Digital DJs

One of my New Year's resolutions is to learn to digitally DJ. Auckland suffers a bit from record boxes full of the same tracks, because most people buy their tunes from the same record shops. Out of all of them Criminal Records has the best service and range.

What I miss the most about the UK underground is seeing DJs going off behind the decks. I want to see passion, I want to see a performance. I want to see less bored looking DJs in baseball caps, and above all I want to hear less hard house. It's going totally Gabba now with kids practically jogging on the spot. When its pitched up too much you lose the groove, and it becomes music with no soul. Some local DJs like Kyle, Lolli, Justin Sane and especially Taz play even the super fast stuff really well, but I'm too old for for a night at +10.

Rather than whinging the time has come to start playing what I want to hear. I can beat-match, and I used to DJ a bit back in 1989. I've just never been interested in mixing off vinyl, it's just too linear and restrictive to make the music I hear in my head. I've recently been playing with the Traktor DJ Studio to mix MP3s. Digital DJs have far more creative freedom than those playing off vinyl. Traktor is great for mashing up genres like techno and psy-trance that have vastly different BPMs. Vinyl is heavy, expensive, and I hate taking irreplaceable records overseas. What I'd really love to do is DVJ and mix both music and visuals at the same time.