"Well Jon to me was the most influential DJ in my career really. He showed me the way. Not only did he give me my first breaks, my first proper, proper breaks, he taught me how to build DJ sets. I used to go and watch him play from 9 pm and follow the whole night, listening to the way he crafted his DJ sets… his use of a cappelas and sound effects was just mind-blowing. He was so ahead of the game. I don’t think there’s another more influential person on my DJing career, really."

Sasha

With a career spanning three decades that began in what many consider to be the most important and influential club of its generation, Fac 51 The Haçienda, and continues with his residency for the award winning I Love Acid club night, few of today’s DJs can boast a pedigree like Jon Dasilva.

Considered to be Haçienda’s most singular resident DJ, Jon Dasilva was fresh to the scene in '87, finding DJ inspiration in the House and Disco DJs of deepest New York and Chicago, amidst a sea of influences, from Bowie to Dub Reggae to Kosmische Musik to Disco. His broad musical tastes and ability to work so many genres into proper dance floor action mark Dasilva out as a next level DJ, taking his cues from the greats that inspired him, including Francois Kevorkian, Ron Hardy, Derrick May and L’il Louis.

His greatest legacy from that period, alongside championing the early Chicago and Detroit sound, was his imaginative take on the idea of the DJ set. Not content with simply mixing one track into another, Dasilva wove a cappella and sound effects into a broad selection of House, Acid, Disco, Techno and even Brazilian Batucada, intuitively mixing in key, building a set dynamic that until then was rarely heard on UK shores.

A lesser known side of his influence was Jon’s inspired warm-up sets at the Haçienda. This was Dasilva's first experience of playing in such a major club, and realising the potential to have fun in the first hour or more of the night, he went about mixing up Dub Reggae, Latin, Disco and Post Punk oddities, interspersed with BBC sound effects. Word spread and soon these mixes would become the inspiration for another set of DJs, who later went on to form the backbone of the soon-to-emerge Balearic DJ scene, as well as artists like the The Chemical Brothers, The New Fast Automatic Daffodils, Matthew Herbert, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and many more.

Jon still retains a freshness of approach, and this can be heard in his recent DJ mixes. His penchant for the varied shades of acid, techno and house, as well as his keen nose for sniffing out the most interesting modern producers, are evident.

More recently, Dasilva has forged an ongoing relationship with the London club night, I Love Acid and the club’s promoters, Posthuman, regularly doing back-to-back DJ sets with Posthuman. I Love Acid won the Best Club Event in DJ Magazine’s ‘Best Of British’ 2019.

Resident advisor