” he says. “The lyrics of the songs were filled with stories about the war and were very passionate. The songs could sometimes last for 20 to 30 minutes and people danced all night long.”

In his lifetime he’s only been back to Eritrea four times. The first was after the war in 1992 and the last was in 2002. “The country is still in a poor state and the political situation is still bad,” he says. “People are poor but generous and have a natural kindness that you don’t find so much these days.”

As a teenager growing up in Mannheim, he first found dance music via the intense rhythms of UK Drum ’n’ Bass in the early nineties. “Drum ’n’ bass was big in the early nineties in Mannheim and provided my first contact with the music,” he says. “A friend took me to a party at the age of 12 and I was stunned by the sound and how people danced to it.” After this he began to collect mixtapes from everywhere possible. His older brother, a dancer at the Loft Club, brought House mixtapes home for him to listen to and his sister bought him his first set of turntables when he was 13. After a while he graduated onto wanting to make music himself and bought a computer and midi keyboard. “I learned mostly by myself,” he says. “Fortunately today it’s not as hard to start making music as it was in the eighties or nineties.”
The magnetic attention of the Frankfurt scene soon pulled Johnny towards house and techno. Lead by local heroes like Sven Väth and Ricardo Villalobos he grew up raving in clubs like Robert Johnson in Frankfurt or the Milk Times in Mannheim. Now, like local producers Sascha Dive, Reboot, Nicky Curly or Vera or Oslo Records’ head honchos Federico Molinari & Nekes, Johnny is part of a tight network of new producers moulding deep house and techno into a fresh new interpretation on the blueprint laid down by their heroes.

Next up from Johnny is a barrage of remixes for key labels like Leftroom, Sushitech, Supplement Facts, Moon Harbour, Connaisseur, Hypercolor and another couple of EPs on Safari Electronique and Oslo. If he’s lucky, he might even get to ride the wave of admiration that his records have attracted with some killer gigs overseas. But if it doesn’t happen any time soon, although hugely frustrating, it won’t hurt too badly. The planes to the UK may take off daily, but Johnny D’s success isn’t going anywhere just yet.

TEXT BY GAVIN HERLIHY