From what I’ve read, you’ve been into electronics from an early age. When did you get into synths/drum machines/etc.? Did you get into them from a musician’s perspective or from an engineer’s perspective?

I love the sound of the 808 and its x0x relatives and I wanted to understand the physical reality of whats inside it, to have the knowledge the original designers had.  I wanted access to the same palette of analog circuitry they used, because its ultra-minimal stuff and within that is a special kind of truth, it has a purity that I admire.  Imagine the challenge to take the sound of an arbitrary percussion instrument and translate it into transistors and opamps.  It’s not going to be a perfect sonic clone, but instead you get something unique and potentially magic.

Studying this stuff is really rewarding, I’ve gained insight on how technological progress has guided the evolution of electronic music.  At every stage of progress from tubes to chips, someone has been there pushing the envelope with creative circuitry in service of aesthetics, to please the ear, to give musicians a new expressive tool.  Yet, looking under the hood at synths of different eras, you can see sort of a struggle between the consumer and the manufacturer.  And in the fray, a lot of good circuits have been forgotten.  I’m fascinated as an engineer by the challenge of recreating these circuits and understanding exactly how they work.  Then, the fun part is making creative changes to arrive at something new, something that potentially could have existed back in the day, but perhaps it was just a bit too complicated or bizarre to be mass produced.

When did you get into circuit bending? What were some of the first bends you did to studio gear (as opposed to toys)? Why did you choose these specific pieces of hardware? What results were you going for?

As a kid I built lots of Forrest Mims projects and had some fun with contact points in Casios but didn’t think much of it until my late 20′s. Thats when I quit a chemistry career and started messing with electronics again.  Saturn Return I suppose?  Suddenly I had a lot of time on my hands and an apartment full of electronics.

I picked stuff to bend that I hadn’t seen done before, forbidden stuff with AC power connections like FX processors.   Digital answering machines make glitchy lo-fi samplers.  I integrated one inside a cruddy bass amp and presto, an amp with record and playback features!  I tried things with visual output rather than audio, like an electronic typewriter and video projector.  The Indian company Radel makes funky electronic tabla boxes, I found these sound quite awesome with bends.

I’ve modded a lot of gear recently.  Erich Ragsdale’s TX-606 (based on TR-606) is certainly the most elaborate, its a luxury device.  Then there’s more utilitarian mods like adding 36 mute switches to my Studiomaster Diamond mixer.  Why don’t mixers ever have mutes on the aux sends?  I don’t get it.

From what I’ve heard (and watched) with Bodytronix, you’re doing pretty straight-forward dance music with not-so-straight-forward (to put it mildly) gear. Most of your work is experimental but with Bodytronix, you’re doing something more aesthetically accessible. Why?

I enjoy Bodytronix because at the heart it’s truly experimental, but we’re playing sounds that make me want to get up, stuff that pivots on rhythm and melody.  My previous experimental projects seemed to gravitate toward a melancholic, alienating vibe, and that sort of limited emotional spectrum became tiresome.  But, start up a good bassline over an 808 beat and that always makes me smile.

Anyway, I’ve always loved electro, techno, acid, so its fun to tackle these genres with handmade instruments.   It may not be obvious when hearing Bodytronix, but some of the rhythm and melodic sequences are generated by algorithms.  I like designing hardware that composes music automatically.  Its a thrill to put these untested ideas into practice for the first time and crank the result thru a nice PA.  Then we have a beat, we have bass, and everybody’s having fun.

You used to work fixing high-end studio gear and hardware. What insights did that give you about modifying/bending gear?

Doing repairs exposes you to schematics for all kinds of audio circuitry, and with the pressure to get it working so you can earn a buck, stuff starts to make sense pretty fast.   Studio gear is quite educational to look inside because you’re seeing stuff that was designed for performance, rather than simply being cheap and easy to mass produce.

In a nutshell?  Hot glue sucks.

Could you elaborate on the continuum from bending through modding to design?

In all three scenarios, you’ve got a soldering iron, some wire and components.  The first case, bending, its an entry level approach in that there’s little or no theory, its just trying random stuff until either you like the result, get tired, or fail by destroying the device you were messing with.   Next, learn to read schematics and understand a little about how electrons move, now you’ve got a measure of insight and you can start to plan specific mods on your gear.  You know in advance more or less what effect you want to produce, and you understand which components to focus on to get results.  Finally, once you start digging in the books, you see things from an electron’s perspective, you’ve digested stacks of schematics from classic gear you respect, and the oscilloscope is no longer a mystery.   Then you can sit down with a pencil and paper and sketch something new on a creative impulse – and the real experiment is to build it and see if it sounds anywhere close to what you imagined.

Could you go into detail about your live setup for Bodytronix (perhaps focusing more on your favorite instruments)? I’d be very interested in knowing more about the drum machine you built.

Erich and I have duplicate set-ups in essence, because we each use an analog drum machine, a sequenced bassline monosynth, and a vintage keyboard synthesizer.  So the layers can get thick.  Erich’s got a TR-606 that is really boss, it has pretty much every mod he asked for.  That, plus an external handclap machine we call the Clap-raca.  Its a hybrid of the 808 and 909 CP with filter and decay controls.  Analog handclap is a very crucial sound.  Just as crucial as his x0xb0x.  This is essential acid: 606 + 303 + clap, such a classic combo.

For keyboards, Erich’s currently using a Multivox synthesizer, and I like my Yamaha SY-1 and Alesis QS6.1.  Gotta have a polysynth for pads, and the Alesis is effective with some help from FX.

Most of my setup is handmade circuits built on perfboard.  There are about 30 individual boards split up into 3 boxes.  Ten of the boards are drum sounds, another ten are sequencers, and the rest are synths.  The drums are based on TR-808 schematics.  I built the BD, SD, CH/OH as straight-up clones, but the MT, LT, CP/MA, and CB/RS are experimental.  They have additional sequencers onboard, their purpose is to make components materialize in and out of the circuit, sort of like automatically modifying itself in sequenced patterns.  That way the sound morphs continuously within a set of discrete possibilities.  It can sound really fresh, and alien at the same time.  These are special circuits, but fairly complex because they are all analog with discrete logic.   I really need to make the 808 cymbal next.

My sequencers are experiments.  This is rewarding territory to explore, I enjoy designing algorithms for composition.  The drums are triggered by two sequencer algorithms – symmetric and asymmetric.  By switching them on and off independently, I can have a four on the floor beat transform into something like a funky solo.  The asymmetric sequencer was inspired by a 1972 machine called the Triadex Muse.  It contained a really beautiful compositional algorithm.  My sequencers are controlled by selecting numbers, and what comes out isn’t always what I expected.  Its good that way, the machine always has a new idea for the next rhythm, even if I don’t.

The handmade synths in my setup are pretty strange and amusing.  There’s the original Drone Commander prototype, also a modulated grid of LEDs that’s played with a photodiode stylus.  These are the little synths, one board each. Then there’s a big synth that spans seven boards.  It has a crazy algorithm to generate diatonic melody, and this is sequencing a 3-oscillator monosynth.  There’s a second sequencer for synchronized LFO on the filter.  It gets sounds from dubby wobble bass to acid leads, and since its controlled by numbers, I pretty much just pick some numbers and let it take care of the details… 4-bar loop of melodic 16th notes in G minor?  With acid filter and glide and sub-octave?  No problem.

The rest of my stuff is not handmade, like the mixer and FX racks etc.  Actually I’m doing some unusual things with the FX.  I use a Digitech RDS7.6 delay as the master clock for everything – the delay time knob sets Bodytronix’s BPM.  That way I can use the delay as a 2-bar looper, and its always synchronized.  The looper is crucial.

Did you know what drum sounds you wanted and then built it, or was there an uncertainty about the tone and texture quality of the final result?

Early on, I tried some stuff that looked cool on paper but just sounds like analog farts.  Since then the more drum circuits I build, I get a little better at predicting the results.  Its sort of a science or craft maybe, I think just as much as building acoustic drums.

Father knows best

I’ve been DJ’ing for almost 14 years now and as I have gotten older, I have moved on from club life into fatherhood and other daytime activities. This process has also involved a musical shift for me as well. I’ve always loved many different types of music, but now, I’ve been integrating these various sounds into my DJ set. DJ’ing is more than just making people dance, it’s about creating an atmosphere, a mood, a sense of time and place. Ultimately, the role of the DJ is to use sound to create a space that invites people in and makes them feel at home. I hope you enjoy!

Father’s Happy Hour presents “Pre-club music for post-party people vol.1″ by Jackson_Deep

“Pre-club music for post-party people Vol. 1″ set list:
Low Motion Disco – The Low Murderer is Out at Night (Eskimo)
The Zombies – Time of the Season (CBS Records)
Subway – Outbreak (Deadly People)
Lusine – Crowded Room (Type A remix) (Ghostly International)
Walls – Gaberdine (Kompakt)
Solvent – Loss for Words (Ghostly International)
Fleetwood Mac – Hypnotized (DJ 4AM edit)
Atlas Sound – Sheila (Kranky)
6th Borough Project – Miss World (Delusions of Grandeur)
Space Ranger – Herbal Cake (The Revenge Rubdown) (Lovemonk)
Outmode – Life (Future Classic)
Jamie Jones – Ruckus (Discoid Dub) (Hot Creations)
Caribou – Odessa (Cooperative Music)
Charlotte Gainsbourg – Time of the Assassins (Matthew Dear remix) (Because Music)

Please support these artists. If you like the music, all of these tracks are available on Beatport.

Architecture is more than simply the design and building of structures for habitation and commerce. In dense urban environments, architecture becomes the environment. From the corner store to the new apartment building, the urban dweller cannot escape from the reality of the surrounding city. For the working poor, the architecture of their surroundings is often a burden, and sometimes, even a threat. For those whose only means of survival are the housing projects, their lives are often defined by the stark nature of their apartments and the crime outside their door.

The infamous Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago

This has been the reality for many people in the last half-century since the beginning of the “projects” under the Housing Act of 1937. This law established the first Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) in large cities around the United States. These PHAs built housing projects to house the working poor and the unemployed. But these massive apartment units became centralized locations for gangs and the drug trade. Over time, the “PJ’s” became synonymous with crime and gang warfare.

With the Housing Acts of 1965 and 1968, the move towards privatization of low-income housing began with the subsidization of developers and the guarantee of rent to property managers on behalf of low-income residents. The Section 8 Rental Assistance Program of 1974 further progressed privatization by giving vouchers to low-income families who could then use them in acquiring a residence of their choice. It also gave greater control to local governments in the development and administration of affordable housing. One of the goals in privatizing affordable housing was to allow the private sector the opportunity to solve local housing issues.

San Francisco has the second most dense population in the United States behind New York City. With just over 800,000 people in just under 49 square miles, housing is at a premium. Even the barest of accommodations can be out of reach for many working-class families. In response to the need for affordable housing, the City has created agencies like the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and the SF Mayor’s Office of Housing (MOH). These agencies are working in conjunction with private architecture firms and developers to tackle the issue of creating low-income housing at a reasonable cost.

SOMA Studios and Family Apartments

San Francisco architect David Baker has been at the forefront of this affordable housing movement in the Bay Area. Baker’s firm, David Baker and Partners, has the unique ability of creating low-cost structures that combine sustainable building techniques with a high aesthetic value. Baker’s approach to urban architecture is based on the principle of “better living through density.” Data has shown the carbon footprint of an urban area is inversely proportional to its population: the higher the population per square mile, the lower the amount of energy used. One reason is people can walk or take public transportation to their destination instead of using a car; another reason is more people share the same resources, such as water and sewage systems.

With this principle in mind, Baker seeks to create better urban environments for everyone, not just those who can afford it. Working closely with the MOH, Bakers’ firm has created some of the most innovative and cost-conscious affordable housing projects in San Francisco. One such project is SOMA Studios and Family Apartments at the corner of 8th and Howard streets. The colorful geometry of this five-story building houses an eclectic mix of the young and old, from artists to immigrants. The bottom floor houses an organic food market. This combination of commercial and residential space is the key to building neighborhoods with lower carbon footprints by minimizing the distance between sale and consumption. SOMA Studios, built in 2003, was chosen as part of the SF Chronicle’s Top 10 list for architecture of the past decade.

Another project is the Folsom + Dore Supportive Apartments located on Folsom Street and Dore Alley. This innovative multi-family building serves those with special needs, people living with HIV/AIDS, and the chronically homeless. It was the first new building in Northern California to receive a LEED Silver Certification for its use of green principles in its design. The use of plants and open space in this structure create a distinctive sense of place, and this, in turn, creates a sense of pride and ownership in those who live there. When people care about where they live, they become involved with the maintenance and upkeep of their residence.

Folsom & Dore apartments

Baker achieves sustainability in his projects, he says, by “minimizing energy expended in the manufacturing process.” This includes choosing materials that combine low-cost functionality with high-impact aesthetics – integral color concrete, for instance. The use of local artisans and designers allows for the variety and individuality necessary to create the personality of a vibrant community. This in turn puts money back into the local economy as well as minimizes the energy consumed to get materials from where they are fabricated to the actual project site.

Across San Francisco, Baker’s designs have brought color and playfulness to areas once smothered by decrepit tenements and crack hotels. Instead of gentrifying the neighborhood into high-market condominiums for the wealthy, though, these projects are serving the people who call these neighborhoods home. Compare SOMA Studios with the Soviet Bloc-style architecture of traditional housing projects and it’s clear to see why David Baker is part of a revolution in transforming our urban landscape.

Courtisane

I came across Van Olffen’s work while I was researching conceptual, Dieselpunk and Steampunk-related art online. What struck me first about Van Olffen’s work was the masterful way he invokes the future by referencing the past, and I was intrigued by his use of late-19th-to-early-20th Century war paraphernalia such as gas masks and trench coats. Van Olffen’s work goes beyond pastiche, instead his works are cohesive visions of netherworlds: neither past nor future, and yet, paradoxically, beholden to both. One of the most interesting aspects of Van Olffen’s work, though, is his ability to give the future a sense of nostalgia. His romantic dystopias seem to long for a past that never really existed.

Van Olffen was kind enough to answer a few questions for me about the motivations and machinations behind his work.

Your art combines imagery from many different time periods – some that haven’t even happened yet. Which interests you more – the past or the future? Why?

Chapelier

I’m certainly not interested in the future, I don’t see anything bright in that direction. The only light I see is not the daylight, rather the one of a locomotive that human race is about to catch at full throttle and that will smash this once living entity before this latter one had even the time to follow the recommendations of Stephen Hawking, namely colonize space. Since the death of science-fiction, I’m not expecting anything from the future excepting maybe an encounter of the third kind, which would make me withdraw immediately what I’ve just said!

I’m more interested in the past as a way to understand the present and how in less than one century we all became “citizens of the age of the ephemera” as Alvin Toffler said pertinently. The lost civilizations, the great conflicts, men, discoveries, etc., whole those new quantic waves that were shaping the face of humanity. Needless to say it was more impressive than… Facebook!

When you say, “the death of science fiction,” what do you mean? Why do you feel it is dead?

Zyklon B Baby

One century ago, in other words yesterday, the XXIst century was imagined as a prosperous era where everyone would have been happy in his work, the disparities would have disappeared and we would be travelling in flying cars… Thirty years, that’s not so long ago… And what do we got? Planes in the face (9/11), children taken as hostages and killed on a large scale (Beslan) and so on.

From Homo Sapiens we are now Homo Numericus. If George Orwell was still alive, he would be amazed by all the things our time can offer on a silver plate at the startup of his computer. As for Emil Cioran, he would already have blown his brains out since a while!

More seriously, the Science Fiction doesn’t mean anything anymore for me except an aesthetic value…

When do you think this happened?

Science Fiction as a genre has disappeared from the radar since, let’s say, the 1930s and the Turing machine that indirectly contributed to the birth of the Internet. That’s is the less to say not a small revolution.

The intrusion of the Net in our time is not science fiction, it is very real and nobody saw it coming except a few prophets. If you had said at the end of the World War II that in half a century the kids of your kids would be sending photos through waves,  listening to music on dematerialized supports and chatting in real time with people on the other side of the planet, I think you would have been considered as a lunatic or at least for a serious crank, because in the Science Fiction facts it had only a meaning when it was not existing.

Nowadays everything written, thought, realized, imagined by the so called Science Fiction artists has far more chances to happen and in a shorter time limit than the Science Fiction has ever been able to imagine since his origins, that is to say from Jules Verne.

The balance of forces has changed: everything, absolutely everything, including the cybernetic man or the cloned dog, has become more likely than unlikely and that’s all the difference.It’s in that way that for me the Science Fiction is dead and while its body is still warm Anticipation has already replaced it.

Oxygen

You satarize both historical figures (Winston Churchill) and pop icons (Disney) with a combination of humor and anger. How do you feel about pop culture?

I don’t feel anything, I’m not interested anymore by pop culture. For me it is like advertisement: it tends to eat oneself as “renewal” which is ultimately never new, as it would like us to believe; it is more like a frozen meal badly warmed.

Some of my favorite work of yours are the post-apocalyptic Victorian pieces. What was your inspiration for this work?

Mecatron

First of all, I’d like to put right one thing: my pieces are not Victorian but rather Second Empire. This might seem to be a quite trivial precision but this is an important one. Steampunk is ordinarily represented in a Victorian environment and, according to me, that’s what confers to the different representations a similar look, whatever the production horizon is. The Crystal Palace will always be the Crystal Palace, and London, London dispite the presence of a little mechanical dog or a turbo fiacre flying here and there. My pieces being not positioned in London but in Paris, the Paris of the baron Hausmann, Napeleon III and Victor Hugo, I strongly believe that my images doesn’t have that similar look. It was a period of confusion, riot in the very heart of the city when the face of the capital was changing to become what we know today. It could not have happened without a certain idea of chaos which is quite seductive for me, as you can easily understand. So I think that the part of my work related to that period are more Retro-chaotic Second Empire than post-apocalyptical Victorian. More than a precision it is the answer to your question.

What is the process for your work? What medium do you use? Is everything done on a computer?

As powerful as a computer is with its quadcore, tera octets of storage and gigas of RAM or even a Colossus type computer like in the movie of Joseph Sargent, it will never give you an original idea even if you connect firewire or hdmi plugs to your ears. It’s only a tool I use to finalize some steps like I could use a hammer to drive a nail into a wall. To go further with that metaphor: before driving the nail into the wall, the wall had to be built and before that, plans had to be done and so on.

Same process for an image: first the idea, then the sketches and a more elaborated drawing, usually a wash drawing. A lot of photographic takes are following and the computer comes into the process, to work at the same time on preparatory steps and the final ones, as a centralization tool.

Bon Boulet Bobbies

What do the terms “steampunk” and “dieselpunk” mean to you? How have these movements influenced you, or do you feel it is the other way around?

Steampunk and Dieselpunk mean nothing, they are only generic words to name things. Personally I refuse the idea to belong to one or other of those categories. You may notice that I’m not only doing “Steampunk” images but that I’m also exploring other universes, trying to keep, of course, a stylistic consistency in the use of duotone or colors.

For the rest I wouldn’t say that I’m influenced by other artists in that field. If I need to refer to something I’d say classical images, like North American pictures from the beginning of the XXth century or paintings of Edward Hopper, for example, whom was said to “paint the silence”, or Michelangelo whose artworks are always worth contemplating.

To conclude, I’m not making Steampunk, I’m making Graphic Sampling.

Babel Central Station

In the ever-shifting sonics of electronic dance music, a new sound emerges every so often that separates itself from its predecessors and becomes more than the sum of its influences. As the second decade of the century begins the new sound is called dubstep. Over the past ten years dubstep has evolved and matured; now it is poised to break through the boundaries of its scene and cross-over into mass appeal. Although dubstep has its roots in London, San Francisco’s vital dubstep scene is at the vanguard in the propagation of this cutting-edge sound.

Dubstep is the endpoint of a mutation of sounds that began in London back in the 90′s. First there was hardcore and then drum’n'bass, a combination of hyperactive drum breaks and thick, rolling bass lines. As that scene settled into a dark niche in the late 90′s, 2-step garage emerged with a slower tempo and the swing of its sparser beats. Then came grime which, as the name implies, took a darker approach to the 2-step sound by incorporating elements of hip-hop and dancehall into the equation. Then, a subtle shift occurred when the bass got bigger, more complex and moodier: dubstep was born.

Dubstep’s history in San Francisco’s clubs began with a monthly called Grime City, started by Ben Enzyme and Emcee Child. Already hooked on the 2-step and grime sound, the infiltration of dubstep records onto the decks was a natural progression. Juju, a well-established drum’n'bass DJ, also began to push the sound at his Narco.Hz events. Then in 2005, DJ and promoter Ripple threw the now-legendary party, Superheroes and Supervillians, which was the first party to fly in top UK dubstep DJs.

Promoters soon took notice of this new sound and began to push forward with monthlies and one-offs. The Full Melt parties along with events thrown by promoters such as Surefire Sound and An-ten-nae put down the foundation upon which the current scene thrives. The sound spread outside the city as well to Northern California’s vibrant festival circuit including Symbiosis, Raindance and Lightning in a Bottle. Spearheaded by Lorin and his Bassnectar project, dubstep along with its mutant cousin – a sound called glitch – has become an integral part of main stage music at outdoor events.

As these events began to create a stir in the club scene, behind the scenes, local producers began making tracks that were finding their way onto the UK’s airwaves such as DJ Mary Ann Hobbs highly-respected BBC Radio1 show. San Francisco now boasts a bevy of established producers: Antiserum, Djunya, Babylon Systems and Eskmo are a few of the artists who have been making waves both in the US and internationally with their productions.

As the scene continues to grow a new wave of artists and fans are being drawn to dubstep’s massive low-end frequency manipulations. In addition, San Francisco now boasts the largest vinyl dubstep record shop on the West Coast. Red Sky Records (224 7th St.) was opened in September 2009 by co-owners Jon Holliday and Beau Bales aka General Nao. The store has also become a nexus for the scene, hosting local up-and-coming acts like the Spit Brothers as well as international stars such as Boxcutter and Ramadanman.

One of the main factors in the rise of San Francisco as a major player in dubstep culture is Surefire Agency. Started by Miro and Sam Supa, Surefire has become the number one booking agency in the world of dubstep. One look at its roster reveals a who’s who of dubstep producers and DJs, including UK artists Shackleton and Peverelist who both released critically-acclaimed full-length albums in 2009. With this accessibility to so many top dubstep acts, Surefire Sound, the production side of the company, is able to bring to the Bay Area the most current and important artists from around the world.

What makes the San Francisco’s dubstep scene the most interesting though is the rate at which it is growing. As Sam Supa explained to me, the dubstep scene today has changed from what it was six months ago to a year ago and beyond. With a whole new generation of kids getting turned on to electronic music, for many of them dubstep is becoming the first underground sound they are listening to.

Most recently, some of hip-hop’s top artists, such as the Wu-Tang Clan and Lil’ Jon, have begun to collaborate with dubstep producers. This cross-pollination of scenes only heightens dubstep’s visibility within the US and abroad and raises the chances for cross-over appeal. As dubstep continues to expand beyond the boundaries of its underground sub-culture roots, San Francisco is already leading the way into the future of electronic music.

Filed under: Blogroll, Music Tagged: Dubstep, Full Melt, Narco Hz, Sam Supa, san francisco, Surefire ]]> http://jacksondeep.com/2010/04/29/dubstep-in-sf-the-rise-of-bass-culture/feed/ 0 jacksonsf http://jacksondeep.com/2010/04/06/the-art-of-storytelling/ http://jacksondeep.com/2010/04/06/the-art-of-storytelling/#comments Tue, 06 Apr 2010 09:58:38 +0000 Jack http://jacksondeep.com/?p=255 ]]> All communication is storytelling. I recently had this revelation that all acts of communication whether they be profound or mundane are all forms of storytelling. The goal of communication is to impart information to someone else. Most communication strives to correlate itself with reality. Let me tell you what happened today. Let me tell you how to work this program. But all language can ever hope to do is point towards the truth of reality; it can never be reality itself, it can never be truth in and of itself. It is the most powerful guide to the truth that we as a species have, but all communication is ultimately a story told by one person to another.

For all the knowledge a mind can acquire, it has difficulty explaining that which is beyond words. The perception of any experience is made up of sights, smells, sounds, emotions, thoughts and memory. As time passes between the mind’s attention to an experience and the actual experience itself, the mind creates more and more thoughts, commentary and judgements on the original experience. When this person then relates this experience to someone else, the explanation is wrapped in that person’s own critique of the event. Therefore, one is never given the truth of an event but rather an impression of it based on a person’s reinterpretation of that original moment. One can only hope the story is accurately portraying the event.

Some people are excellent storytellers. Each anecdote passed along is pleasurable for the way it was told as much as for the actual knowledge shared. Many people have difficulty expressing themselves and their lack of communication skills can often hide the truth they so desperately want to share. The limitations of communication creates the boundary between two people truly understanding each other. In rare occassions, we are fortunate enough to meet someone with a similar outlook and mental framework as ourselves, and these relationships provide us with small amounts of the understanding we, as social creatures, crave. But for the most part, communication is diluted by the limits of language and context on the speaker’s side and the ability to truly listen without prejudice on the listener’s side.

The art of communication is the ability to open one’s self to the listener, to understand where he or she is at, and then to carefully use words or pictures or art to reach out and connect to him or her. The burden of communication is on the person speaking, even though the listener stands an impenetrable wall of preconceived thoughts and beliefs. Many people are unable to listen, they can only hear what is comfortable to them, what is palatable, the rest is blocked out as if it had never been spoken. In these cases, it is important to understand that communication is just storytelling: telling a story that strives to create a bridge of understanding between two people.

Father’s Happy Hour

pre-club music for post party-people

My inspiration was the impending arrival of my son (due on June 29th of 2010.) I have realized over the course of the past few months, and perhaps over the past few years even, I no longer like late nights and late parties. But, in spite of this, I feel nothing compares to hearing good music in a proper atmosphere: great sound, good atmosphere and amongst friends. I know as I am getting older there are many others just like me: retired ravers, day-trippers, family people but still in love with music. Therefore I believe there is a need in the music community I hope I am able to fulfill by presenting a monthly happy hour which caters to a more mature crowd.

I am happy to have on board with me my friends and fellow residents, Kevin Knapp, from Satellite, and Marc Kate aka Silencefiction, label head of one of San Francisco’s best labels, Untitled & After. My goal with the sound track to this event is to bring together all the music I have ever loved together in a context befitting the atmosphere and quality of the evening. British indie rock , 80′s synthpop, classic deep house, electronic lounge, dubstep and the many layers of sonic texture between and beyond.

I’d like to give a shout-out to my friend Nate Riley for the fantastic illustration for the flyer and to Marc Kate for the design.

The esoteric art of the opening DJ

No one seems to understand it. No one seems to respect it. And it might just be the most important part of the night. RA explains why the warm-up DJ deserves perhaps even more credit than the headliner.

There are many variables in producing a proper electronic music event. Some things are obvious: a proper space with quality sound and engaging visuals are part of the physics that create a comfortable environment for the crowd. If, for instance, the sound system isn’t properly dialed in to the acoustics of the space, the performer, regardless of his or her talent, is going to sound like crap. The result is a lethargic dance floor and an angry performer who will not only expect to get paid but will never come back.

But there are many subtle factors that can keep an event from being labeled “epic” and instead relegate it to just “another night out.” Fast bartenders, adequate bathrooms and a security crew that behaves professionally all contribute to a clubgoers overall perception. When it’s done right, these things aren’t even noticed. But when you have to stand in line for half an hour to piss in a flooded bathroom, while in the main room, everyone’s mind is being blown by the DJ you paid a lot of money to see, your night gets flushed down the toilet.

The last crucial element in the event equation, though, is the opening DJ. At a live music event, if the opening band is terrible there is always a short break to switch out equipment. The headliner then takes the stage and the night moves on. But in a club environment the music rarely stops from the moment the first track begins. This continuous flow of sound is maintained until the lights are turned on at the end of the night. A good DJ taps into this flow and manipulates the energy of a room through careful programming and mixing choices. Mastery of this flow allows a DJ to take the crowd on the sonic journey which has come to define the all-night electronic music party.

But the headliner almost never plays from the moment the doors open. One or more opening DJs are used to warm up the room, keeping the crowd entertained and the alcohol flowing until the headliner’s designated time slot later in the evening. And many promoters seem to be unaware of how important this role can be. A DJ who isn’t up to the task of opening can dissipate the energy on the dance floor before it has a chance to solidify. In a good scenario, the crowd will pack the bar and hug the walls until the headliner comes on. In a worst case scenario, the club will empty out before the DJ has time to mix in a new track.

In many ways, the warm-up DJ faces more challenges than the headliner. Consider this: The opener must start with a fairly empty room that slowly fills with generally sober people who aren’t there to see them.

The DJ must create an atmosphere out of thin air and at the same time set the stage for the musical narrative of the headliner’s set. Steve Lawler, head of Viva Music who has headlined top venues the world over, agrees, “The warm-up’s job is in fact the hardest and very important to how the whole night will turn out. If a warm-up does a good job, you can feel it in the air, and then usually 99% of the time, it’s an amazing night.”

The opening DJs biggest challenge is to program a set that will seamlessly sync with the DJ who will go on next. “The opening DJ has a huge responsibility; they can dictate the entire mood of the party,” says Magda, of Minus Records. “You have to think about who you are opening for and how they play in order to avoid overpowering their sound.” Each headliner has a definitive musical style that presents a unique programming challenge to the opener. “If I open for Theo Parrish I definitely will not be playing the same records as opening for Richie Hawtin. That’s the fun of it though,” she explains. “It’s a challenge to get the different crowds worked up while complementing the main act at the same time.”

A good opener must have two things: an attenuated awareness for the musical progression of the night, and an extremely large and eclectic record collection. Craig Richards would concur. With a ten year residency at Fabric, London’s most respected club, Richards is highly regarded as one of the best opening DJs in the world. Warming up a room is a position Richards fully embraces, “Over the years I have often opted for the warm-up slot. I find it a wonderful challenge which if played properly can result in maximum musical fulfillment.”

Great opening DJs know their music and the subtle effects each record transition will have on a dance floor. DJ Yousef, the DJ and promoter behind Liverpool’s legendary party, Circus, says for a DJ to successfully warm up a crowd “they need to be aware that the tempo, the groove, the energy and even the texture of every record must be seriously considered.” This sensitivity to the way music influences the crowd allows the opener to begin the patient task of drawing people to the dance floor.

Dirtybird’s Christian Martin describes it as such: “Your job is to peel people away from the bar, and keep building upon that small nucleus of early dancers that will eventually become a packed dance floor. It’s important to pay attention to the mood of the floor and adjust the direction of your set accordingly, without going overboard too early.” Martin’s last point brings up another extremely important trait of great openers: restraint.

“I’ve [sometimes] had to kill the

music altogether to reset

the energy.” – Lee Burridge

“I know a lot of my fellow DJs feel the pain on so many nights from an inappropriate, overly energetic and mostly far too big warm-up set,” Lee Burridge laments. With over 25 years of experience, Burridge is universally recognized as one of the world’s most talented DJs. He says great warm-up DJs “understand where the guest DJ starts from—not where they are two hours into their set. The energy needs to be left at a point where the guest DJ can comfortably continue from.” Burridge told me that in many cases the opener plays records of such high intensity “I’ve [sometimes] had to kill the music altogether to reset the energy.”

“I’ve warmed up for many big names over the years and I realized a long time ago that the night wasn’t about me alone,” Burridge continues, “This seems hard to accept for a lot of upcoming DJs as they want the attention of the people. This attitude totally disturbs the gradual build of the night as a whole.” Many young DJs see the opening set as their chance to show what they’ve got, but the result of this enthusiasm is exactly the opposite. Yousef states when an opening DJs set is “hitting them over the head with an iron fist” of uptempo, peak hour tracks, it “will always result in not getting another gig.”

But there is more to opening a room than just keeping the tempo under 124 bpm and playing deep music. The signature of a great opener is defined by a devotion to the music he or she is playing. As Lawler explains, “you can tell when an opener is someone that has just gone onto Beatport’s Top 100 [to buy their] Deep House [tracks] and is trying to do it, as opposed to someone who loves and collects the music they are playing. You can always hear passion in a DJ’s set.”

Craig Richards takes it one step further: “I’m absolutely certain that the music lovers, not the DJs, are fit for the job—the people who can forget themselves for a moment and deliver a groove, a beginning and a sense of belief.” The best openers are in many ways the people who are true music lovers, the ones who obsessively collect obscure and eclectic music for the simple joy of it. These DJs know their music so well they intuitively know there is a right track to play in each moment for any audience.

Opening a room requires the ability to step outside what you want to play and, instead, to be conscientious of what the crowd is willing to accept. “As a DJ you have to find the middle ground of being yourself and being mindful of what you think will work on the dance floors of the world’s clubs,” Yousef explains, “I always play the music I love but I’m experienced enough to enjoy a broad selection of electronic music.” Each DJ I spoke with emphasized the need for an opener to have an extensive range in musical tastes and, most importantly, the patience to hold back, and to slowly build the tension in preparation for the headliner.

For both Lawler and Burridge, each sees the role of the opener as important as his own role as the headliner. Lawler tries and takes an opener with him to gigs, “so I know the energy and vibe will be right when I go on.” But they each tell me it is often the promoter who chooses a DJ not fit for the role, or sometimes, Burridge says, “The promoter has been known to come into the booth and tell the warm-up to pick it up.” In either case, it reveals a lack of understanding in how a night develops. Whereas a nervous promoter wants to see the dance floor packed with people pumping their fists in the air from the start, all the DJs I spoke with saw this as detrimental to the night as a whole. As Richards put it, “There can be nothing worse than an over-enthusiastic start—a soup that burns the mouth or curtains ripped open to let the light in.”

But this ultimately leads to one question for the promoter: If you are going to spend the money to fly in and accommodate a world-class DJ, why not spend the extra time and money to get your guest a proper opener? With the high risk inherent in throwing an event coupled with a lack of understanding about the role of the opener, DJs who are picked to warm up a night are often inexperienced and more often than not, underpaid. A promoter can spend thousands of dollars on a headliner, and to rein in costs, will often only spend a couple of hundred on an opener.

So obviously, great opening DJs aren’t in it for the money. Instead, these DJs are perhaps the purest music fan in every sense of the word. Since the opener’s artistry is built upon subtlety, they rarely receive any accolades. The media often overlooks good warm-ups, instead focusing on the headliners, and only knowledgeable crowds will recognize the skill that goes into the nuance and restraint of slowly building the tension in a room. This often leaves only the headliner’s gratitude as any sign of appreciation.

In fact, the biggest reward an opener receives is the opportunity to explore musical territory a headliner often cannot. Playing opening sets “gives justification for buying records that you know will only sound right at certain times,” says Craig Richards. “The chance to hear these records loud was and still is my driving force. Playing deep, quirky, delicate tunes at a time when they make sense is an utter pleasure to the man who seeks the truth for the music not the limelight.” Successful venues and events have always recognized what a proper opener provides: The atmosphere that is the foundation of any event.

Words / Jack O’Shaughnessy

Published / Tue, 22 Sep 2009

comment 137 Comments

Photo credits /

Header image – Ruairi Drayne

Lee & Craig – Nick Ensing

Magda at Club 2 Club – Nick Ensing

In one’s childhood there are those rare events profound enough as to to emblazon a memory that remains as vivid as when it actually occurred. I distinctly remember Christmas morning in 1983. I had just turned eleven and while I still had the exuberance of a child for presents under a decorated tree, I had also begun to comprehend the meaning of cool. My hope was that this idea of cool would have my name on it and be amongst the carefully wrapped boxes beneath the family Christmas tree.

So early that morning my brother and I raced as we did every year to the living room eager to rampage through the careful architecture of presents stacked beneath the tree like Godzilla and Mothra in downtown Tokyo. But this year, I didn’t have to search for that one special gift. Instead, it was waiting for me. Leaning up against the wall next to the tree was a boyishly good-looking face looking at me with a smile that said “we’re going to be good friends.” It was a vinyl copy of Michael Jackson’s Thriller with a small bow attached to a corner. I hadn’t find cool, it had found me.

From that moment on, my friends and I sought to imitate Jackson’s every dance move; we waited impatiently for every new video. When the video for the single “Thriller” was premiered on Mtv, we sat in awe at the creative spectacle, the magical story being told through music and dance. Little did we know at the time that we were watching what is still considered to be the greatest music video ever produced. But Thriller really was about the music: for the first time in history, an album borrowed from R’n'B, soul, hard rock and disco and successfully blended it into timeless pop music.

It is impossible to overstate the cultural transformation initiated by Thriller’s release. There were the obvious fashion and dance influences that immediately took place: black and red leather jackets and feeble attempts at the moon walk come to mind. On a larger scale, though, Thriller initiated the era of the modern pop star. With the arrival of cable television and 24-hour news coverage, his every move could now be monitored, every rumor endlessly discussed. Over time, Michael Jackson was transformed from a mortal into a myth: sometimes he would be portrayed as the Herculean hero, and other times he would be labeled the Minotaur.

But beneath the layers of media coverage, court cases and Jackson’s tragic journey through drug addiction lay a man who was perhaps the greatest talent of our time. The quality of his voice was unparalleled in its emotive range: the childlike innocence of “The Girl is Mine” to the raw emotional content of “Beat it.” But he wasn’t just a singer, he was a performer. Nobody could dance like Michael Jackson – nobody. The flow of his body to the rhythm and the constantly cutting-edge dance moves inspired a generation of performers. He is the only singer whose back-up dancers had to keep up with him, never able to match his grace and flair. The remarkable thing when one sees footage of him dancing in the final days before his untimely death was how amazing he still was as a performer – an immortal figure upon the stage.

So much has changed since the release of Thriller. Today’s pop stars come prepackaged with auto-tuned vocals, lip-synced performances and air-brushed videos. Anyone can become a celebrity these days; no talent is required. One of technology’s ironic twists is that it has elevated mere mortals to the stage once graced by the King of Pop. The other irony is that the media that displayed Jackson’s talent to the world would also ultimately be a contributor to his demise. The ever-present eye of the media combined with the ungodly revenues from his album sales and constant touring allowed Jackson to create his hidden world, the details of which we are now just learning.

The shadow of tragedy will forever cast a shadow on Jackson’s legacy. But fame itself has become a tragedy. What has been surprising in the months since his death is that the faults of the man are slowly being forgotten. We are now left with the epic story of his talent: the records, the videos, and the performances. The renewed interest in the life of this artist has made people remember just how remarkable a human being Michael Jackson really was. The mythical beast has been made human once again, and with the return of his humanity, Michael Jackson’s legend lives on.

I find it very difficult to label the past decade as was the case with previous decades. There was no defining sound that “broke through.” Instead, new sounds evolved from old sounds and a new plateau has blossomed, an endless range of fresh arrangements and designs. Retro was reborn and restructured, new steps were reformed and stretched. The awakening was that anyone can do music with a computer, some sweat and, most importantly, some talent, and the entire spectrum of sound was utilized.

So I decided to share some samples from some of my picks for my own personal favorites from the 2000 – 2009. These are in no particular order.

Interpol – Stella Was a Diver and She was Always Down from Turn on the Bright Lights

Tim Hecker – Chimeras from Harmony in Ultraviolet

Radiohead – Everything in its Right Place from Kid A

Ladytron – International Dateline from Witching Hour

The Bug – Skeng from London Zoo

Burial – Archangel from Untrue

Ulrich Schnauss – Gone Forever from A Strangely Isolated Place

Bjork – It’s Not Up to You from Vespertine