Dean James is a master producer, engineer, programmer, drummer and keyboard player. He heads up our Monumental Productions compnay based at The Dairy in Brixton. Plese click on the link to the left to look at his discography.

His CV has a varied and impressive list of names for whom he has worked and is working with in these various capacities, including Nitin Sawhney, Beverley Knight, Natty, Channel 4 and the BBC, to name but only a few.

Dean started his music career playing in various bands and going along to gigs, before starting to record local bands at Backline, a rehearsal and recording studios in Guilford run by Bad Manners Drummer Brian Tuitt.

“I got into music because it was always at the forefront of my life. There didn’t seem to be anything else I had as much passion for”, Dean says.

In the early days of studios Dean only used tape, which he says gave him more of a feel for recording with live musicians. This led to mixing tape and computers, which opened up the possibilities of programming with samplers, synths and sequencers.

Dean then moved over to Chiswick where he was taken under the wing of Kenny Denton, who lists Jimi Hendrix, The Who, ELP, Thin Lizzy and Peter Green amongst his recording credits.

After a while he moved on to Sphere Studios in Battersea, where he began working with more high profile names, including The Shining, Beverly Knight and Duran Duran. His work mostly involved engineering sessions, but he also managed to sneak in some programming, with his work appearing on the Sugababes album ‘Angels with Dirty Faces’. This led to Dean programming the intro to Westlife’s tour, and working on remixes for Ronan Keating and Amy Winehouse.

It was at Sphere that Dean began to forge his relationship with Nitin Sawhney, working on the album ‘Varekei’ that Sawhney produced for the Cirque Du Soleil. He soon found himself employed by Sawhney, engineering and mixing the albums ‘Philtre’ and ‘Human’, and delving into orchestral recordings with Sawhney’s score for the film ‘The Namesake’. At the same time he also worked on the TV series ‘2nd Generation’ for Channel 4 and ‘England Expects’ for BBC 2.

He is also involved in lots of work with major labels with Craig Dodds, a producer he again met at Sphere, recently recording an album with him for Island Records, as well as music from Dodds’s forthcoming album.

As well as playing percussion/drums and keyboards, Dean has a room at Townhouse Studios in Shepherd’s Bush, where he is working on Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly’s new album. Future projects include Nitin Sawhney’s next album, ‘London Underground’.