Phil Asher

An unassuming and beloved pillar of London's underground dance community for over three decades, Phil Asher was a DJ, producer, and label operator with global reach. His collaborative bent and avoidance of the spotlight is evinced in the dozens of aliases he used since 1992, the year his first soul-steeped house productions were released. While his output was sometimes credited to his birth name, and includes albums as Focus and Phlash, namely Sweet and Sour (2002) and Deep Electronic Sound (2008), he's known most as the driving force of Restless Soul. The slew of remixes Asher executed as/with Restless Soul includes work for Jamiroquai, Azymuth, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Blaze, and fellow West London dwellers such as 4hero and Bugz in the Attic. As co-founder of the club night CoOp, Asher was key to the broken beat sound that emanated from West London. Shortly thereafter, he and partner Patrick Forge established Inspiration Information, a weekly party that lasted over a decade. Asher remained active until his death in 2021. Phil Asher grew up in a West London household that nurtured his voracious listening habits. Asher's parents worked at one of London's Harlequin record shops, which fueled his obsession with late-'60s R&B, and in turn informed the high soul quotient in his own output. Having dealt records as a youngster at school fairs, Asher went on to work at London shops, starting at the tail end of the '80s with Quaff, and continuing with Vinyl Solution, another subcultural hub. He took his first remix credit in 1989, gained his footing as a DJ in the early '90s, and soon became prolific with myriad productions, re-edits, and remixes under his birth name and a dizzying assortment of solo and collaborative guises. The aliases included Basic Soul, Two Shiny Heads, and Level III, the last of which -- a trio with Two Shiny Heads partner Ray Whittard and Noel Watson -- issued a couple singles through Junior Boy's Own. Many of these handles appeared on no more than a handful of 12" releases, but Restless Soul, a production team Asher co-founded with Luke McCarty, appeared in the mid-'90s and both endured and progressed for over two decades with around a dozen singles, scores of remixes, and a label of the same name. Asher alone also produced the entirety of saxophonist Nathan Haines' 2000 album Sound Travels (A Restless Soul Production). Just before Sound Travels arrived, Asher was one of the instigators behind CoOp, the West London club night that became the epicenter of broken beat, a hybrid form of dance music rooted in jazz-funk, hip-hop, and drum'n'bass. Asher's mix album Now Hears the Future, made around this time for Slip 'n' Slide, was possibly the first commercial DJ set that showcased the distinctly U.K. style. As it was hitting its stride in the early 2000s -- at which point Asher and Patrick Forge started another club night, Inspiration Information -- broken beat was exemplified by intensely polyrhythmic, easily enjoyable anthems from the likes of Afronaught and 4hero. Asher followed his mates with a CoOp favorite of his own, "Having Your Fun," issued under the name Focus in 2002 on DJ Gilb'R's Versatile label. Also issued that year was the Focus LP Sweet and Sour and Asher's first of two DJ mixes for the Trust the DJ series. Restless Soul remixes were eventually Asher's main creative outlet, but in 2008, he revived one of his early nicknames, Phlash, with Deep Electronic Sound, a highly collaborative full-length project for Volcov's Archive label. Deep Electronic Sound involved many of Asher's longtime friends and accomplices, such as the Mighty Zaf, Mark de Clive-Lowe, Orin Walters (aka Afronaught), and Dego (of 4hero). Asher and Patrick Forge held the final Inspiration Information session in 2011, concluding an 11-year run. Throughout the decade, Asher issued singles bearing his birth name with greater frequency, usually on Restless Soul or subsidiary Rstless Trx. Still, he was more likely to pair up, whether with the emergent James Massiah (for an EP released on Rekids in 2015) or the Mighty Zaf (for a series of disco and post-disco edits series that ran from 2017 through 2020). Asher died of a heart attack in 2021. The impact he and his music made on underground club music was shown by the numerous figures -- from Gilles Peterson and Benji B to Kyoto Jazz Massive and DJ Spinna -- who paid tribute with radio sets and online mixes.
© Andy Kellman /TiVo