Orlando's pioneering progressive DJ slows it down with 'Balance'
In the contemporary world of superstar DJs, Orlando, Florida, is an unsung capital. During the early '90s, the adopted city of Mickey Mouse Club performers Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera was also a burgeoning port of progressive house. Orlando was already turning on to European-style club culture with proper venues and the more understated sounds of U.K. progressive jocks (who mixed American diva house with icy electronic elements). The city became the birthplace of American progressive and the super-club industry that sound spawned.
Just as the Florida town is often overlooked, so too is one of its main players, Jimmy Van M (né Van Melleghem). The DJ is certainly known to avid fans of progressive house as the go-to warm-up for U.K. superstars Sasha and John Digweed. But fewer are aware that he was an instrumental mover and shaker in the development of the nation's big-name DJ circuit. Connections he made in the early '90s helped Van M and some of his Orlando brethren build a community of receptive clubs from coast to coast and laid the groundwork for electronic dance music's rise. His home on an Orlando cul-de-sac became a focal point in 1993 and '94, when he hosted parties for after-hours warriors fresh from events at the seminal Beacham Theater. Some of the world's most renowned spinners, including Sasha and Digweed, sat on Van M's couch and bobbed as he spun down-tempo breaks and tech-flavored house. In a way, his latest mix-CD, Balance 010, takes us back to that genesis as much as it takes us forward. Two of the compilation's three discs - "Downtempo Mix" and "Midtempo Mix" - chug along at a wee-hours, house-party pace.
"When you don't have clubbers in front of you expecting up-tempo music, you can play that slower style, and it's fun," says Van M on his mobile before a flight to Mexico City and a subsequent return to Los Angeles to play at the New Year's Eve Giant Maximus party. "It's music I've loved for years."
While younger DJs might wince at this non-peak music, Van M relished the opportunity to showcase his own Back to Mine-style sessions on Balance 010, breaking out the angelic dub of Wax Poetic feat. Norah Jones's "Angles (Thievery Corporation remix)," laying down some Brian Eno and Goldfrapp, and even rinsing Cocteau Twins, Aphex Twin, and Saint Etienne. The result is bubbly, relaxing, and almost liberating for anyone used to a temple-pounding 4/4 beat. Of course, it wouldn't be a Van M disc without his big-room sound, which feels like an ominous glacier moving swiftly your way. Disc three's minimal but brooding tech-house ("Uptempo Mix") reminds us why he's the world's greatest warm-up DJ - restrained but muscular, respectful but moving. The dots on all three are connected via Ableton Live, software that helped him sequence the music in an escalating journey.
"It would be great if a lot more DJs respected the idea of making the musical line go up at a 45-degree angle," instead of just playing straight-line peak music, Van M says. "It would be cool to expand the room and make people want it."
Van M was 10 when his parents moved to Orlando from Belgium and opened a successful travel agency. In the mid-'90s, it dawned on him that few agencies were arranging American flights and gigs for increasingly popular overseas DJs. Thus was Balance Promote Group, a DJ booking agency and record pool, born in 1995. A few years later it moved (along with Van M, to New York), eventually expanding and morphing into The Collective Agency.
The DJ, meanwhile, scored a coveted slot as a resident at Manhattan's celebrated club Twilo, where he spun with Sasha and Digweed. A year after the place closed, he conceived and co-organized America's most ambitious dance-music tour, 2002's "Delta Heavy," featuring the DJ trio at arena-sized venues fitted with a "Sound Violation" P.A. system trucked in to each stop, rock-style. He hopes to do it again. But these days, Van M's been living in Barcelona, away from the fray of New York clubbing - although he still tours extensively. Dance music isn't as hyped as it was at the millennium. The 45-degree angle of clubgoing growth has leveled off. But it's still a strong global market. Revelers in Taipei line up to see Van M, and that's a long way from Orlando.
"Everything is so viral, there isn't one leading sound or city any more," Van M says. "It's everything, everywhere."
0 comments:
Post a Comment