Ian Simmonds

Biography

Simmonds spent part of his childhood traveling the world with his trumpet-playing father. At 18, he moved to London and co-founded the collective Sandals with three friends. In the late 1980s, the collective started a Soho club called Violets, a response to acid house and early rave culture, followed by events at other clubs. In the early 1990s, Sandals formed and had little success before publishing for London Records. Simmonds began releasing his own music in 1995, first as Juryman, later under his real name. In the mid-1990s, he recorded a series of EPs and produced tracks for Leftfield and Pressure Drop. During this period, he met musician Luke Gordon (Spacer). In 1997, SSR released the collaborative LP Juryman vs Spacer: Mailorder Justice. His solo debut LP, Last States of Nature, came out on !K7 in 1999, followed by the Juryman LP The Hill on SSR in 2000. In 2001, !K7 released Return to X, and another Juryman LP, Escape to Where, appeared in 2002. Since the mid-1990s, he has collaborated with Leftfield, Goldfrapp, and Pressure Drop, and composed music for Adam Smith's Channel 4 documentary A.I.P.S. In 2005, he moved to Germany to work on his jazz project Wise in Time, subsequently releasing music through Musik Krause, including five EPs and the LP Burgenland Dubs.