DJ Culture

DJs are everywhere. On a recent night outside New York's Sound Factory, dedicated fans form a line. Despite the long wait—and a $25 per head charge—they pack the 3000-person club to capacity. The draw: prominent London-based drum and bassist DJ Aphrodite. Downstairs at the coat check the ascendant status of DJs is even more apparent. A kid is playing records on a pair of turntables set up in the open space between the garderobe and the bathrooms—and a crowd has gathered, watching intensely. The kid spins a vinyl platter into position with his left hand. He ignores the crowd, puts his headphones up to one ear and begins to bounce to the beat. On the main dance floor, a variety of creatures dance in outlandish gear. Two women wear angel wings and skimpy tank tops. Glitter chicks flit about with glow sticks in their mouths, a cute trick that produces an eerie green light when they speak. Amid the bouncing and bobbing, a few guys hit the smooth floor for some neo-break dancing. Another group twist their arms and hands like Grateful Dead fans. Girls with bare midriffs climb onto bass boxes the size of SUVs and start to dance. Ten feet above the fray, a couple of figures jump around behind a bank of equipment in the DJ booth. They urge the crowd on (text continued on page 100)DJ Culture(continued from page 81) with sonic booms, stuttering high hats and an array of blips and sirens—the new rock and roll.

Today there is a DJ for everyone—club kids, road trippers, even head bangers. Some just drop booty music. Others spin ambient listening music. Without a doubt, DJs are providing the soundtrack to the late Nineties. For a new generation of listeners, they are on their way to surpassing guitar bands in credibility and popularity. In the hands of a good DJ, the future works. Technological change translates into beats per minute—and everyone can party to that.

The music is fast becoming ubiquitous. Three different Fatboy Slim songs popped up in ads during last year's Super Bowl. Volkswagen, Oldsmobile and Philips pump the stuff in their TV spots, and the worst of it is lapped up by sports highlight shows. On the fashion front, designers have co-opted club looks and now feature cargo pants, platform shoes and super-wide-leg jeans in their runway shows. And thriving websites like Delia's and Alloy can overnight 48-inch-wide pants—at the cuff—to kids stranded in the heartland.

DJs now enjoy rock-star status. They are youth-culture heroes and groupie-worthy electronic music pioneers. They also know how to make money. The Guinness Book of World Records recently added a new category: most successful club DJ. British DJ Paul Oakenfold grabbed the honor with more than 1 million record sales and an annual income of $400,000; England's DJ Magazine also named him best DJ in the world. Darren Ressler, editor in chief of Mixer magazine (which began as Mixmag in 1996), says Americans such as Josh Wink, King Britt, Armand Van Helden, David Morales and DJ Icey all do very well recording and producing albums for a variety of labels. Some, like Morales and Frankie Knuckles, earn $30,000 for a remix and even get points.

Theirs is a peripatetic entrepreneurial lifestyle, which perhaps explains the profusion of mixheads. Cell phones, beepers and laptops are as essential as record crates and turntables. During an average week, Nigel Richards, a Philadelphia DJ who set up 611 Records, will DJ up to five times. "You go to Virginia on Tuesday, Atlanta on Wednesday, you'll hit Los Angeles on Friday, Seattle on Saturday, New York on Sunday—no biggie. It makes it seem like a small country. You keep track of the miles. I want to save 15,000 more so I can get two round-trip first-class tickets to Japan."

The DJ scene is just remote enough and new enough to make it a perfect youth culture. Like punk and rock before it, the music makes the uninitiated older brother or parent reach to cover their ears. At Manhattan's tiny Bar XVI on First Avenue, the crowd looks menacing and slightly druggy—though such traditional rave enhancers as Special K, Ecstasy or even coke and crystal meth are nowhere to be found. As drum and bass DJ Dieselboy—imported from Philly for the night—orchestrates an obscure assault of beats and blips, intense fans here or there occasionally break out into an Irish jig. Then they'll stop as suddenly as they started and flash a shy grin at a neighbor. Other than that, there is little that resembles dancing. Not so at a typical big-name DJ show. At a Fatboy Slim concert the music is easily recognized—he's not above spinning Planet Rock or When Doves Cry. A time-warped visitor from the old Studio 54 would immediately notice comforting similarities (and odd differences) on the dance floor. For one, everyone dances—but facing the same direction. The mirror ball has been replaced by computer game–style graphics on huge screens. And everyone stares intently at the DJ. Periodically Fatboy Slim holds up an album, waves it above his head and smiles. The crowd roars.

"American crowds tend to be on less drugs than English crowds," says Norman Cook, a.k.a. Fatboy Slim. "There's more of a drug culture in England. The first thing that strikes you is the faces. People are actually having tons of fun, but they look like they're in pain. And sometimes you look at people's faces and they're trying to say, 'I'm having a really good time,' but it looks like they're saying, 'I have a very sharp piece of metal up my bottom and somebody's wriggling it around.'"

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As Fatboy Slim, Cook has sold more than 500,000 copies of his most recent album, You've Come a Long Way, Baby. He even pulled down Spin's 1998 single of the year for The Rockafeller Skank.

Cook by far prefers life as Fatboy Slim to when he played bass in the successful English pop band the House-martins. In the band, he says, "I could get free drinks and get laid every night. Musically, though, it wasn't what I wanted to do. I'm not a very good bass player, and I'm not particularly happy stomping around onstage and doing sound checks every day. But the DJ lifestyle seems to suit me, and DJing seems to be what my talent is."

So when did putting on records become so glamorous? Though the roots of DJ culture reach back to the Sixties, things began to spin faster with the advent of electronic dance music. In the States, clubs in Chicago and Detroit pushed the form with house and techno music. Instrumental music exploded in British and European clubs at the end of the Eighties. The boom had two major implications for DJ starpower. First, the DJ no longer had to stand—literally and figuratively—behind a vocalist or rapper. Second, music composition now consisted of manipulating prerecorded, preprogrammed or preexisting sounds—the very thing DJs had been doing for years—meaning that the distinction between electronic musician and DJ completely broke down.

Jonathan More, of the British duo Coldcut, says things developed to the point where he began to question the definition of DJ as disc jockey. "We added two extra turntables to our setup, so we had four turntables and two mixers," he says. "We progressed from there to using samplers and CDs and eventually to laptops—and manipulating things on laptops. And now we do a lot of the stuff on laptops. That's what we call a digital jockey."

There is still a school of DJing that centers on manual skills, tricks and acrobatics—the physical act of DJing on two Technics 1200s. The DMC organization, producers of Mixer magazine and a series of excellent DJ-mix CDs (continued on page 156)DJ Culture(continued from page 100) (Mixer Live), sponsors DJ championships all over the world. In 1999, DMC will host 15 regional contests around the country, luring 500 contestants. For the first time, the world championship will be held in the U.S.—in New York, on September 17 and 18. Some DJs shine in this setting—San Francisco's Invisibl Skratch Piklz are so good they were rumored to have been banned from DMC events to foster more competition. DJ Q-Bert is credited with perfecting such techniques as the crab scratch, the flare scratch and others. "Some DJs are fantastic to watch," says More. "Kid Koala, who's on Ninja Tune, is visually an amazing DJ. It's like watching a master violinist at work." Most DJs use such skills to build a party atmosphere. Some, such as the Chemical Brothers, are better known for creating atmosphere than for their dexterity with two turntables.

Still, much of the music that contributed to the heightening of DJ status—slow-motion hip-hop instrumentals on Mo' Wax Records, the often low-key experimentation on Warp Records, the post-hip-hop of early Ninja Tune releases—was not good for dancing. Instead it made the case for turntable-as-prime-instrument. There are now bedroom DJs just as there were (and are) bedroom musicians. The turntable has reached a level of introspection and experimentation parallel to other musical instruments. Advertisers in such magazines as Mixer and URB offer $300 DJ starter kits—with two record players, a mixer and microphone—similar to the cheap electric guitar kits offered for decades.

These days every town has a DJ who can pack a club. Chicago house turntablist DJ Rich says, "Though the DJ is a draw, you can always get another one. There's no room for a big ego. You're not making it—you're just playing it. And if the DJ doesn't get the crowd dancing in four cuts, send him home." Back in the day, this dance party atmosphere gave rise to legendary Americans—DJs such as Carl Craig, Jeff Mills and Kevin Saunderson. Chicago is synonymous with house music, Detroit with techno. Norman Cook considers American DJs Frankie Knuckles and Tony Humphries among his biggest heroes. "Here in England," says DJ Darren Emerson of Underworld, "we were inspired by all the original Chicago and Detroit pioneers. People like Derrick May and Juan Atkins—they were star DJs to us."

Despite the deification of American cities and DJs abroad, the electronic buzz that overwhelmed club culture in Europe went unnoticed in the U.S. Darren Ressler of Mixer says, "There are many reasons why Detroit and Chicago legends aren't well known. Some of it was intentional on their part. Detroit's Underground Resistance refused to be photographed without masks. Many just wanted to produce and spin and not deal with fame." Cook ventures a theory: "It's the age-old thing of black America inventing something and white England digging it and working it out into a more palatable form. You'd say all the stars are English, but the guys I name as my heroes are black Americans."

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There is money to be made at all levels of fame. The costs to everyone involved—record labels, club owners, even the performers themselves—are much lower than with a band. "All my album cost," says Cook, "was the digital audiotape we mastered it onto—about 40 bucks. Well, that and however much coffee I drunk while doing it.

"It's all about overheads. If you're on tour and generating income, it's all right. But if you have these people on a retainer and you take six months off, it costs a lot of money. Now I have more freedom—I have to pay the wages of only two people, a personal assistant and a recording engineer. If I wanted to take a year off, it wouldn't bankrupt me."

The popularity of DJ styles is reflected in the explosion of new gear and clothing (cargo pants, Day-Glo running shoes). G-shock watches (pictured on page 83) can even count beats per minute. Record bags have eclipsed backpacks as totes of choice among trendy kids. New acts frequently set up corporate entities that do everything from promoting parties to releasing records.

Many DJs also sell mix tapes through local record shops. Bad Boy Bill, a house DJ, sold about 30,000 copies of mix tapes before releasing his first CD. Music and specialty clothing stores have sprung up to satisfy scenesters. Liquid Sky, Soulslinger and Sonic Groove are in New York; Satellite Records is in Atlanta. Gramaphone and Untitled are in Chicago. Housewares and Faster Bamboo are favorites in San Francisco; Beat Non Stop is Los Angeles'. And Philadelphia has 611.

"We have two retail stores—611 is a record shop, 612 sells merchandise, record bags, shoes and clothing," says Nigel Richards. "Then we have our own clothing line that we manufacture and sell to places such as Urban Outfitters and Untitled in Chicago. We send exports to Germany, France and Canada. Then we have the 611 record label.

"The niches aren't huge and established, so a lot of people involved in retail end up being DJs—usually they open stores because they're into music. And it aids your notoriety. I opened 611 and created a logo, and it definitely helped my DJ career. Now I'm making three times as much DJing as I do out of my own store." Darren Ressler explains: "The DIY spirit that fueled punk pushes entrepreneurs in America because there is so much potential."

Coldcut designs and markets software to enable digital jockeys to move beyond vinyl. "Manipulating video material is powerful," says More. "We thought that if we had tight control over video and music, we'd get interesting results. We did stuff using Premiere, which is a slow program for doing video. It was frustrating. So we thought we'd design some software that would enable us to do what we want, which is to play clips with sound and manipulate those in real time."

For the first time since the death of disco, dance music has shed its image in the U.S. as a gay art form. As Ressler notes, "In America, there is a notion that if you like to dance, you're a fag. That's because the gay community has been most accepting of dance music from day one." One of the most enticing qualities of today's dance music events, however, is that the crowds are not limited to young, aggressive boys—the traditional rock fan. Crowds tend to be mixed in terms of sex and sexual orientation. Of course, some ostensible dance acts—the Prodigy, for example—draw audiences that more closely resemble those of a gangsta rap or heavy metal show. However, most music surrounding DJ culture is less frustrated, more embracing and, as a result, more an elixir for sexual escapades than a consolation prize for the lack thereof. Disco diva vocals still tend to be associated with gay clubs, but they've also become the near-universal soundtrack to wild parties.

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A kaleidoscopic array of music rumbles across the dance floors and chill-out areas of clubs—and don't call it electronica. Like the many strands of rock, every subgenre (e.g., trance, techno, jungle, drum and bass) has a distinct history, a set of records that make up the canon, and as many detractors as fans. Take the genre known as big beat. Some fanatics trace its origins to a 1994 remix by Left-field of a self-titled single by Renegade Soundwave. Others will point to older material by Renegade Soundwave and Depth Charge. Still others single out the groundbreaking work of Andrew Weatherall, who collaborated with Primal Scream on their seminal album, Screamadelica. In any event, the scene coalesced with the release of the landmark debut album by the Chemical Brothers, Exit Planet Dust. A host of other DJs and groups (Fatboy Slim, David Holmes, Monkey Mafia, Wiseguys, Dee Jay Punk-Roc, Bentley Rhythm Ace, Dub Pistols, Propellerheads) began to release similar music (characterized by hip-hop drum patterns beefed up with the effects and bowel-loosening bass of techno and often supplemented by fairly obvious samples). Adherents adopted the name of Norman Cook's famous club night called the Big Beat Boutique, which itself was modeled on the Chemical Brothers' regular party, the Heavenly Social. Big beat also includes more obscure platters such as the Fatboy Slim remix of Cornershop's Brimful of Asha, a series of compilations from Skint records called Brassic Beats Volume I, Underworld's Born Slippy remix single and Unkle's remix of Bell-bottoms by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. And one could argue ad infinitum about a host of other items. For every big beat fan, there is someone who thinks the style is too obvious or too much like futuristic frat-rock.

Where big beat people party, drum and bass DJs get arty—with breakneck-speed beats programmed in intricate patterns. The style emerged from the jungle scene, which basically took raggamuffin's hard dancehall reggae and added incredibly fast and furious snaredrum break-beats. Two pirate radio DJs, Jumpin'Jack Frost and Bryan Gee, were pivotal in creating jungle by combining the technology and rush of acid house with ragga and dub. Other artists began to transform the genre. Some added house diva vocals. Others got minimalistic, until, having jettisoned all the reggae flavor, the music was left with just drum and bass. Hence the name. Many British legends originated in this scene, from the Godfather of drum and bass, Grooverider, to Goldie, Roni Size, DJ Krust, Peshay and Ed Rush.

House and trance seem to have the most mass appeal. Though house varies from diva-sung anthems to harder deep house, the foundations are still disco-inspired. Anchored by an invariable beat, the songs exploit basic melodies and elements of funk to attain differentiation. Trance is a melodic and mainstream descendant of techno. Grafting a neohippie image with rave culture, trance is closely related to Goa—New Age rave music that originated at beach parties in the Indian city of Goa. These genres also overlap with the progressive house of DJs such as Sasha and Digweed. As traditional techno faded, trance, Goa and resurgent house forms came to dominate the biggest venues—places that can't be filled by more abstract forms such as drum and bass.

Electronic dance forms change and evolve as fast as the computers they're made on, and many of the changes are quickly reflected in new names coined by artists or journalists. One thing is sure. The mutations—and the music—will only continue to grow.

Two turntables, no microphones. It's the revenge of vinyl

Tools of the gods. Looking back, the introduction of the Technics SL-1200 series turntable in 1973 may have been the most significant innovation in sound since Dave Davies of the Kinks cut a hole in his amp and invented distortion. Technics' direct-drive system (as opposed to belt drive) allowed the first experiments in scratching. The Technics SL-1200s (at left, the SL-1200MK2, $700) have no close competitor. No other turntable can stand up to the hard use. More than 1.8 million units have been sold, and with the current DJ boom, sales will only increase.

Concurrent with the arrival of the SL-1200, New York's DJ Kool Here originated the style of hip-hopping between two identical records with a mixer. This technique allowed him to extend the instrumental sections of records and to emphasize percussion breaks. The DJM mixer by Pioneer (at right, the DJM-500, $1100) is a popular DJ choice—small, convenient and durable.

In recent years, relatively cheap samplers (used to digitize bits of sound for manipulation), computer sequencing programs (used to organize sampled sounds) and synthesizers (used to create drum patterns, artificially low bass sounds and almost anything else) have also spilled into the performance side of DJing.

The D. J Style

discs and dance floors that power the scene

The racket produced by these new stars varies as much as forms of rock do. The best way to have a listen is to pick up DJ-mix CDs. But be careful—a lot of the stuff is crap. Try anything from Studio K7 "DJ-Kicks" series. Take a world tour with a trio of Studio K7 releases: Vienna's Kruder & Dorfmeister, "Kruder & Dorfmeister DJ-Kicks" (laid-back, dub-inflected—also listen to K&D's stuff on G-Stone); France's DJ Cam, "DJ Cam DJ-Kicks" (trip- and hip-hop); and England's Smith & Mighty, "Smith & Mighty DJ-Kicks." Or check out local heroes on DMC's "United DJs of America" series, featuring sets from Josh Wink, Taylor and Frankie Knuckles. Then try Detroit mixer Tony Drake's "Music for a Blue Room" (Transmat) DMC alsooffers sharp drum and bass mixes, including "Mixmag Presents Aphrodite" and "Mixmag Presents Mickey Finn." 611 showcases a prominent American drum and bass DJ, Dieselboy, on "Sixeleven DJ Mixseries." Pick up some of DMC's videos for a taste of the acrobatic mixing of top DJs ("Tricks and Technics, 1998 Technics DMC DJ World Championships").

Tribal Jungle House Groove Techno Trance Urban Funk

New York's Twilo—a premiere venue—has huge resident DJs, including Berlin's Paul van Dyk and London's Carl Cox. Cox also likes Boston's Axis. In Philadelphia, Elevation has a great sound system in a fuck-you room, as in "Fuck you. There's nothing else to do, you better dance." Concourse, in Atlanta, has jungle and reggae on Fridays. Houston has drum and bass on Fridays at the Oven. Smart Bar is a Chicago mainstay. In Toronto top venues include Guvernment and Area 51. At Motor in Detroit, watch out for DJ-1000, the newest DJ in Underground Resistance. Simon's in Gainesville is Florida's hot spot; Stereo is Montreal's. There are three drum and bass nights in San Francisco (at Basement, Ek-lektic and La Belle Epoque) and one—Atmosphere—on Tuesday nights in LA's Viper Room. Los Angeles also boasts Logic and High Society house night at Club ID.

dj history

how jamaican dub kings and bronx hip-hoppers inspired a generation

Two separate developments combined to make the modern DJ a potent cultural figure: the rise of DJ-as-entertainer and the growth of electronic music. The first 45 rpm records went into production during the Fifties. The new mass market spawned the first performance-oriented DJs (as opposed to radio jockeys) in the form of Jamaican sound systems. Ambitious record shop owners toured the countryside with a jerry-rigged PA and stacks of 45s. By the late Sixties the use of records for dancehall performances led to the first remixes of hit records. Then King Tubby, Scientist and other producers made heavy acetate cuttings of reggae records, called dub plates, that dropped vocal lines and emphasized hass tones. Shortly thereafter, the first big names emerged from New York's nascent hip-hop scene: Kool Herc, DJ Hollywood and Grandmaster Flash, who brought a new level of creativity to DJing. Following the lead of the Jamaican sound systems, DJs entertained open-air crowds with only intermittent patter from an MC. But the guy with the microphone quickly outshined the one behind the two record players; in terms of name recognition and pulling the lovelies, the MC had no competition. Some DJs got equal billing on records—Public Enemy's Terminator X even made solo records—but it is Will "Fresh Prince" Smith rather than his partner, DJ Jazzy Jeff, making all the movies, and Run-DMC rather than their DJ, Jam Master Jay, who are lauded.

The Eighties witnessed a proliferation of electronic sounds first begun a decade earlier by Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno. Musicians had access to synthesizers and programmable drum machines. To increase the percussion, DJs ran homemade drum tracks along with original songs. Hip-hop artists sampling Kraftwerk originated a style known as electro, typified by Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock," that anticipated many later developments. (To gauge the impact of electro buy the two-volume "Electro Boogie" series on Studio K7.) By the mid-Eighties, house music—basically an extension of the disco 12-inch record cult said to have originated in Chicago's Warehouse club—became a full-fledged musical form. Then came the meteoric rise of acid house in Europe, and the stage was set.

World Spins

for every beat on the planet, there is a dj somewhere burning it onto a disc

"The scene is global, not local," says Darren Ressler of "Mixer" magazine. "Because DJs tour like hell, you can go to a club like Twilo or Simon's and hear a French or English DJ. There is no ethnocentricity. It's all beautifully interconnected."

In addition to current big-name artists, Britain also has a wide range of full-on madmen. Their styles defy labels. For mind-warping experimentation and genre bending, listen to Aphex Twin, Autechre or µ-Ziq.

Germany and France play important roles. Germany is home to the world's biggest techno DJs—Swen Vath, Westbam, Paul van Dyk—and host to the single biggest event related to the music, Berlin's annual Love Parade, which draws more than 1 million revelers during the second weekend of July. Organized by another DJ, Dr. Motte, the festival goes around-the-clock, with a huge parade followed by parties at all the major clubs. In response to overbearing techno, German artists such as Mouse on Mars, Whirlpool Productions and Le Hammond Inferno experimented with lighthearted electronic music noted for its easy touch. Le Hammond set up an influential label, Bungalow, that uncovered similar acts in Japan and Europe.

In France, a number of famous DJs and groups have made a fairly insular house scene global: Daft Punk, Etienne de Crécy, Dimitri From Paris and Cassius know one another through the famous Respect club nights at Queens, where they all DJ. Kid Loco, DJ Cam and the Mighty Bop cover more laid-back, trip-hop territory. Many of these trace their origins to the Paris hip-hop scene centered on MC Solaar, Soon-E-MC and Menelik.

In Japan, DJ Krush and Major Force Orchestra mine trip-hop grooves, while Towa Tei became a celebrity DJ after the breakup of Dee-lite. His compositions are mirrored by other cut-and-paste groups such as Pizzicato Five and Fantastic Plastic Machine.

Meanwhile, back where it all began, there is yet another new style emerging in Detroit called ghetto tech. Local artists such as DJ Assault and DJ Godfather mix hard bass and percussion with electro-style synthesizers and dirty chants such as "Shake dat azz" or "Hit it from the back."

drum 'n' bass trance bigbeat triphop speedgarage ghettotech deephouse dub jungle goa urban house

"it the dj dosesn't get the crowd dancing in four cuts send him home."

D.J Rich

Tribal jungle house groove techno trance Urban Funk

Tricks and Technics; Headphones are a must to cue up a record, but some tutntablists find rhythm tracks by eyeing changes in the surface of vinyl. At competitions, Dis even use tape to mark their LPs. Scratching and tapping the deck [much like tapping a guitar pickup] produce additional rhythms, and goofing with pitch control adds melody.

DJs enjoy rock-star status. They are youth-culture heroes and electronic music pioneers. They also know how to make money.