Having rocked events such across the country from Tidy Weekenders to the legendary Goodgreef, you'd be hard pushed to find a busier and more in demand DJ from North of the border. With over 10 years experience Jason Cortez has played alongside the biggest names in the world including Tiesto, Mauro Picotto, Judge Jules, Fergie, Eddie Halliwell, Lisa Lashes, Scot Project, Marco V, Anne Savage, Yoji Biomehanika & many more

In September Scotland’s no 1 hard dance DJ, comes to Glow Ball to launch an exciting new venture – Audica, we caught up with Jason to find out a little more about what he has been up to over the past year and what is Audica.

Hello Jason, How are you? You're one of the few people who always has something exciting going on each time we speak - so what's the plan of action for today?

I am very good, I’m working on Abelton to get my set ready for Glow Ball, editing some tracks, mashing some stuff up and doing some exclusive bootlegs.

On top of that I’m doing a little more work on fitting my kitchen… Its not all rock ‘n’ roll you know ;-)

Rumour has it that you’ve been a very busy bee over the last year aside from the many gigs you’ve played I understand you managed to set fire to a nightclub on new years eve – what happened?

Erm, due to legal proceedings I’m not sure if I can talk about it… What I will say is that it was one of the worst nights of my life and that I’m so glad that no one was seriously hurt.

It would appear that you can’t trust companies and recommendations from other promoters and sound & light engineers, despite proven track records… Anyways, moving on…

Ooops, so moving swiftly on, what else have you been up to?

You find me at a crossroads in my musical & DJing career actually!

Having found some degree of success making and playing hard-dance over the past 8 years, I have come to a point where I am torn musically between hard-dance and trance…

Trance was my first musical love, I started DJing in 1996 and was lucky enough to enjoy the trance boom from then till 2000, before turning my affection towards all things hard-house.

Having played the length and breadth of the country and internationally with my take on hard-dance, I am now drawn back to trance, but can’t just turn my back on a scene that has stood by me and done me proud, so I now present Audica to the hard-dance World!

As my musical tastes have changed, developed, grown up some may argue, my love off tech-trance has driven my sound in a different direction, away from the harder, more euphoric sound that I’m known for. Taking influence from artists such as Marco V, Sander Van Doorn, Marcel Woods, Richard Durand, etc, it’s pretty safe to say that Jason Cortez now makes and plays predominantly trance music. I hope that you will see several new releases over the coming months, as well as seeing my name appearing on line ups for trance events across the country.

Some may think this is a case of jumping ship or turning my back on hard-dance, but I have been playing mainly trance sets in Scotland for a couple of years now. I have supported Tiesto on two occasions and I recently played out my new sound at my first major English club, The Gallery at Ministry of Sound, so I hope this marks the start of my trance adventure South of the Border.
As you find me now fitting back into my trance pants, it has been hard for me to just turn my back on hard-dance music, the scene and the friends I’ve made, so rather than confusing people with playing trance and hard-dance under the same name I made the difficult decision to continue playing and making hard-dance under an alias… Thus Audica was born!

Audica will give me an outlet for my near 20 unreleased tracks and remixes, as well as give me the opportunity to develop my live/dj concept. This concept has been on the boil for some time, as my musical tastes were torn it seamed the perfect time to develop it more and make it a reality and I look forward to debuting it at Glow Ball next month :)

You’ve become very well know for your production work with tracks such as Shining in Ecstasy and Set You Free becoming firm favorites with many hard trance DJ’s, are you working on anything new at the moment and what can we expect to see over the next year?

Thank you for pointing out that these tracks have become favorites with DJ’s that not so long ago I was going to see, looking up to and respected so much, to now find myself working with them and being able to call them my pears is a dream come true.

As fond memory of mine is getting a phone call from Nick Sentience on a Sunday afternoon, he, Phil Reynolds and James Lawson were having a bit of an afterparty and were listening to a CD of tracks I sent which had ‘God’ on it. They loved it and called me to tell me, that was the moment that all the hard work, effort, late nights and lost hours made sense and seamed worth it, these guys were heroes to me and to get some recognition meant the World to me and drove me on to make more tracks.

Since then, as you mentioned I’ve done Shining In The Ecstasy and Set U Free, both have done really well and I am pleased to say that I have several new tracks that are ready to go, tracks which I hope will be as big as the ones mentioned. Off all the tracks waiting on release I would say that Soulseeka, Desire and Take Me Away are the ones that I think will do rather well. They are all big room, hands in the air hard-dance bombs, I’m not trying to be clever with these tracks, I’m just trying to make people dance!

As well as these tracks I have another 20 or so tracks waiting to be released, as my Audica concept develops and gains attention I want to release a track a week from the end October till Christmas and am looking to get some remix packages put together before doing so, so you’ll be seeing a lot of Audica over the coming months!

As well as these un-released tracks my Audica re-invention has re-ignited my love of hard-dance and I can’t wait to get back in to the studio between now and the end of the year, I have ideas for around 6 new tracks, and am excited to see how my sound develops.

You’re playing at Glow Ball in September – news has been spreading fast on the event and is attracting people from across the UK – when you were booked to play had you heard about Glow Ball?

Yes I had heard of Glow Ball, and I’d heard good things!

Being friends with Alf Bamford, Thomas from Adrenaline Dept and others who have played there, word gets around about great parties…

As well as word of mouth I check out harderfaster, DSI and other boards and read great things, so I can’t wait to experience it first hand.

At Glow Ball you’re launching Audica, what is Audica? And where did the name come from?

I wish I had something clever to write with regards coming up with the name, but its just taking the first part of the word audio and replacing the ‘o’ with a ‘ca’, lol.

As for the concept behind Audica, it came about from playing a set off 3 decks, playing all my own tracks and dropping accapella’s and samples off the third CDJ. I was wanting to drop more samples and accapella’s but couldn’t and was constrained in terms of editing tracks on the fly and mashing stuff up. Taking all this on board I looked into Traktor & Abelton and saw how I could develop the concept. With a back catalogue of tracks, and 20 unreleased tracks I wanted an outlet to play these out in a new more exciting way. Drawing inspiration from the Tidy Boys live mix from The Tidy weekender I started editing my own tracks down, mashing them up with other well know anthems and started throwing vocals, loops and stuff over the top. The concept allows me to showcase new material alongside known tracks while dropping bits of well know tracks over the top, making for a 60 or 90 minute floor filling, crowd pleasing, anthem bashing, party set that’s sure to have voices raised and arms held aloft!

How would you describe your sound to someone who hasn’t heard you before? And what can we expect to hear at Glow Ball?

Energetic, euphoric, hard-dance that you can sing along too!

As for what you can expect at Glow Ball, you can expect re-edits of tracks such as God, Shining In The Ecstasy, No Other Way, Finally, Set U Free. Alongside the older tracks I will be dropping new tracks Soulseeka, Desire, Take Me Away, In Your Hands, Take Control and Make Some Noise. As well as original tracks expect a few cheeky remixes and bootlegs all mashed together with recognizable vocals, stabs and samples!

How does a Live PA differ from a DJ set, to many people it’s nothing more than a keyboard and laptop – can you explain a bit more on how it works please?

I think the most important thing about a PA is that the person playing is playing their own tracks, you go to see a PA as you know your going to hear tracks you like by that artist. I would say that a PA is about the music rather than the delivery, lets be honest, how many so called PA’s have you seen when its just a vocalist singing over a backing track?

The way the tracks are delivered can differ, with some acts using keyboard to play tracks, trigger parts of tracks etc, others have full live elements.

This is my first PA, so I am very much in the developmental stages, but I will be very much interactive, triggering tracks, loops, track parts and more, all the time editing stuff, using FX, dropping samples etc… As mentioned before, this concept was born from taking inspiration from The Tidy Boys live from The Tidy Weekend, with my PA its about bringing a party, loads of work will be done ahead of time meaning that I can trigger tracks, samples, FX and such from keyboards and midi controllers live on the night, reading the crowd and feeding off them.

Within 3 months I will to have a live vocalist included, re-singing my old and new tracks, as well as some trance and hard-dance classics done in an Audica style.

As the concept develops more will be added with as many live elements as possible… This whole journey has just begun and who knows where it will end up!

What have you got planned for the rest of 2009 and beyond?

With Summer nearly over I am hoping to get away in September for a holiday, so I should have a nice tan for Glow Ball and be fully refreshed and raring to go.

I am currently building my new studio, so you will be hearing a lot more new material over the coming months. I also hope to start work on my debut album as Audica, hopefully working and collaborating with some of the scene’s leading lights!

Finally, I’m looking to get a new puppy for Christmas :)

Thanks Jason - I'm can't wait to catch up with you at Glow Ball and hearing Audica for the very first time :)