Red Melon Records: Ripe Grooves from the City by the Bay

June 2002, a Saturday at DNA Lounge, and nobody wants to go home. JZ has opened the room, DJ Filter has flown in from Wellington, and London's Rob Mello has gone dark, techy and funky at once. Now Dano, Red Melon's founder, is closing, riding a dubbed-out groove through the club's four-corner rig until the staff have to shoo everyone out at 4:20. This was Melon, and it is still the best way into the label's sound: funky, dubby house that slips between deep and tech, made by DJs for the people in front of them.

Dano, born Dan Hruby, first heard underground house and techno in Copenhagen in late 1989 while studying architecture there. In 1991, in Sun Valley, Idaho, he met Jay Zimmermann, who was throwing mashup underground house parties for the tourist crowds and showed him the basics of DJing. That year he also called Prime Cuts Records in Los Angeles, where Chris Brown, later DJ Brownie, played him records down the phone and mailed them out: his first vinyl. By 1994 he was in San Francisco, coming up through the Wicked and Come-Unity scenes, and in 1996 he founded Red Melon. Jay Zimmermann joined about a year later, and Fredness, a former Dolby Labs engineer from Kitchener, Canada, became the critical third member.

The parties gave the records a home. There were nights at Spundae's Nikita at 1015 Folsom and the label's own House Beautiful, then the Watermelon boat parties, where the fog sometimes lifted off the Bay while Dano and JZ played downstairs and guests like Doc Martin, Joe Silva and Tim Deluxe came aboard. Melon ran monthly at DNA Lounge from 2001 to 2003, bringing in Chris Udoh, Ralph Lawson and David Alvarado, with XLR8R's Philip Sherburne on the lounge decks. Melon:LAX took the crew to Circus Disco in Hollywood, and in 2002 they joined Singapore's Zouk for a Winter Music Conference showcase in Miami Beach.

The music travelled further. Twisted Horns, cut with Joeski as The Twisted Pair!, made Carl Cox's top ten in 1999 and turned up on a Ministry magazine CD. Lee Burridge put Dano's dub of Mood II Swing's The Slippery Track on his Global Underground mix, and Mixmag used it too. In early 2002 Dano and JZ toured New Zealand, Malaysia and Bali, with Red Melon nights in Kuala Lumpur and at Zouk in Singapore, then went on to Mexico. That dubby pressure carried Dano into Fabric's main room again and again, to The End and to The Arches in Glasgow, and as far as Propaganda in Moscow and Pacha in Portugal.

After a final run of releases in 2004, Red Melon fell silent for twenty years. It came back in 2024 from Carlsbad with the Therapy Remixes, made with Sheffield's Liam Connolly and sung by Robert Owens, and old friends have been joining new voices ever since. San Francisco's fog is far behind now. But when Dano steps up for a cameo set at Shelter in Encinitas, it still sounds like 4:20 at DNA Lounge, with nobody ready to go home

Contact: info@redmelon.com