C.J. Mackintosh
One of the UK's most widely revered DJs and remixers, to whom major record companies regularly indulge their A&R budgets. Chris ‘C.J’ Mackintosh's standard approach, that of radio-friendly, lush garage arrangements, is too MOR for many of the nation's more underground clubbers, but his technique has become the epitome of taste in the mainstream. Clients have included Whitney Houston, Lisa Stansfield and Janet Jackson. Mackintosh actually started out as a hip hop DJ, going on to win the 1987 finals of the DMC mixing championships. After this initial success he would provide hip hop megamixes for labels like Champion. His first venture into remixing proved even more rewarding. Together with Dave Dorrell, he mixed MARRS' Pump Up The Volume, one of dance music's most portentious moments. Mackintosh happily continues his day time job, that of club DJ, and on this basis is one of the first of the UK's ‘names’ to play in the States. However, it is as a remixer he has won fame and fortune, although he also sees the dangers inherent in a DJ-led music scene: ‘With remixing, everyone's doing it and it's wrong, but I think it'll go on because there's nothing to stop it….All sorts of bands are depending on it, they all want a dance mix…. remixing's easy because you're using someone else's ideas. Production, and writing, is a totally different thing’. A list of his credits could fill a small book, but some of the most important include Inner City (Good Life), Dina Carroll (Ain't No Man), PM Dawn (Reality), A Tribe Called Quest (Bonita Applebum), De La Soul (Ring, Ring, Ring), Digital Underground (Packet Man), Simple Minds (Sign Of The Times), Gang Starr (Take A Rest), Whitney Houston (Queen Of The Night) and Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson (The Best Things In Life Are Free).