Simon Dunmore at Bump N Hustle

Simon Dunmore is Defected; plain and simple. Without him, one of the world's longest-standing and most highly respected house music labels would not exist.

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Date published: 19th Jan 2020

As the founder and A&R director of Defected, arguably the United Kingdom's leading dance music imprint, Simon Dunmore is a highly influential industry figure who remains a DJ at heart and whose professional experience predates the founding of his label by well over a decade. A longtime record collector, Dunmore first began spinning records in 1982 as a soul music DJ with a particular love for the Salsoul, Philadelphia International, and Motown labels. During the 1980s he worked at one of London's premier record stores, Soul & Disco Centre in Rayners Lane, and he also worked as a journalist, writing for Blues & Soul magazine and then founding his own fanzine, The London Soul Circular. All the while, he continued to advance his reputation as a DJ throughout England and beyond; he went to Ibiza as early as 1985, before the rise of acid house and the commercialization of the island. In 1989 Dunmore began working in the A&R field, initially for Cooltempo, a London-based subsidiary of Chrysalis. While at Cooltempo he signed smash hits such as Arrested Development's "Everyday People" and Kenny Thomas' "Thinking About Your Love" -- not to mention dance classics such as River Ocean's "Love and Happiness (Yemaya y OchĂșn)," a Masters at Work production featuring salsa star India -- and he also remixed a number of singles for the label. In 1995 Dunmore moved to AM:PM, a dance music subsidiary of A&M, and while working there signed more hits, for example, Ultra NatĂ©'s "Free," Mousse T's "Horny," and Roger Sanchez's "Another Chance." Toward the end of the decade, Dunmore and colleague Janet Bell decided to "defect" from AM:PM after learning that Universal Music Group, in the wake of its takeover of A&M, was planning to cut their division. Hence the founding of Defected in 1999. From the time of its inaugural release, Soul Searcher's "Can't Get Enough," a Top Ten hit, Defected enjoyed an incredible run of success. Rather than sign artists to long-term contracts, Dunmore licensed particular tracks for re-release and, given the brand equity of Defected, generally propelled them to a much greater level of success, often breaking them into the British mainstream. In addition to his A&R work over the years, Dunmore continued to spin records on a regular basis, DJing at clubs as well as on CD. He has a long list of mix albums to his credit, many of them in the popular Defected in the House series; for many years in a row, beginning in 2004, he helmed the Eivissa volumes of the series.

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