Jan Linton

Jan Linton is a singer, musician and producer from Warrington, England, who helped internationalize the music scene in Tokyo, Japan. He studied violin from the age of six, moving briefly onto piano, before discovering pop music and electric guitar as a teenager. When he was 17 years old, his first synthesizer exploded, leading him to try bass guitar instead.

After graduating from Birmingham University, he left for Japan in January 1990, and secured a recording agreement from King Records after just three days. The project combined electronics with Asian pop and a world music flavor, including a performance by violinist and Chinese Kokyu player Masatsugu Shinozaki (who performed on the soundtrack to "The Last Emperor"). A change in A/R management delayed Linton's first CD, "Oinaru Sekai (TrueNirvana)"; it was finally released at the end of 1992. The producer also worked with the Japanese boy band "Smap", with the result that the album swung between electro-pop and Asian World Music. The album was sung in ten languages, including Japanese, and this led to distribution problems as shops were unsure how to categorize it. The cultural and linguistic barriers traumatized Linton, who said the album was "underproduced", and he has made attempts to remix it.

In 1993 Roger Eno introduced Linton to the renowned guitarist and artist Bill Nelson, whom Linton had been a fan of since his university days. Nelson contributed guitar to some new tracks Linton was recording. One was released by Sony in 1994 on an album which sold 15,000 copies. This established Linton as one of the few non-Japanese musicians in the Japanese scene of the time, which centered on clubs such as "Juliana's", modeled superficially on British style "raves". However, Linton's track "6 Ritual" was clearly going in a different direction.

The Japanese scene moved into instrumental techno, estranging Linton, and after his apartment was vandalized in a racially motivated attack, he returned to England for a short time. From 1994-1997 his releases were sporadic.

In 1998 his instrumental piece "Sarajevo" was chosen to open a Princess Diana tribute/charity album sponsored by the British Embassy, and it sold five thousand copies, even though the CD had no label or distribution at all. In 1999 he was able to release an EP of earlier tracks, and Sony Asia Pacific later marketed it. Linton formed a band called "Dr Jan Guru" which played frequently at large venues. Under the band's name, he released three albums over the next few years: starting with "Alienshamanism" in 2000. However, the live members often changed and rarely appeared on the albums; instead, a number of well-known musicians contributed to the recording sessions, such as Duran Duran's John Taylor. The albums also included reworkings of the unreleased tracks Linton had recorded with Bill Nelson.

Linton made several releases in 2000 in the UK, Japan, and Europe. The singles "Inner Sanctum" ("Can't you feel") and "Sarajevo" were both number one hits on the MP3 electronic music charts in several countries. Linton also released the first of a series of experimental albums under his own name, on the "Kaerucafe" label, which is noted for experimental and sampling CDs. Inspired by the notoriously difficult to program Yamaha DX7 synthesizer as used by Brian Eno, "Music for Aliens" was the best selling sampling CD in national stores such as Yamaha. In 2001 a collaborative project with the former Japan and Porcupine Tree synthesist, Richard Barbieri, was again marketed as a sampling CD and titled "Cosmic Prophets". This became a cult classic, and is still available on the UK Burning Shed label.

In 2003 Linton signed a European distribution contract for a compilation of new, unreleased, and re-recorded tracks. The album "Communion" included a cover of John Taylor's "King Porn" (which the band had been playing since a concert in the World Cup Soccer Stadium in Yokohama in 2001), and a track of Linton's, "Lose Yourself With Me", which Taylor also played bass on. The album was released as by Jan Linton/dr jan guru, further establishing Linton as more of a solo artist than as a band member.

In 2004 King records signed Linton to make another album as "dr jan guru" for them. Entitled "Planet Japan", it was in a style closer to rock/cyberpunk, and the controversial subject matter -- Linton's occasionally bitter experiences in Tokyo -- caused a slight stir in the Japanese media. Featuring the former Japan and Ippu Do guitarist Masami Tsuchiya and sounds from Richard Barbieri, (one instrumental, "Sequential Sakura" was credited as a Barbieri/Linton joint composition), it was released by King after being recorded in just seven weeks.

The experience exhausted Linton, and after traveling around East Asia, he moved back to the UK in 2005 to study for a Master of Arts degree in music at a university in England. While supplying sounds for Roland's new sampler, he is currently demonstrating Edirol's VJ software in solo performance, as well as studying new ways of live musical interactivity.