“Part of the weekend never dies.” This bit of genius commentary comes to us by way of an extended version of “E-Talking” by Soulwax. For the last few years it’s been my signature on www.mercuryserver.com from whenever I first heard the track until now. It’s obviously catchy and semi-ominous sounding and I’m sure part of it’s appeal to me is that it conveys some sort of higher purpose to what often becomes a slew of bad decisions and overspending.

Recently though, as I continue to try to sort a life for myself out of the music we play and produce as Holosound I’m finding more and more truth to this statement. I didn’t get to where I am today by just chasing the party, the madness of all night dance sessions or after-hours filled with disposable conversations and pictures that make us regret bringing photography with us into the digital age. I got here by refusing to accept the fact that the quality of dance music I could enjoy was subject to the whims/mood/amount of sleep/level of intoxication of whichever big DJ happened to be swinging through my city that weekend.

Although this had been the case since I’d fallen in love with electronic music around ’93, it wasn’t until I was at Trinity College in Hartford, CT in ‘98-’99 that I really began to rebel against this situation. In the days before full-on Internet (2.0), accessible dance music outside of clubs/Raves in America was ostensibly controlled by GU Compilations and jaded record store employees who hoarded anything of worth to themselves.

When I purchased my first Technics 1200 Turntables in ’99 I religiously hit the record stores every week trying to get a hold of fresh, forward-thinking music that expressed what I felt was exciting about dance music at the time. I was buying underground stuff and the big tracks (at the time I admit it was all trance) I’d heard out at clubs but I had a difficult time conveying the sheer joy and utter abandon I’d sometimes feel on those nights when you felt the DJ was communicating only with you.

In these cases I was the DJ so not being able to effectively translate these vibes to my friends at school was frustrating. Stringing bombs together worked well enough at the smaller east coast raves and college frat parties but I kept wanting to elicit the kind of responses I’d given people like Josh Wink after a particularly mind-blowing set at Axis in Boston during some year that was pre 1997. After a couple years, a few thousand dollars and more records than my roommate and I could rationalize being in the “common area,” I started to see a clearer path through my record crates.

The secret, I was finding, was that every venue and party I played demanded a truly objective perspective when it came to choosing what records to play. It’s clearly not rocket science that your sets couldn’t be carbon copies of one another but I was starting to realize I’d never consistently have good results if I, as I’d tended to do in my first few years, favored my newest purchases at the record stores at the expense of something a few weeks older that may have better suited the situation or environment.

Combining proven records with newer, untested tracks limited the risk of losing the connection I’d generally work so hard to build with the people on the dance floor. Even though you’d know what a track sounded like in your bedroom or on headphones, it could often be an entirely different story when it came to the varying caliber of clubs and sound-systems I was having the opportunity to play on. Certain spaces were drastically over or under powered with regards to the lower bass frequencies and others had arrangements that strongly (read: painfully) favored the higher ones.

Regardless of which particular insufficiency of polar frequency response a particular venue suffered from, the mids almost always fell prey, resulting in a muddy sound that I personally hold partially responsible for the formation of the “it all sounds the same” theory with respect to dance music as a whole. In the current climate of dance music proliferation some of these conclusions may seem obvious, but back in 2001ish, in the absence of any accessible mentor figures or online recorded examples of how to tastefully play dance music live, this was a notable learning process.

This realization could not have happened without the ability to record my practice sessions at home. Listening to your sets, as I’m sure most DJs will tell you, is always a bit stressful because you’re always your own worst critic. You’re also infinitely more qualified to determine the effectiveness of a mix, track selection or filter sweep than the girl hugging everyone on the dance-floor who just gave you a thumbs up.

Some of the tricks I used to think were awesome live actually seemed to diminish the emotive potential of certain tracks upon re-listening. I found myself wanting to not hear an echo I remembered putting into a mix because I knew just how great the song could sound on it’s own. After all, when we make tracks as Holosound, we’re not hoping some DJ is going to reverb the hell out of a breakdown…

Restraint became more important to my playing a show that the audience AND I felt good about. Sometimes when you’re up in a booth playing records and the adrenaline’s brought all the hairs on your body to attention, impulses to show off or do something “incredible” start firing. I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline, the massive wattage a club system can put out or the minor differences between beat up pieces of club gear, but the results of most of these efforts sound a few clicks short of “incredible.” Don’t get me wrong, I still do certain things with effects if the mixer or gear is something I’m comfortable with, but I apply significantly more judgment into the decisions to do such things than I once did during the “early days.”

All of these discoveries that I’ve made about my own DJing, with regards to record store strife, programming tips, effect usage moderation and the importance of listening to one’s sets are epiphanies that came about from Monday to Friday. Initially these began at night after school, then at night after work and now 9-5 week in-week out I’m putting the groundwork into to making the weekend everything it can be. It also bears noting that even in the absence of a boss or cubicle, my desire for the weekend to arrive is still as strong as ever.

My theory is that the personal validation we all get or (in my case) got on a daily basis from our day jobs or academic performance is vital to maintaining a balanced sense of well-being. Having great friends and family is equally important but there will always be a need, certainly within myself, to constantly evaluate my progress as an artist within larger and larger sample populations.

It’s through constantly testing my ability to adapt to the unrelenting series of changing environments, crowds, and musical genre preferences that accompany a DJ’s lifestyle and job requirements that I can go to sleep each night, satisfied that I’m still learning and growing more effective at my chosen craft . Although I revel in the day-to-day creative process involved in laying the groundwork for the next show, I only truly relish and am spiritually satiated by the feeling that accompanies contributing to our society on, wait for it… The Weekend.

Download (left-click and unzip):
Holosound - Holologic 2.0 Promo - pt1 - July 08
Holosound - Holologic 2.0 Promo - pt2 - July 08

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 11:03 am and is filed under Views, What's Going Down. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.