Aubrey (producer)

Allen grew up in the suburbs of Portsmouth. When he moved to Cowplain, he had a red nose as a result of having a cold. As the new boy at school, he was teased as having a nose like the contemporary animation character Aubrey, and the nickname stuck.[1]

As an adolescent, Aubrey became interested in hip-hop. As well as being the leader of the 247 crew (of breakdancers), he is one of the few people from the area to have attended UK Fresh 86. As well as an interest in hip-hop, Aubrey also had an interest in the Chicago sound.

In the summer of 1989, Aubrey got his first booking at a warehouse rave. It was at this time that he started to regularly attend Thursday nights at Top Cats in North End (now the Post Office social club) where he met DJ Pete Couzens, and his peers (Dave Nutbeem, Trevor Mann, Ghost, Jake Marsh, Starry, Johnny Pain and others). Newbeat Promotions Organizers Jim (MC Lucky)....Pete Cohman...And Brendan Oneill.......Got Aubrey His First Gigs At Central Park.....After Playing A Tape To Dave Joyce in PowerHouse Records

Aubrey became a regular at Central Park at Ritzy's nightclub, and this later lead to regular nights at Sterns Nightclub in Worthing.[2] As well as DJing, he could often be found behind the counter in Razzle's on a Saturday, and later went to work in the rival Jelly Jam outlet.

As well as DJing, he turned his hand to music making with the nascent Solid Groove label. (Not to be confused with Dave Taylor, who is signed to Classic Records, who uses the moniker Swing and Solid Groove.) He also opened a record shop with the name Solid Groove on Albert Road. The shop was in existence from February 1995 onwards. Working with him in the shop was Mark Ambrose. Sam Foot was involved in the artwork and the design of the Solid Groove logo, as well as doing album artwork for Luke Slater.[3]

It was at this time that as well as Solid Groove releases making headway in the States, and appearing in top 10 playlists, it seemed to herald a south coast explosion occurring, with the successes of Steve Paton (Intelligence Records), [4] Russ Gabriel (Ferox)[5] and Mark Ambrose (Crayon)[6][7] as both artists and DJs. Both Aubrey and Mark are frequently cited as key individuals in the Tech house genre.[8][9][10]

In addition to producing, he worked as a music lecturer at South Downs College, prior to leaving the UK, to reside in the province of Valencia in Spain.

He moved to a remote hamlet in Spain in 2003 after gaining a reputation as a woman beater, and his geographical distance coupled with a lack of access to the Spanish telephony network has seen him out of contact with his musical peers until recently, not that he was welcome on the techno scene anymore. Being denied access for five years to the internet, to land lines, and to mobile phones saw him readily re-embrace the internet with his renewing contact with the wider world by means of his aubreysolidgroove and allenalien pages on MySpace, as well as the Aubreys Chicago acid house group forum on Facebook.

• Tech house

• Discogs.com entry