UK house music legend Phil Asher has died

According to friends of the DJ, he passed away in his sleep after suffering a heart attack.

Regarded as one of the finest the UK has to offer, record collector and innate selector Phil Asher is credited for his pivotal and intrinsical role in bridging 4/4 and broken beat, while garnering admiration for his seamless mixing technique.

His first DJ set came at the seminal Delirium in 1991, and since then, he’s gone from strength to strength, crafting a career that spans almost 3 decades, several aliases, and contributions to influential dance music institutions, like Rekids, Versatile Records, Strictly 4 Groovers, and Houseology, among others.

In 2000, Asher co-founded the Co-Op club, located in West London, with Demus, Dego, G-Force, and IG Culture, becoming a hotspot for that broken beat sound. He also hosted ‘R Solution’ with Kirk DeGiorgio and ‘4hero’s’ alongside Dego and Mark Mac on Kiss FM.

During an interview back in 2015, Asher said: ‘Quality over quantity definitely. I’d rather take time, release some music that will be enjoyed for its merit rather than what it is. Good vibrations are more important to me than good chart positions and here-say. It’s not an arrogant vibe, it’s just as you get older your priorities change, now I strive for different goals. I have had a charmed career musically, considering I can’t actually play any instruments properly. I am super grateful and want to give something back’.

You can read some of the tributes coming in on social media from the UK dance scene below.