Hmm, a whole page dedicated about yours truly… fancy that!
Well, first off… my full name as given on my birth certificate is Jonathan Roger Stanley. Born to Mr. John Roger Stanley and late Mrs. Sau Wai Stanley (née 林秀惠) just under 3 decades ago on one Autumn morning at roughly 5am on the 6th September, 1978 in Hong Kong, the ex-British colonial outpost now returned to mainland China through an unequal treaty undoing an unequal treaty from the days when Empire backed opium cartels was a perfectly civilised thing to be involved in.
Hong Kong was the place where I spent the majority of my pre-teen years, excluding the two-to-three month long breaks during my summers holidays from school in 1983, 1985 & 1987 which were here in the U.K. to stay with my father’s side of the family or at his old home town prior him going to Hong Kong. By the time of the winter of 1990, father had reached retirement age for the Royal Hong Kong Police Force and it was a choice of either going to British Columbia in Canada or to England.
England it was… as remaining in Hong Kong whilst maintaining the lifestyle endowed from father having a decent job within the colonial government and all its perks would have proved pretty much impossible. Factor the edginess and fear of how things might turn out post-1997 with mainland takeover, my father took the decision that we’d leave the bright and vibrant city state for the Rose of Shires that is Northamptonshire, where I’ve now lived for just over one-and-a-half decades.
My upper school education took place mostly at Northampton School For Boys, founded some time in the dark ages in the 1500’s, so despite being a State school they had oodles of cash (comparatively) and looking back it was very much like going to a private grammar school, since that was it’s roots after all.
Even “back then” as a child I was very good at Science and Maths, so come A-Levels, I tried to extend my fortes by doing Physics, Mathematics and Art A-Levels. Though Art as a strong point didn’t really develop till post G.C.S.E’s.
Also somewhere along the lines in my mid teenage years discovered House/Techno music. The purist underground variety. Very difficult to quantify, but it has this alluring feel to it in all its vastly different forms.
By my late teens and getting a part-time job, around the time of me starting A-Levels in 1995, I finally had the cash to upgrade from some belt drive turntables I’d borrowed off a friend to learn how to DJ to the holy grail… a pair of brand new Technics 1210’s.
Half a decade-ish on I’d landed myself a residency at a local House club (though now defunct) called Frisky, playing Deep Vocal House in the “Funky House” room. During that time from 2002 to 2003, I had managed to record a number of mixes by me ranging for lush Down-tempto, lazy Nu-Jazz, sexy Deep House, twisted Tech-House, jazzy Detroit Techno to stomping Industrial Techno machine funk. Listen & enjoy! :D
More recently, in the spring of 2005 saw the first time I returned back to Hong Kong, visiting relatives from my late mother’s side of the family after some 15 years of being away. That same year and having some cash to burn with an end of contract giving me free reign to do stuff, I embarked on “World Domination 2005″ which took me full-circle around this little planet of ours and took more photographs than what one could browse through in a working day, even though around half remain unpublished as they are so time consuming to work through not to mention more than one occasion of utterly rotten luck.
That’s all for now… so happy browsing! :P