Will Ashon
Will Ashon is an English writer and novelist, former music journalist and founder of the Big Dada imprint of Ninja Tune records.
Ashon was educated at Countesthorpe Community College and Balliol College, Oxford. In the mid-1990s he worked as a music journalist specialising in hip hop for publications including Trace, Muzik and Hip Hop Connection. In 1997 he started the record label Big Dada Recordings in conjunction with Ninja Tune, signing and releasing albums by artists including Roots Manuva, Diplo, Speech Debelle and Wiley.
He published two novels with Faber and Faber, Clear Water and The Heritage and a work of non-fiction with Granta, Strange Labyrinth, in 2017, "an anarchic hymn to the scruffy edgeland of Epping Forest". He left Big Dada in February 2014. In 2019 he returned to the subject of hip hop and released a "genre defying" book about the Wu-Tang Clan's debut album entitled Chamber Music: Enter the Wu-Tang .
