DJ T. tour blog: Week 23 & 24

DJ T. tour blog: Week 23 & 24

18 December, 2009 | 7.39AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: dj t, dj t blog, get physical

DJ T. thought Canada and America’s immigration checks were bad, until he landed in Auckland, New Zealand. There, stoned-faced airport cops greeted him with harassment and a violation of privacy. His crime? He’s a DJ.

Plus in this episode of his tour blog, T. discusses the development of electro house, which was spearheaded by his label Get Physical, its subsequent demise, and the rise of mainstream techno, which he says is disguised as ‘minimal’ but shares little in common with its founding blueprint.

No doubt some will find his views controversial.

After my gig in Singapore, there was just about enough time for another quick disco nap and then I was off to Melbourne.

Ever since my first overseas tour – years ago, booked by Damian Laird and Mike Callandar – Australia has claimed a special place in my heart. Back then, the talented twosome had been working for the (now defunct) distributor Listen 24/7, a company that had paved the way for Get Physical’s first foray Down Under in the early days of the label.

Since then, Australia has topped my list of non-European touring destinations – if my counting skills haven’t deserted me, this will be my sixth stint in the country – adding up to one tour a year since the above-mentioned Australian debut in 2004.

So, in terms of extra-European DJ adventures, Australia feels like the first girlfriend or the first sex. Back then, between 2002 and 2005, the two continents experienced their strongest musical synergies. Acts like DJ Hell, Miss Kittin, Metro Area and Chicken Lips paved the way for a resounding return of disco, old school house and electro, synth pop, dark wave and post punk sprinkled liberally into the mix.

All of a sudden, people were chucking all these ingredients and plenty more into the formulaic house pot and gave it all a cheeky stir. At the time, anything seemed possible again and, somehow, the influx of 70s or 80s snippets did not seem tired and reactionary, but rather like the freshest and most contemporary approach to club music.

I loved this period: after years of (voluntary) limitation to a select few formulae (mainly European tool techno and US deep house) we suddenly enjoyed an invigorating openness where any sounds and genres could be merged into countless of previously unheard “styles”. Electro house was born, a term that – at least in my opinion – started out as a mainly (Italo) disco and electro funk influenced strain of reference house.

Back then, many took two of my earliest Get Physical releases (‘Philly’ and ‘Freemind’) as a blueprint for this style.

For a brief moment, it was okay again to mix a huge breadth of flavours and eras on the dancefloor. The sets – and the crowd’s reception – became more eclectic and DJs previously separated by entire universes might find themselves rubbing shoulders.

Afterwards, everything drifted apart again. Electro house quickly morphed into a cold, sterile and completely soul- and sexless recipe reduced to pure functionality. Disguised as minimal, techno snuck in through the backdoor and went on to conquer Europe and later the rest of the world. What followed between 2005 and 2008 was recently labelled “the dark ages of electronic dance music” by one of the world’s most famous house DJs – at least it was for all of us who look to the dancefloor for warmth and funkiness to get our collective arses in gear.

Don’t get me wrong: I would never negate any style’s right to exist – after all, there’s great and terrible music, inspired geniuses and copycats, in any genre. And anybody should be able to enjoy and dance to whatever they like. Nevertheless, I have never made a secret out of my dislike for minimal, less so for the music itself but for the overall scene.

At least I cannot think of any other “movement” in the past where the musical experience was tied so strongly to specific circumstances, including the consumption of certain drugs, whose fans exhibit such empty fashion poses on and off the dancefloor and who isolate themselves from any outside influences with such fanatical dogmatism as the minimal (techno) crowd.

I will never forget one particular experience. At the height of Ibiza’s minimal phase, I played a summery, uplifting house set on the Space patio, a set that put a smile on 90 per cent of people’s faces. Afterwards, some resident DJs and the venue’s self-appointed minimal taste police tried to discredit me on the island for playing a supposedly “unsuitable” set. This was a first for me and something that, fortunately, hasn’t happened since. It was this attitude that I began to despise over time.

I guess many people never realised that minimal – as a label for a specific style – was always rooted in a great misunderstanding. Initially, when people like Jeff Mills and Robert Hood had founded their ‘Minimal Nation’ in 1998, translating the idea of minimalism from the world of art to the realm of electronic dance music, it had been about minimal structures. In the beginning of the second wave, however, the (in parts extremely high-quality) music labelled “minimal” had become extremely complex.

Take the oeuvre of my highly appreciated peer Ricardo Villalobos, for example. Ever since his ingenious album ‘Alcachofa’ his tracks have drawn on jazz, delicate, multi-dimensional and in constant flux, to resemble improvised freestyle.

Like Ricardo, most of minimal’s charismatic icons and founders soon abandoned these narrow, extraneous definitions in their DJ sets and reintroduced house and all sorts of classics to the mix – something that a large part of their audience never realised. The minimal phenomenon developed a life of its own and soon boiled down to a single formula (cynical souls call it “Ableton preset music”) that required all sorts of dazzling effects to work on large floors; a sound rehashed all over the world.

Australia went the opposite way: later generations couldn’t and wouldn’t follow this latest European trend and instead chose to return to their own Australian (or rather British) indie roots – fun and riotous sounds, guitars, vocals, songs.

Down here, a blend of hardcore electro, fidget house, nu rave and mash ups have ruled dancefloors in recent years. Well, I have to admit that this isn’t exactly my cup of tea either, but at least it’s carefree and affirmative, while run-of-the-mill minimal still carries a whiff of negativity for me. I guess, at the end of the day, all this is incredibly subjective … who knows what I would enjoy if I was a 20-year-old today?

So, I was all the more (pleasantly) surprised by last weekend‘s crowd at my first Australian gig at F4, a fairly new and hip club in Melbourne. It was hosting one of the Stereosonic festival’s five official after hours and, as the Australian festival crowd isn’t exactly known for its love of house, I had downscaled my expectations. To my great surprise and delight, the young crowd responded to my fairly deep tech house set with cheerful hands-in-the-air abandon. Apparently, my favourite Ozzie, Mike Callander, had lived up to his resident promise and prepared them for a different sound.

In the early morning hours, I left for Brisbane and another stint of Stereosonic fun. This time around, I was to play the actual festival and not the following after hour. Big thanks and congratulations go out to my friends and bookers Richie McNeill and Simon Coyle of Totem Industries who managed to pull off five successful festivals in five different cities within just eight days!

Overall, there must have been something like 130,000 people at all events and most of the headline acts played all five cities. My booking had been a bit last minute, so I only did a stint at the Brisbane event.

The variety of acts on all five stages was truly staggering; I can’t remember seeing an equally variegated line-up anywhere else. Naturally, the festival featured three of the best known protagonists of the above-mentioned genre so popular in Australia right now: Deamau5, Bloody Beetroots and the Crookers.

My floor, on the other hand, brought back memories of home with old friends and acquaintances switching decks, a. o. Roman and Jörn of Alter Ego (whom I hadn’t seen in a few years), but also Marco Carola and Laurent Garnier. Unfortunately, I had to miss the latters’ performances – after a few hours of festival fun, my equally exhausted friends took me to the Gold Coast for a few days of rest and recreation.

So, last Thursday, we spent an hour on the road to reach the eastern-most tip of Australia and the well-known surfer paradise Byron Bay. A tiny bar club called La La Land had booked Don Nadi and me to play a low budget gig.

Every other Thursday or so, the place hosts international DJs who come to this tranquil backpacker haven for a few laid-back days between gigs – a fact much appreciated by the tiny local scene. Again, I didn’t expect much and the night started relatively slow; it looked like we’d be providing the soundtrack for a bunch of random people.

But all of a sudden, more and more eager Ozzies arrived, ready to move their stuff on the dancefloor … and they even turned out to be hardcore Get Physical fans. Many of them had travelled the two hours from Yamba just to see me. What a fun night!

The next day, I was off to Auckland, the biggest city in New Zealand. Entering this small country became the worst instance on “running the immigration gauntlet” of my entire DJ career.

It all started at the Air New Zealand check-in desk where the attending staff almost wouldn’t let me board. Their rationale: I couldn’t quote the exact ticket number of my return flight the following day. Although I presented all my flight data, including the flight’s booking code and even a special work visa for my one night of DJing, they didn’t consider all this enough proof of my intention to leave the country again.

If there hadn’t been another, slightly more helpful attendant who took it upon herself to walk to the airline desk and fetch a print-out of my flight data, I would have looked like a proper fool.

Obstacle #2: two intense security checks between me and the gate. All of my hand luggage was turned inside out and any piece of electronic equipment was given a thorough once-over. But the last – and worst – harrassment was still to come: immigration in Auckland.

Here’s a warning to all DJs and live acts: be prepared for special treatment when you arrive in New Zealand. Apparently, it’s a recent development … a little bird seems to have told local law enforcement that musicians and DJs like their drugs and, in their eyes, this makes any artist suspicious.

For the first time in my 20 plus years of DJing, they inspected even the smallest detail of my suitcase, asked me to explain every single medicine in my travel kit and basically violated my privacy with a bunch of extremely unpleasant and embarrassing questions.

Unfortunately, this experience left a strong dent in my mood that lasted well into the night. During the party at Ink/Coherent, I slowly started to loosen up again – warmed by the knowledge that, yet again, every single person in the room seemed to have come just for me. While the Auckland scene is relatively small, those who love European sounds make up for it in enthusiasm.

Almost no sleep till Sydney. I had been looking forward to my gig at the Chinese Laundry for ages – the place has been a popular constant on the Australian club scene for ages and remains one of the city’s few venues with a true underground flair when it comes to ambience, sound and booking policy. After a delicious dinner with club manager Paul – and an all-too-brief comatose interlude – me and the crowd shared two intense, intimate hours. Afterwards, I followed the guests to an after hour at Bunker where I met Emerson Todd, among others, who’d just joined the Get Digital roster.

Somehow, and despite my weakened condition, I managed to stay awake long enough to catch a set by my compatriot Reboot who turned out to be equally exhausted. I was only too happy to follow his spontaneous invitation for a round of back2back. Considering people’s reactions, we must have looked really funny – slumped on our barstools, almost delirious and passing the headphones between each other. What a way to wind up the weekend.

DJ T. Worldtour DJ chart

DJ T. - The Inner Jukebox Worldtour 2009

December
19.12.09 - Poison Apple, Ladida, Melbourne (AU)
25.12.09 - Club Heaven, Seoul (SK)
26.12.09 - Warehouse, Tokyo (JP)
31.12.09 - Underground Club, Hannover (DE)

January
01.01.10 - Tribehouse, Neuss (DE)
07.01.10 - Rooftop, Dubai
08.01.10 - Haus der Kunst, München (DE)
09.01.10 - Airport, Würzburg (DE)
16.01.10 - Public Club, Istanbul (TR)

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