Producer profile. (Talent).

One of dance music's most prolific producers, Dave Lee is no stranger to the charts. His album under the Jakatta moniker, Visions, recently made a Top 20 debut and has exceeded silver status in less than two months, while its three singles have all reached the Top 10. Not content with his chart career, Lee also runs his own label, Z Records, releasing both underground house and the disco-based tracks with which he made his name.

Lee's decade-and-a-half career ranges from work on Take That's 1993 chart-topper Relight My Fire to his own 2000 disco-based Top 10 hit Must Be The Music. He has also scored hits under a dizzying array of aliases, including Raven Maize, Joey Negro, Z-Factor and Akabu.

Unlike his previous long-players--which have been collections of dance singles--Visions was produced very much as an album. Straddling several genres including soundtrack-sampling hits with vocals from Seal and Sheila Chandra, plus a rap track featuring Ty and several strings-drenched tracks, it marks a conscious step away from his previous club-orientated releases.

"I've been making house records for quite a long time so I wanted to do something a million miles away from stuff I would normally do, avoiding what people would expect from me," he says.

Lee praises the hands-on role played by A&R man Ric Salmon at Ministry of Sound. "He's a musician himself and he knows how to explain things," says Lee. "This was the first time I've worked with a decent A&R guy who could help me make the record, give me direction and who I could bounce ideas off."

For his part, Salmon lauds Lee's attention to detail. "Dave doesn't go out to make commercial records--he just makes them as good as he possibly can," he says. "On the album, he wasn't restrained by genre--and, unusually for a `dance' album, Visions is a CD you can listen to at ...