Dispatches from the digital cesspit: The greatest DJ Intros
11 min read
Amidst the existential backdrop of fetid idleness and degradation, us human beings of the Anthropocene live happily with a thief close at hand. Given the mass writing on the topic it’s almost tautological to name the thief, but nonetheless we’re nothing but thorough here, so… The smartphone is one of the most artful chronological embezzlers to have entered human consciousness since time immemorial. We thought we were in a bad place when the internet rapidly began to infect previously untainted parts of our lives in the early noughties, but now in the late tensies we live with wi-fi injected in to our frontal cortex via devices seemingly glued to our palms – a maliciously crafted data stream design to keep us satiated within our own echo chambers of thinking and visual stimulation. The range of seemingly indispensable functions that these digital demons serve mean that we are captive hosts to enemies no larger than a bar of dairy milk but nonetheless powerful enough to keep us from doing anything but stare in to it’s vast abyss for hours at a time; streamer of music, portable banking hub, debating hall for the masses, clandestine masturbatory aid, private cinema, personal reference library, and above all else a time poacher of epic proportions.
You would think that such an opening salvo would lead in to a Guardian-esque life changing piece where you’re going to be encouraged to put down your phone and start reading some paperback novels, playing lacrosse and growing your own pak choi but we know that you can’t stop what is already welded in to our human consciousness. So akin to an internet Canute, we’re not going to profess to hold back the tide, or in this case infinite tidal wave, of digital shrapnel that we gleefully suck in to our faces. Instead we are going to guide you to some things that you, shock horror, may not have seen thus further lengthening your joy cycle. So here’s some fodder for your handheld horror... some great bits of DJing on the net that will eat away another 10 – 20 minutes of your spare time :)
Derrick May @ Kappa Festival 2014
At the core of the original Techno philosophy was a utopian vision of a society democratised and emancipated by the power of technology. Over twenty years later we’re not quite in the state of technological advancement that such bright eyed futurism promised, nonetheless it’s edifying to see Derrick May demonstrating an impressive machine mastery in this clip as his hands move gracefully over the facia of a DJM-1000 to the delight of a shitload of Italians in a big tin shed at Kappa Festival 2014. The transitions are buttery smooth, the mixing fast paced, precise and done largely without headphones and if you were to look for a celebration of the synergy between man and machine these are some of the best 5 minutes you can lay eyes on….
Bonus points for the slightly snarled sex faces and the dizzying array of soft drinks in his rider. Mr May must have a bladder the size of a space hopper.
Doug E Fresh Medley
Turntablism disappeared in to it’s own creative rectal dark zone in the noughties. The routines became more and more arrhythmic and more reliant upon the same tiered clichés of 808 battle breaks and hackneyed disses culled from turgid braggadocio strewn rap accapellas. Perhaps the ill conceived artistic telos at the heart of turntablism, to make the turntable an instrument, was doomed to deliver us a culture of menchildren in oversized t-shirts ferociously scratchwanking to their contemporaries without any regard for the scrambled smeg of noise that is delivered; a glaring example of a triumph of process over output akin to that which served as the death knell for progressive rock when creative brinkmanship took ahold and time signatures and concepts began to be prioritised above musical content.
That’s why this clip is so pleasing to watch… a good old-fashioned meat and potatoes demonstration of block party DJing, with none of the pomp and ceremony of turntablism. And the star of the show… Kid Rock. As a purveyor of tepid hick rock he’s not my cup of tea, but in DJ mode he gets my vote. His vignette lasts no more than a minute but he gets so many things right. A simple routine where he adroitly juggles a double copy of Alan Hawkshaw’s juicy organ groover “The Champ”, Rock… Rocks it… Throw in some behind the back showboating, in homage to Flash’s infamous kitchen routine from Wildstyle, and you have one of the most compact yet memorable bits of non-wanky turntablism to have passed my retinae.
Mix Master Mike Intro, Glasgow 99
My friend Tristan aka The Robotic Carrot, and I loved to go to his house for lunch when we were in sixth form. We’d have weak tea and toast, and watch whatever he’d recorded from MTV 2. Invariably we’d watch this once a week, and in particular we would rewatch Mix Master Mikes routine over and over. It’s an utter marvel to watch. From the opening salvo in which a tone record is perfectly cutup (an example of turntablism done right!), segueing in to a juggle routine where Rush’s ‘Tom Sawyer’ is masterfully recalibrated.
Youtube commenter Alexander Chandler points out to any naysayers… “Who gave mike a thumbs down... I’d like to personally piss in your face... unless you’re into that”
And you can rest assured that I’d be right there with Mr Chandler micturating on anyone that would dare to call this average.
DJ Harvey - Ray-Ban X Boiler Room 007 Milan DJ Set
The nightclub in your pocket function of your smartphone has been most fully realised thanks to the Boiler Room. The critics of the BR success story have been widespread and numerous, ranging from crude group sex vs wank analogies on twitter through to more sophisticated long-form critiques. Liam Maloney at foundationsofhouse.com claims it to be a voyeuristic nightmare that strips and inverts many of the essential aspects of the nightclub experience, an anonymous but highly polemical post on medium.com attests to Boiler Room whitewashing black culture into a palatable consumer product and Angus Finlayson aka Minor Science gives a thoughtful analysis that ruminates on the alienating and diluting effects of e-clubbing in the digital meta city.
Whatever your opinion on HTML vs IRL clubbing, we’re still Canute-esque in our stance so we’re not about to pour scorn on something that brings joy to so many. And to further bolster the nihilism touched upon within our intro to this list, it’s probably best to refocus thinking of Boiler Room to terms where it is reviewed as a commercial enterprise rather than a creative platform. With this in mind if you turn to former BR host Gabriel Szatan, who bestowed this erudite synopsis of his former employers market position -“Within the music world, Boiler Room is Uber…Rapid expansion, considerable disruption, and no small amount of backlash generated. It’s absurdly fun.”, - you can then move to a fairly untroubled conclusion. Boiler Room is just another app delivering a proxy version of something you used to do in real life.
So when you feel that need to take a musical Uber to destination fun, it’s wonderful to have someone like the peerless DJ Harvey as your driver. When talking about DJ icons people can often fall in to fantastical hagiographies but when discussing Harvey, the hype is very much justified. A lifetime in discotheques has given Harvey the air of an expert vintner or antiques dealer, the act of making germane and crowd pleasing selections being the product of an automatic ingrained reflex. Although said with tongue firmly in cheek, Harvey has even proclaimed to divine records when digging so there certainly appears to be some form of unfathomable voodoo at work when it comes to his communion with music. With an effortless panache Harvey glides through a glorious selection of mid tempo grooves ranging from the coastal new beat of Chayell through to sassy disco pop from Petula Clark. It was a long time coming but for Harvey fans, both diehard and newly won, this was well worth the wait.
DJ Premier in the Studio
DJing in the context of a recording studio is something that has only ever been an awkward footnote in pop music, a gimmick that is shoehorned in to a song to give it some edge. Bar some genuine crossover successes like Rockit or Where It’s At, the bulk of what we’ve had is awkward wakka wakka noises strapped to the chassis of shiny pop vehicles….think Avril Lavigne Sk8r Boi, the regrettable rock/rap hybrids of the early noughties, etc. But in hip hop music where the DJ has been at the core of the music’s creation since its inception, scratching is a tool of the trade and becomes a fabulous additive when deployed artfully.
Here one of the master boardsmen capable of such artistry DJ Premier, aka Preemo, works through some ideas with Ludacris and it’s fascinating to see the process unravelled before you. As you would see Bacharach at a piano trying to work out some chords here Premier is using his instrument, the turntable, to assist him in the songwriting process. The bricolage hooks that are a sonic signature of Preemo’s productions are some of the best in the hip hop, here you see Premier rifling through an acapella version of Luda’s hit “Stand Up” to find a killer line that can be cut and scratched to form the hook of a new composition. This is Preemo allowing the artist to have their own Hitchcock style self-referential wink at the audience, as their own bars reappear as repurposed chorus lines. For hip hop geeks footage like this is manna from heaven.