Music came naturally to Dom who learnt to play both the piano and trombone to a high level from an early age, raised by parents who were opera singers. When exposed to the early rave scene, he was soon inspired to set about making music of his own. Determined to make his mark and develop a unique sound, he chose the Roland S760 sampler as the core of his studio over the more-popular Akai series machines. It’s this piece of equipment that inspired Dom’s unusual moniker and symbolizes how, throughout his long and successful career, he has always maintained a conscious effort to sound apart from the rest.
His first releases came in 1994 on Saigon, a new label set-up by his friend Nico Sykes, and became synonymous with the dark and industrial sound of techstep drum and bass. The quality of Dom’s productions placed his engineering skills in high demand and, in a bold move, he convinced his bank manager to sign off a loan that would fund the studio gear he needed to push his sound even further. In 1996 he began a relationship with Moving Shadow that spawned numerous massive singles and three long players. A milestone of his success was that he was chosen, alongside Rob Playford and Goldie, to write a track for the labels 100th release (‘Distorted Dreams’). In these early evolutionary years Dom also had high profile releases on Doc Scott’s 31 Records imprint and Grooverider’s label, Prototype.
Having built up his own studio and honed his skills, Dom mixed and produced several tracks for other artists that went onto gain legendary status, including ‘Mutant Revisited’ and ‘Sonar’ with Trace and ‘Subway’ and ‘Skylab’ with Ed Rush. In the process of these collaborations, Dom created the infamous ‘Tramen’ break, a breakbeat that has become a drum & bass staple and has been sampled by many other artists since. Dom’s role as a producer extended beyond that of just a studio engineer and, having worked with Optical’s brother Matrix, introduced him to Ed Rush and helped bring about a partnership that would spawn Virus Recordings and define the neurofunk sound.
Dom’s first album, ‘Industry’ was released in 1998 on Moving Shadow to unanimous public and critical acclaim. Drawing on his wide background of musical influences, the album presented the listener with a variety of textures and styles fused together with his unique style of hard, dark sounds. Dom kept up the pressure with a string of superb releases including ‘Parasite’ (SH131), ‘Killa Bullet’ (SH135) and a reworking of ‘Kaotic Kemistry’ under the guise Known Unknown. His subsequent release, ‘Can’t Punish Me’, continued the trend and caused major disruption on dancefloors all over the UK. It was the inclusion of a Dom & Roland remix of ‘Terrorist’, however, on the Killa Bites EP that really blew the public away, proving to be so popular that it sold out in one day. As a result of this popularity, he was also commissioned to write exclusive material for the Playstation 2 game, ‘Midnight Club’, whilst working on his second album, ‘Back for the Future’ in 2002.
His third album ‘Chronology’ surfaced in 2004 and saw Dom tour extensively in the USA, Europe, Asia and Australia and New Zealand throughout the year to promote the release. With an appearance as guest remixer on Calyx’s album ‘No Turning Back’ the following year, Dom’s long relationship with Moving Shadow came to a close. He turned his focus towards his own label and established ‘Dom & Roland Productions’ as an outlet not only for his own music, but that of artists he respects and admires. In Dom’s own words: “I want DRP to put out tunes you remember and still wanna play out 5 years down the line, I don't like McDonald’s Happy Meal music.”
2008 saw the release of the ‘Through the Looking Glass’ LP on DRP, with Dom taking on a range of styles within drum & bass and giving each his signature sound. ‘Catscan b/w Funk Hunt,’ a collaborative effort with Gridlok, followed in early 2009 with both sides receiving support from Ed Rush, Hive, Dieselboy ,Hype and Bailey among others.
As well as keeping dancefloors busy with a furious barrage of beats, Dom is also involved in software testing and development for leading innovators including Native Instruments and Sonalksis, keeping him at the very forefront of cutting-edge music technology and sound design.
After hitting a rich vein of form in the studio, Dom released his fifth studio album ‘No Strings Attached’ in November 2009. Featuring collaborations with some of the very best producers around, a mouth-watering tracklist sees Dom alongside Noisia, Amon Tobin, Hive, Audio and Rob Playford for an LP of truly epic proportions. Expect to hear these tracks plus other forthcoming material from Dom in his DJ sets as he embarks on an album tour in late 2009/early 2010 taking his truly original and dynamic sound worldwide.
