A Slap from Left Field: 04/26/2007

Spank Rock fuses dance music and hip-hop for a bracing good time

By Dennis Romero

There's a new generation of hipsters living on the edge of understated irreverence. Comedy has Saturday Night Live's Andy Samberg (with his YouTube omnipresence). Film has Jon Heder (Blades of Glory, Napoleon Dynamite). Gosh. And now pop music has rising, post-hip-hop act Spank Rock. Nearly a year ago, the quartet debuted with the critic-wowing YoYoYoYoYo, which staked a claim somewhere between Licensed to Ill and today's Dirty South. Nasty, schoolboy rhymes met sparse synths and spaced-out booty bass. Along with the likes of Lady Sovereign, Diplo, and M.I.A., Spank Rock is coming at hip-hop from left field, deflating the genre's thug archetype with sassy antics and up-tempo, e-music beats. It's almost as if Samberg's William Hung-level rapping as "the Blizzard Man" character has come to life, except that Spank Rock's Naeem Juwon can really spit.

Spank Rock is reprising last year's breakout with a new mix-CD, Fabriclive.33, part of London club Fabric's lauded series of DJ-mixed compilations. Officially due next month (but available now online), it's one of the year's best dance music long-players so far, taking listeners on a journey through hip-hop's leather-pants past (Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks"), dance music's skating-rink glory days (Yello's "Bostich," Kano's "I'm Ready"), and, of course, e-music's future sounds (Mylo's "Drop the Pressure"). That list might not sound that tongue-in-cheek. But then the Spank Rock boys drop rhymes over Kano's disco groove like it's 1982 at Manhattan's Fun House. And Mylo gets a cathartic, one-off rap off his own, marking the loop-frenzied peak of the 111-minute, 29-track trip. By the time Yes's "Owner of a Lonely Heart" drops, you're getting the picture: This is no 50 Cent mixtape with a gangsta pose. This is a come-one, come-all plastic-cup party.

"The thing is," says Spank Rock DJ Chris "Rockswell" Devlin, "we've been getting interested in the dance music scene since the release of YoYoYoYoYo. We were into hip-hop, but the album was the beginning of 'Let's figure out how to have a good time again.' That's the roots of hip-hop, playing good records, not necessarily hip-hop records, but just creating a good party."

Indeed, the second half of the mix ignites with K.W. Griff's James Brown-esque "Good Man," which gets accosted by some raunchy female rhymes. Soon, when Tangerine Dream's "Love on a Real Train" hits, you might fear that this whole thing is just turning into a glow-stick festival. The trance-like flow of Simian Mobile Disco's

"Hustler" doesn't calm your concerns, but then Rick Ross starts rapping about his own "Hustlin'" over the synths: "I know Pablo, Noriega/The real Noriega/He owe me a hundred favors." And he's still rapping when the Romantics "Talking in Your Sleep" drops, in-time.

The group, with roots in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, formed at the millennium, with producer Alex "XXXChange" Epton, rapper Juwon (a.k.a. MC Spank Rock), and Devlin at its core. Battle DJ Ronnie Darko was recruited later. Amanda Blank is a frequent guest MC. This year and last have been booming for the quartet, with a January appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, songs licensed to videogames (on the Junkie XL-produced soundtracks to Madden NFL 07 and Need For Speed: Carbon), and a Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival debut Sunday night. The new mix-CD, produced mainly by studio whiz Epton, is brilliant, but it's not alone in its outlook. Diplo's own Fabriclive.24 helped reignite the eclectic dance music revolution. And, as it happens, the DJ helped Spank Rock get discovered when he passed a demo along to label Big Dada. The result, YoYoYoYoYo, was an unprecedented combination of Southern-tinged "Baltimore bass" with girl-obsessed player talk. But Fabriclive.33 is clearly modeled on Diplo's own precedent-setting, tossed-salad DJ excursions.

"We're lumped in as part of this DJ movement," Devlin admits. But paying homage to Diplo "makes sense," he adds.

Where Diplo's own Fabric mix started with Plantlife's derivative "Love 4 the World," Spank Rock's ends with L.T.D.'s original, "Love to the World." It was done, of course, with reverence.

Brazil Wax: 05/10/2007

Recruiting DJs from way down south, Avalon breaks free from the predictable

By Dennis Romero

Electronic dance music has had a long love affair with Brazil. Some of the scene's most iconic songs - Basement Jaxx's "Samba Magic," Faze Action's "Samba" - have been heartfelt odes to the land of headdresses and street parades. Even the speedy, dirty sound of drum 'n' bass has found a Brazilian soul in the music of critically acclaimed producer-spinners Amon Tobin and Soul Slinger. Still, there's something off-putting when a local club announces it's hosting a "Brazil night." Images of free-range derrieres, whistle-blowing beefcakes, and sweaty samba lines inevitably fill your head. For fans of electronic dance music, which has become more refined and velvet-roped in this post-rave era, a Brazil night could seem like step back.

Except that, in the case of Avalon Hollywood's "Made in Brazil" quarterly parties, the vibe is all fast-forward, technologic, and DJ-centric. In other words, Brazilian exoticisms take a backseat to contemporary, binary beat-craft. With the advent of laptop production, language-neutral e-music, and light-speed file-sharing, DJs around the globe are racing toward the future, and Brazil's spinners are eager to measure up. The country excels and often dominates in other edgy youth culture arenas, including skateboarding, surfing, and mixed martial arts, so it's no wonder that a new wave of e-music stars is emerging from the world's fifth largest country.

"Brazil has an important electronic music scene," says Brazilian expatriate Renata Amaral, part of L.A.'s Liquified promotion firm and the mind behind the night. "'Made in Brazil' was created as concept to launch Brazilian DJs in the United States."

DJ culture at Los Angeles "super-clubs" has become frustratingly predictable, with the same DJs from the U.K. and the Netherlands who play the same old "progressive" and trance circulating with clockwork frequency. Promoters aren't ignorant about the stagnant waters of club-land. They are, at least, trying to make waves by gambling on lesser known, buzz-worthy talents. Avalon Hollywood brought Germany's well-respected Booka Shade duo to the club in March, and Vanguard matched that move by booking label-mate M.A.N.D.Y. last month. With its "Made in Brazil" parties, initiated earlier this year, Avalon is casting a fresh light on an often overlooked but fertile region of electronic music. The nights also help the club connect with a sizable Brazilian expat population in Los Angeles. The first "Made in Brazil" night, held in February, is said to have drawn 2,400 people, many of them of Brazilian origin or ethnicity - without a carnival in sight.

"This young crowd is not into samba and carnival," promoter Amaral explains. "We appreciate the culture, but we also know how to appreciate a good party with good music and beautiful people. One of the greatest things about electronic music is its capacity to integrating people. When you are on the dance floor, it doesn't matter who is who, or where did you come from. Brazilians enjoy the music just as Americans and Europeans do. We are proud of our DJs, so when there's a chance to see them playing far away from home, a big crowd comes out."

Chief among the south swell of talent being drawn to Avalon's Brazil nights is Fabrício Peçanha, who in February immersed the club's deep well of a floor with a tech and electro-flavored bubble bath of grooves. His chugging, momentous set proved that the DJ belongs in the same league as such superstar spinners as Hernan Cattaneo and Danny Howells. Peçanha, who will perform at Saturday's "Made in Brazil" party as part of the DJ trio Life is a Loop, uses three CD decks, an effects processor, and a loop-maker to create his supercharged machine soul. Born and raised in the vertical metropolis of Porto Alegre, Peçanha has been spinning since he was a teenager. He's watched as his beloved techno music rose from the underground to become de rigueur at the big-city "yuppie" venues that "charge more at the door," says the 32-year-old.

"Nowadays there are no more frontiers," Peçanha says. "With the power of the Internet, everything has become easier - and closer. From Brazil I am able to communicate with people from all over the world, and every time I play abroad, people spread the word."

Growing Past Gargantuan: 05/24/2007

Spooky transcends with the two-disc 'Open'

By Dennis Romero

Spooky's debut, Gargantuan, helped define synth-driven "progressive" house in 1993, opening the floodgates for e-music's heyday, when Leftfield, Underworld, and Orbital explored similar territory and reached critical heights rarely seen since. Gargantuan, with its sublime atmospherics and beat-driven dreamscapes, set a bar that's still hard to reach today.

But Spooky missed much of the subsequent party. That first album, released domestically on I.R.S., sold less than 50,000 copies worldwide and was known mainly to diehard e-music fans, DJs, and critics. A 1996 follow-up, Found Sound, was largely overlooked. By the time electronic dance music finally reached the top of the pop charts in the late 1990s, with the likes of Moby (and his Gargantuan-flavored Play), Spooky was all but disbanded, its music shelved and its ability to work shackled by a major label that had the duo under contract. Charlie May, one half of Spooky, found solace in studio work with new friend Sasha. But the definitive, otherworldly magic of the British pair skipped e-music's peak, only to return with a new album this summer, just in time for the bittersweet after-party. Or is it? These days, trend surfers have left the club, critics are heralding dance-rock as the genre's Next Big Thing, and vinyl DJ shops across the nation have nearly all dried up. Spooky, however, is high on now.

"We're more excited than ever," says the duo's Duncan Forbes. "We've never been in such a strong position."

The act strengthened its position by reacquiring its back catalog, including Gargantuan, and re-releasing it online last year, mainly at Beatport and iTunes. And, for the first time in years, Spooky has ventured from its London base to perform around the world. Forbes credits Sasha's globetrotting influence with helping to seed demand for Spooky. The pair has found fans in the far reaches of the globe, in places such as South America, Eastern Europe, and Asia - new audiences that are creating a new wave for e-music.

"There's an enormous global market," says Forbes, 38. "Live music is massive. People seem to be hungry for it in South America and Eastern Europe. People are downloading it, and then they want us to play at their venues around the world. I think that's the future, really."

To tap that demand, Spooky has unleashed a two-disc album good enough to bookend the e-music era it helped create with Gargantuan. Open, due next month, is ambitious and ardently ambient, beckoning the listener to inch closer as break-beat syncopation moves the night forward. It's a post-dance-floor album or, as Forbes puts it, "a-listen-to-at-home or at-the-beach record." Julie Daske ("Belong") contributes a harrowingly wistful voice reminiscent of Sarah McLachlan's. Celestine Gordon counters Daske's featherweight yearning with heavyweight joy, lending a soulful tone to the smooth "New Light." ("It feels so good, to be free," she sings, perhaps channeling Spooky's post-major label liberation.) "No Return" sounds like it could have come from a Gargantuan-era Spooky. It contains the classic progressive house formula - American-style tribal drums and diva vocals paired with high-flying Euro-synths. The rest of the collection slows down considerably, with shiny tuneful down-tempo, and a second disc of minimal dub mixes that wash over the soul like a summer tide.

Forbes and May grew up together, their childhood ears filled with the sounds of Roxy Music, Howard Jones, and Duran Duran; Bob Marley, King Tubby, and Scientist. They dabbled in bands, mainly one called Red 10. But at the dawn of the '90s, Forbes made a trip to New York. He bought thumping house records and took in the DJ-driven scene at the Sound Factory club. When he got back to England, he played his records for May. They ditched the band and pooled their gear - a sampler, a Roland TR-909 drum machine and a Roland JD-800 keyboard - to create Spooky. Today, even with the ultramodern Open, one can hear their ever-present yin and yang - soul versus synths, progressive house versus deep house, digital arrangements versus dub-style tape delays, American soul versus British tech - that have made Spooky a marathon act for the ages.

"We've been there all along," says Forbes. "Then and now are the two most-interesting times in electronic music since Kraftwerk. I don't know if it's because of what's going on in the world, but people are digging deeper and feeling more. People are coming out with more honest music, and I think that's the best music."

'Idealism' Saves the Day: 06/07/2007

Digitalism's debut rescues e-music by bringing the new

By Dennis Romero

The days when electronic dance music seemed to produce groundbreaking records a few times a year seem long gone. The heyday of Underworld, the Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Moby, Leftfield, and Orbital has so far been left in the 1990s. What these artists had in common was a desire to create the epic, big album - to prove that they could sketch the highs and lows of human emotion with digital music in the same way rockers did with guitars. After the millennium, dance music's bubble burst, disintegrating into entrenched genre tribes (trance vs. house) and contrived trends (electroclash's failed new wave revival). There has been quality e-music: Artists such as Bent, Sasha, Junkie XL, Hybrid, Dennis Ferrer, Goldfrapp, and Spooky hit us with heavyweight long players in recent times. But their albums have been more about refinement than advancement. E-music has yet to blow minds in the new millennium. And that, in our opinion, is the genre's inherent duty: to continue to move popular music beyond its mid-century Elvis pose - to reinvent the new.

With Idealism, the debut from German duo Digitalism, we've been offered something ardently fresh, and perhaps something that will return e-music to its '90s heights. The 15-track record, due June 19, is part Daft Punk, part '80s punk, and all-killer, no-filler. While dance-rock (Tommie Sunshine) and dance-punk (LCD Soundsystem) are the fads du jour that have taken electroclash's sorry place behind the velvet rope, Idealism feels organic and fluid, a result of heartfelt chemistry rather than marketing alchemy. More importantly, it delivers the goods - crunchy, loopy, robotic grooves the likes of which haven't been seen since Homework; true-punk irreverence (not to mention guitars and vocals); and a range of emotion, from wistful yearning to thrashing abandon. Idealism rides on four-on-the-floor kick drums and break-beat syncopation.

On "I want I want," the Hamburg team of Ismail "Isi" Tuefekci and Jens Moelle step up like it's '79 at CBGB, kicking out live-sounding drums, a porn bassline, and wiry, metallic guitar licks. The underlying rhythm, meanwhile, is a series of stripped-down percussion - pure floor candy.

"We love the punk attitude in general," says Moelle, 25, "being silly or rude or disrespectful."

Similarly on "Pogo," an homage to the vertical punk dancing of yore, Digitalism unleashes relentless hi-hats, Joy Division-esque guitar twang, and yes, lo-fi drum-machine claps. What's surprising about the music is the duo's high-flying, Brit-style vocals, which adorn much of the album. "Woh-oh, there's something in the air," they sing on "Pogo." With "Anything New," the two reinvent digital punk-funk while belting out the Digitalism manifesto: "Everything is anything new/The future is a thing that's a danger to you/Even the minimum is maximum/Gold never will become platinum." (The chorus asks, "Is anything new/Is anything new.")

At times the voice-box effects can seem overdone ("Moonlight" is straight out of the Daft Punk playbook), but the blend of analog exotica and future-forward synths is mesmerizing. "Home Zone" is the hottest German break-beat track since "Trans-Europe Express." Put on your tracksuit and white gloves. "Digitalism in Cairo," meanwhile, is an infernal redux of The Cure's "Fire in Cairo" that builds like a monster wave at Peahi. "The Pulse" and "Jupitor Room" are pure big-room jackers - unrelenting siren calls to get down, get funky.

The duo met about seven years ago when Moelle was working at a Hamburg record store and Tuefekci was purchasing tunes for his DJ sets. The two paired up for gigs, but found the house and "progressive" of the time was staid. "We thought that if we couldn't find music that really kicks us, we'd have to make it ourselves," Moelle says.

Digitalism makes records the old-fashioned way: with a 900 mhz PC and retro Roland analog keyboards. By now you might be saying that the elements described herein don't really make for a genre-busting, decade-defining, all-time album. You could be right. But Digitalism really is more than the sum of these parts. Sure, acts such as MSTRKRFT, A Touch of Class, and Soulwax have done a good job of incorporating similar sounds. But Tuefekci and Moelle, DJs and remixers from the fauxhawk era, have a chemistry that whips new wave revival, house loops, and a punk attitude into something entirely revitalizing.

Mix'n Art: 06/21/2007

Andrew Lojero brings underground parties to your ears with 'From L.A. with Love'

By Dennis Romero

The klieg lights blast a hole in L.A.'s soul. There are so many poseurs, cameras, and facades, it's sometimes hard to determine where the sets end and the real city begins. Like roaches, many denizens of culture scurry into the streets when location crews go home and the lights go out. It's a city where break-beat jazz wafts into the midnight mist and graffiti artists open aerosol windows to a different world. In many ways, this anti-Hollywood, if you will, is the concrete terrain of Andrew Lojero and his ArtDontSleep underground parties.

"What they do in Hollywood, there's a place for it," says 25-year-old Lojero, who grew up in Boyle Heights. "L.A.'s big enough to have that demographic and ours."

His demographic includes indie hip-hoppers, street-art fanatics, and young intellectuals who like to celebrate the city in unique places, such as under the First Street Bridge, where one ArtDontSleep party was recently held. Producers tapped out hip-hop beats on Akai samplers in a nearby basement while nu jazz bands performed in the open air up top, and graffiti artists gave birth to fresh installations. "I feel like each event that I do is really a dream," Lojero says.

He has tried to preserve this vision with ArtDontSleep Presents From L.A. with Love, a compilation of sounds found at the parties, live and via DJ. The disc unfolds as a truly sublime, elegant, and enchanting journey into the land of Southern California down-tempo music. The CD, which comes with a booklet of local artwork, is an understated tour de force, perhaps even ironically cinematic in its dreamy elevation of our cityscape.

From L.A. with Love starts with From Leaf to Feather's positively loungey "Night Sun," which is also the nickname of the 30-million-candlepower spotlights used by LAPD helicopters. The late DJ Dusk's voice lives on in a spoken word interlude called "Let Me Know." Nathan Yell's "Goodbye," driven by a bottomless bass kick and a commanding male voice, is harrowing. Exile's "In the Night 22," is psychedelically disorienting in its modern, sampladelic use of doo-wop, coming off like a digital rewind of Whittier Boulevard's cruising heyday. Carlos Nino and Miguel Atwood-Ferguson's "Nag Champa" is propelled by strings and woodwind and is reminiscent of Bill Lee's scores for son Spike. All of the music, however, is thoroughly modern and mostly digitally produced, offering unique time stamps, stutters, and glitches that say ArtDontSleep is not an attempt to relive the Brass parties, King King events, or Project Blow'd showcases of L.A.'s past.

"I have a lot respect for Project Blow'd, and for those Unity Parties before that," Lojero, a sociology student at Cal State L.A., says. "But I feel like we filled a hole. My goal was to bring people together in an environment that elevates their interaction."

His fascination with the city's artistic underground started in 1999 when, as a teenager, he began taking photographs of graffiti art around the city, admiring some of the more prolific spray-can outlaws such as Mear One, who would later do installations for ArtDontSleep. Lojero grew up with strict, Christian parents. But by age 16, he went wild for rave parties, punk rock, and street art. Later, he helped organize parties for a gallery on Melrose, which led the way for his first ArtDontSleep events three years ago. Soon Dusk (who was hit by a car as he left a party last year) and Pablo Like Picasso joined him for hosting duties. In 2006, people from Milan Records came to a party and inquired about signing up some of the talent. Lojero instead sold them on a compilation that would capture ArtDontSleep's array of players, DJs, and visual artists.

"I tried to get what I felt was a good representation of Los Angeles," he says. "These people see my love and passion for the city, and they share that love and passion."

Majestic Mixer: 07/12/2007

How Prince's opener, DJ Rashida, got the coolest gig in dance music

By Dennis Romero

Paul Oakenfold once toured with U2. Trance spinner Tiesto opened the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. And L.A. radio jock Jason Bentley recently played records for the President of the United States of America. But come on now, the coolest DJ gig in the world has to be the one Los Angeles native Rashida holds down. As the official opener for His Purple Majesty, Prince, she's been warming up crowds at his much-hyped performances this summer at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, where V.I.P. tickets go for $3,121. Two more gigs are expected to be announced later this month.

So how did a young woman who once played underground drum 'n' bass as a hobby end up as a blue-chip DJ spinning for one of pop music's most revered artists? Rashida sure can rock a mixtape. The year was 2004: She was mixing drinks at Temple Bar and mixing records on the side on weekends at House of Blues. Prince dropped by for after-party festivities during his Musicology Tour. A member of his band told Rashida, "You funky," and asked for a demo mix, says the 26-year-old. Apparently, the Purple One liked it. He immediately started booking her for events, and she's been his official DJ ever since.

She was born Rashida Gonzales Robinson, a name that reflects her African-American and New Mexican heritage. Her father collected vinyl and played soul and Brazilian music for her. Her Latina mother, a wind instrument player and sometime radio DJ, exposed her to jazz, salsa, and boleros. Although Rashida was born in L.A. and spent some time in New Mexico, her family moved to Atlanta when she was 13, introducing her to that city's vibrant dance music, neo-soul, and hip-hop communities.

"In high school, I started sneaking out and going to clubs," Rashida says. "I went to raves, ska parties, hip-hop clubs, dancehall clubs. All of those scenes were happening. I'm lucky to have grown up there. I don't think I would be a DJ otherwise."

At 18, she started playing around on the turntables displayed at a clothing boutique, Wish, where she worked for summer cash. When she began attending the Atlanta College of Fine Arts, she bought her first set of "decks." She would spin at campus parties when she wasn't working the door at Damian Murphy's progressive-house parties in Atlanta. "That was such a big deal for me, because I could get in for free," Rashida says.

After finishing school, she moved to Spain for several months before settling in L.A. She had spent many summers visiting relatives here, so it felt like home. Soon she was DJing at a drum 'n' bass night, Proper, run by DJ Valida. She also roomed with Valida and bartended for a living, taking on paying DJ gigs whenever she could. When the House of Blues called, she jumped at the opportunity. "At the time, it was a lot of money," Rashida says.

Although she had wanted to become a visual artist, she was opening her mind to the idea of DJing for a living. She took on new sounds, from broken beat to soul to house music. And she perfected her mixing. Today, her ability to seamlessly program up-tempo funk, vintage soul, and modern, digitally composed dance music is amazing. Beat-matching a live-drum-driven track with a digitally produced groove is often next to impossible, but Rashida does it effortlessly, focusing on higher callings such as vibe, key, and musical storytelling. Prince clearly has had an influence on her sound, which, at times, reflects his candlelit freakiness.

"He makes it a point to see that you're learning things," Rashida says of Prince. She, in turn, says she's introduced him to some contemporary dance music. "He's kind, giving, and talented - the best performer I've ever witnessed."

Rashida recently signed on with Damon DeGraff, a DJ super-agent featured in a New York Times piece earlier this year. If you can't afford to see her open for Prince, you can catch her at a local roving party called Kiss 'n' Grind. (For upcoming gigs, check Djrashida.com.) Her goals include putting together a commercially available mix-CD and producing her own music. She already has the best job in dance music.

"The universe," she says, "has opened a door for me."

Not as Silly as It Seems: 07/19/2007

Fatlip does the 'Salmon Dance' for the Chemical Brothers

By Dennis Romero

Last week the Chemical Brothers scored their fifth No. 1 album in the U.K., in a genre that's been long written off in the British rock press as past its prime. With We Are the Night, out Stateside this week, the British duo has affirmed the urgency, resilience, and vision of electronic dance music. The Chems even offer a lesson in futuristic hip-hop at a time when more and more rap producers and artists are tapping into e-music tempos, techniques, and sounds.

"The Salmon Dance" isn't the first single off We Are the Night, but it's sure acting like it is. The brisk breakbeat groove featuring Fatlip from late, great Los Angeles hip-hop group the Pharcyde is already getting airplay on KCRW (89.9 FM) and even YouTube, where amateur video stars are interpreting its steps. The track is as remarkable for its sparse percussion and spaced-out synth stabs as it is for Fatlip's ultra-clever rhyme that introduces "a brand new dance." "The Salmon Dance" promises to do for We Are the Night what the Q-Tip-powered "Galvanize" - all over Budweiser Select commercials - did for the Chems' last one, 2005's Push the Button, another U.K. chart-topper.

Not that the album doesn't have other promising tracks. It's solid and sometimes surprises with its progressive ambition and eclectic menu of sounds. Beat poet bill bissett, for example, lends words and inspiration to the Orbital-flavored title track. The first single, "Do It Again," is head-bobbing, body-jacking electro-house reminiscent of the Basement Jaxx. "A Modern Midnight Conversation" is flowing, hydrodynamic e-music. "Battle Scars" featuring Willy Mason's sour, falsetto notes and ominously deep-voiced rapid-speak, is cinematically tuned-in. Jamie and James of "new rave" group Klaxons make an appearance on "All Rights Reversed." We Are the Night is another solid pillar in the duo's genre-defining catalog, even if it's not soaring high above the mainstream like Exit Planet Dust once did. (Mainstream producers have been taking notes and catching up.)

Still, it says something special when a track like "The Salmon Dance" finds life before an album is even released. Fatlip's lyrics give birth to a character he calls Sammy the Salmon, who greets us with a cartoon-voiced "What It Do." Fatlip goes on to rhyme the proper moves: "Put your hands to the side/As silly as it seems/And shake your body like a salmon floating upstream." The rapper admits the song reflects Eddie Murphy's description of how white people danced in the '80s - knees together, hips tight, shoulders shimmying.

"I kind of took a risk in turning in 'The Salmon Dance,' maybe it would be too silly," says the 38-year-old Hollywood rapper, born Derrick Stewart.

The Chems loved it and kept the song as-is. In fact, it follows the irreverent and sometimes goofy Fatlip mold, which also helped shape an all-time-great hip-hop album, the Pharcyde's 1992

debut Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde. Most interviews with Fatlip inevitably get around to the question of whether the Pharcyde foursome, which imploded in a mid-'90s personality clash, will ever ride again. No, he says, but then drops this bomb: Just this year, celebrated producer and Black Eyed Peas member Will.i.am tried to get the guys back together, even pledging to produce a reunion album. Fatlip says at least one unnamed member held out, and he's cool with that. "I'm just happy that it went as far as it did," he says. "As far as I'm concerned, we're legends in the game. I always respect that, and I have respect for those guys."

Fatlip is happy doing solo work for label Delicious Vinyl, which he says will probably release a new album of his in mid-2008. And he's reenergized by the electronic sounds that the Chemical Brothers and even some fellow hip-hop beat-makers have brought to his ears lately.

"The electronic sound is pretty much where it's at nowadays," he says. "I've taken notice of it, but we're all doing pretty much the same thing - electronic samples and beats, it's the same business. I'm just waiting to see 'The Salmon Dance' on Soul Train."

You DJ, I DJ, WiiJ: 08/02/2007

'Wiimote' innovator Jimmy Lesondak - a.k.a. DJ ! - changes the game for digital spinners

By Dennis Romero

It seems like only yesterday that the mainstream was discovering DJ culture, when movies such as Go, Groove, and It's All Gone Pete Tong exposed the world of vinyl-playing rock stars. Fast forward a few years to today and it's hard to find name DJs who even use 12-inch records anymore, let alone CDs. The last two years have upended the accessible world of two turntables and a mixer, adding DVD decks, endless effects gear, and laptop performances to the mix. Even jocks in the diehard hip-hop world are using Traktor DJing software, which allows spinners to control the music with vinyl simulators.

Now there is a growing and rapidly evolving contingent of geeks bent on pushing the boundaries of digital DJing too.

One young man in particular is Modesto, California's Jimmy Lesondak, who's made waves around the digital music performance world with an ingenious hack that could change the game forever: The 26-year-old Cal State Stanislaus music technology student modified his own software code in order to use two Nintendo Wii Remote game controllers to launch, mix, and manipulate music via Traktor software. He's using the set-up to focus on mash-ups, placing otherwise incongruous pop songs atop one another. In a YouTube demonstration introducing what he calls "the art of Wiijing" (pronounced "we-jaying") Lesondak blends rap group Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It" with house act Milk & Sugar's "Shut Up." The video has had more than 186,000 views. It shows him "flickstarting" - whipping a Wii Remote at a computer screen to launch one song, then the other - before waving the controller in the air to add stutter effects. He even starts and stops each track to create hip-hop style, "beat juggling" sounds.

While Lesondak, who performs as DJ ! (as in "shift one," derived from a typing keyboard), doesn't exactly move like Justin Timberlake, you can start to imagine the possibilities. The TV-style Wii Remotes, or "wiimotes," as they're often called, can free spinners from being holed up behind their consoles.

"Wireless DJ controlling is the way to go if you want to have the kind of stage presences bands have," Lesondak says.

In fact, as mainstream pop critics descended on dance music in the 1990s, one of their key criticisms of DJ culture was that nothing was happening onstage. Core fans argued that the crowd was the show, and that the music should be felt, not seen, but soon stage-based performers ranging from Underworld to Daft Punk started to wow audiences with rock-style shows, and even DJs such as Sasha, John Digweed, and Tiesto embarked on visually intensive arena tours.

Still, the job of DJing has remained tethered to the console until now. Even laptop DJs, goes the old joke, look like they're checking their email. Lesondak's Wiijing, which he admits others have tried concurrently, allows contemporary DJs to become performers instead of just button-pushers.

"It's a lot more fun to get into it," Lesondak, a videogame fan, says. "The fact that I can dance with the Wii gives it more energy onstage. You're not stuck behind turntables. You can move around and get down with the crowd."

Lesondak, who started out with vinyl and has been DJing on the local bar circuit for nearly six years, now gets offers to perform in Quebec, San Francisco, and L.A., where he'll be Saturday for a show at Safari Sam's. He's bringing his three-man band, Miyamoto, to play a few songs too. He'll trigger tracks with Wii Remotes while friends Nick Yonan plays guitar and Todd Peichote plays keyboard and VJs.

"You can definitely put on a good show with the Wii," Lesondak says. "It's all going to depend on your imagination."

Spin Season: 08/16/2007

Avaland's new DJ series promises anything but trance

By Dennis Romero

Los Angeles has a lukewarm reputation when it comes to the international super-club circuit. For more than a decade, the city was known as a kids-and-candy raving haven. The city didn't even have a proper super-club night until the year 2000, long after New York, Miami, Boston, San Francisco, and even Orlando, Florida established a presence on the scene.

To this day, despite three large venues boasting regular super-club promotions, our global city is seen as somewhat staid in its electronic dance music tastes. If a local venue hosts a major trance DJ - say a Tiesto, Ferry Corsten, Armin Van Buuren, or Paul Van Dyk, all spinning a sound that peaked creatively in the late 1990s - there will surely be a line out the door. But if they bring in a more forward-thinking spinner who's beyond trance, it's a financial gamble. Club promoters, after all, have to slap down a deposit on performers and hope they get a decent payday on the back end. What's more, since 9/11, club-going crowds have thinned considerably. So a big-name DJ who plays a big, crowd-pleasing genre such as trance is a sound investment.

The gamblers who promote Avalon Hollywood's "Avaland" nights on Saturdays are trying to help the city's nightlife turn a creative corner. Starting September 1, the venue will host a "Fall-Winter Series," envisioned as a high-arts-like "season" where going out to catch the sounds of a lesser-known - but otherwise challenging - dance music artist will be an event in itself. Saturday's promoters, including Garrett Chau, Craig Edwards, and Damian Murphy, want to build the night for a new generation of club-goers more accustomed to dance-rock and electro-house than trance. The city's new hipsters have been raised on dance-friendly bands (LCD Soundsystem, The Kaxons, VHS or Beta) and are ready for a taste of nonstop, DJ-performed action. In fact, the lineup for Avaland's new series is as notable for what's in it as what's not: trance.

"I felt the clubs in L.A. had been known for bringing the biggest names in trance," says Chau, Avaland's director of promotion and booking. "That obviously dominated the scene for so long. People used to dress up and there were a lot of glow sticks, and that was that era. This new era is not about that. It's not anything against trance. It's a natural evolution."

Avaland's own evolution includes a lot of the techno and electro-house heroes that have been gaining a name for themselves not through radio, club play, or touring, but mainly through Internet music sites like Beatport and MySpace. There's a whole new generation of electronic dance music producers such as Booka Shade, which Avalon brought to town in spring, that have risen to prominence by directly wooing the earbuds of fans online. "Technology has helped start the resurrection of the scene," says Chau, a former Hollywood music-talent agent.

L.A.'s super-club nights have, for the most part, neglected to reflect this digital tidal wave of new stars - until now. Avaland's fall-winter lineup will include such online buzz-makers as Danish act Trentemoller (who had the remix of the year with Djuma Soundsystem's "Les Djinns"), San Francisco's Claude VonStroke (who's funky single "Who's Afraid of Detroit" has almost defined a new genre), and such techno new-schoolers as Adam Beyer and Tiefschwarz.Many of the acts - the exact show dates are still to be announced - will be triggering live tracks and remixes via laptop-based performance software, pushing Avaland's series even further beyond turntables and glow sticks. Trentemoller will even perform with a four-piece band. Says Chau:

"I think there's a super-club renaissance in this new group of artists and producers."

Sam Sparro Goes for Gold: 08/30/2007

Dance music gets a frontman in '80s dress and with a deep, soul voice

By Dennis Romero

As a rising red velvet curtain reveals the stage at club Bordello downtown, 24-year-old Sam Sparro is oozing sweat and quivering with excitement. Sporting tight, metallic gold pants, a black hardhat wrapped with a miner's flashlight, '80s-era louvered pink sunglasses, and Flock of Seagulls bangs, he could easily be taken for the Ali G of dance-rock. But behind Sparro's cool-kid posturing is a solid-gold talent who quickly grabs the mike and whips the crowd into a communal fury. Beyond the Reagan-era looks is an amazing, soul-crazed vocalist blending elements of Justin Timberlake, Jamiroquai, and Prince with electronic dance music. This may sound derivative, but he lays his hazy voice and lyrical high jinks over some truly far out electro-funk. His style and sound bring a fresh wave in a sea of followers.

"I think it's a huge element that's missing from electronic music - the personality, the frontman, if you will," Sparro says.

His Modus Vivendi Music debut EP, Black & Gold, hit the streets last week with a range of up-tempo bounce, digitized soul, and break-dancing elements that show remarkable range for a six-track release. The single "Black & Gold" is the centerpiece for good reason: It pogos dizzily on analog bubbles, tinny hi-hats, and ethereal synths, recalling the work of Goldfrapp. But then Sparro adds his own lyrical music, deep and raspy, yet vulnerable: "Cause you're not really here/Then I don't want to be either/I want to be next to you/Black and gold, black and gold, black and gold." It's anthemic. On "Sick," Sparro bellows like an '80s new wave star and reveals his Australian accent: "It's a sick, sick world/I'll be your medicine ... I'll make you feel better." His most down-tempo jam, "Cottonmouth," feels a little like a reprise to the Saturday Night Live skit-song "Dick in a Box" ("I need some H20/Down my throat," he sings). At other points in the EP, he steals pages from Parliament and, yes, Color Me Badd: "Girl I want to fatten you up/Get you up to a C-cup," he coos on "Miss Rexi," (you know, Ana).

"Ana listen to me/Put that in your mouth and start chewing." Uh-huh. Racy talk for a young man who grew up singing in Baptist choirs after moving to L.A. from Sydney at the age of 10. Both of his parents were musicians and avid fans of many black artists, so he got an earful of good stuff. His father even gigged with Frank

Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. "My dad was very blues and gospel, and that definitely influenced me," Sparro says.

As a teenager he went back to Australia and then moved to London to join the club-kid circuit there before coming back to Los Angeles a few years ago to work out his sound. Label head Jesse Rogg discovered Sparro performing at the What Club? and signed him. Rogg also produced the Black & Gold EP and backs up Sparro with computer-based sequencing when he performs. (Sparro himself likes to rawk out on a retro "keytar" keyboard.) The pair has already put together an album's worth of material, even previewing some of it during the recent show at Bordello. But for now, you'll have to live with the EP.

"The way the industry works, it didn't make sense for us to go full throttle with a full-length," Sparro says. "These days, people buy songs at a time."

His debut album will probably drop sometime in early '08. The sound, Sparro promises, is "pulling from the past and turning it into future music." We'll be waiting and anticipating, with parachute pants on.

First Class Crew: 09/13/2007

A Grand Tour of e-music's freshest stars, all on their way to L.A.

By Dennis Romero

Sometimes it's hard to make discoveries, even if that's your job as a music journalist. Of course, not enough of us do our jobs as thoroughly as we'd like, and we too often fall back on what's force-fed us by the industry's increasingly slick public relations machinery.

Fortunately, new media - MySpace, Beatport.com, e-mailed digital promos - make it easier for journos to make up our own minds about who's the shit and who's just crap. The new media blitz certainly has helped yours truly find some amazing talent just in time for their L.A. performances. Call this rundown a Grand Tour of new, electronic-music makes coming to a venue near you:

Simian Mobile Disco. This British duo is part of a wave of e-music artists combining punk-rock irreverence with spaced-out beats. In fact, one half of SMD, James Ford, produced the "nu rave" sound found on the Mercury Prize-winning Myths of the Near Future by the Klaxons. The SMD pair has its own full-length Attack Decay Sustain Release, out this week. Check the single "Hustler," or get down to the Disco on September 22 at the Echoplex, 1154 Glendale Blvd., Echo Park. Info: Attheecho.com.

Sam Sparro. I told you about Sparro in my last Groundswell column, but it's worth a refresher: This 24-year-old fashion victim is a star on the rise. His soul-glow vocals and far-out electronic-funk tracks make for an entirely new, yet totally accessible, sound. His debut EP, "Black & Gold," is only a teaser for a full-length he has in the can for 2008. But you can get some Sparro September 27 at the Echo, 1822 Sunset Blvd., Echo Park. Info: Attheecho.com.

Amanda Blank. She's another veteran of Groundswell, where I've written twice about her group, the cool kids of indie hip-hop, Spank Rock. This dirty-girl rapper has been a standout in the Baltimore-Philadelphia-New York crew, and she's now poised to go solo. (I'm told she's working on an album at this moment.) Her "Magic Man"-sampling single "Get It Now" has the roof on fire - and, trust me, you don't need no water. Check Blank live at the Neighborhood Music Festival, September 29. 3911 S. Figueroa St., Exposition Park. Info: Neighborhoodmusicfest.com.

edIT. The hip-hop train is colliding with the e-music express, and we couldn't be happier. Kanye West is sampling Daft Punk ("Stronger"), techno producer Dabrye made one of the best hip-hop albums last year with Two/Three, and now Los Angeles-based edIT is ready to unleash his sophomore "glitch-hop" album Certified Air Raid Material. The producer, an associate of the Glitch Mob, churns out synth-based tracks that soar so high they would make trance artists blush. While edIT sometimes sounds better in theory than practice, we like where he's going - and that's to Nocturnal 2007 on September 29. 836 Francisco St., downtown L.A. Info: Nocturnalwonderland.com.

Ulrich Schnauss. This British, one-man band has been heralded by the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper as the vanguard of "nu gazer" music. In other words, he's an electronic shoe-gazer. We can't disagree: You easily get lost in his hazy dreamscape of digital sound. Schnauss's music is like ambient on testosterone; it's Eno with muscle. His latest EP, "Quicksand Memory," was released this summer, but you can wait and catch him live, October 5 at the Troubadour, 9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood. Info: Troubadour.com.

Trentemoller. Since he remixed the hell out of Djuma Soundsystem's "Les Djinns" a few years back, this Danish artist has emerged as the leader of a new class of electronic dance music producers, which also includes Booka Shade, M.A.N.D.Y., Claude VonStroke, and Justin Martin. His output is eclectic, ranging from delicate ambience to grating, dirty techno. But his music is always sexy and groovy, as heard on his recent single, "Moan." See him October 6 at Avalon, 1735 N. Vine St., Hollywood. Info: Avalonhollywood.com.

Claude VonStroke. Along with labelmate Justin Martin, VonStroke has helped the Bay Area's always-strong dance music scene reemerge with a new, "tech-funk" sound. VonStroke's mischievous heart results in undeniably groovy jams, from the break-beat monster "Who's Afraid of Detroit," to the vocal chord cut-up "Deep Throat," both available on his 2006 debut, Beware of the Bird. VonStroke is America's worthy answer to the European wave of producers (Trentemoller, et al.) ruling clubland. He's coming to Avalon November 24. 1735 N. Vine St., Hollywood. Info: Avalonhollywood.com.

Chemical Engineering: 09/27/2007

The Chemical Brothers still get us dancing and still reign supreme

By Dennis Romero

In the early 1990s, after a night of clubbing, invariably my friends and I would end up at my apartment and start joking that someday we'd find ourselves old and gray, sitting tableside at a Vegas revue. An aging Moby would be in a tux, looking a little like The Sopranos' Dominic Chianese, belting out his techno classic "Go."

Well, Moby's no Uncle Junior, but my gray hair is starting to sprout, and Underworld recently performed at the Hollywood Bowl for a wine-sipping crowd of aging hipsters. We're not in Vegas-revue territory just yet, but electronic dance music has held sway in the United States long enough for the likes of Underworld, Daft Punk, and the Chemical Brothers to experience a second wind with a new generation of clubgoers. Today's dance music renaissance is good for those Clinton-era super-groups. The technology of making beats is better than ever, and so is some of the music.

Of those three titans of '90s rave culture, the Chemical Brothers are still making the highest-quality music. While popular, Daft Punk is mostly relying on old standards during its sold-out performances. (The duo's last original artist album came out in 2005.) And Underworld's recent long-player, Oblivion with Bells, is utterly pleasing, dreamy and inoffensive, yet without a tinge of edginess. The duo's Karl Hyde, is 50 - 50 years old. (And he likes to kick, stretch, and kick!) Even L.A.-based Crystal Method is riding e-music's second wave this month with an enhanced and expanded, 10-year-anniverary edition of its own classic album, Vegas.

The Chemical Brothers, on the other hand, continue to do the hard work of moving things forward - of innovating new sounds, structures, and themes. On its summer release, We Are the Night, the British duo is as ambitious, adventurous, and advance-minded as ever. If anything, the only reason the album doesn't garner the pair as much praise as its debut, Exit Planet Dust, is that the rest of the pop world has closed the gap, and the Chems' brand of bombastic break-beats and rock-infused rocket rides aren't as far out as they were 12 years ago.

"Exit was completely out of whack with anything made at the time, and it definitely was a great record," says one half of the Chems, 37-year-old Ed Simons. "But I'm pretty happy with the music we just made, really. If we don't feel that way, it's time to call it a day."

Indeed, the Chems' sounds aren't as shocking today as the duo's mid-'90s assault from the land of dance-till-dawn psychedelia, but Simons and partner Tom Rowlands have made an electronic music album that sounds as fitting, contemporary, and urgent as any grand, rock opus did in the 1970s. In that sense, the Chemical Brothers have seen e-music from its days as a fringe fad to a fully matured, pop-art endeavor worthy of Rolling Stone coverage and Coachella appearances. The world has caught up with the Chems. Theirs is the sound of today. We Are the Night brims with stabs at pop greatness, from the cinematic "Battle Scars" (sung by Willy Mason), to the Klaxons-flavored "All Rights Reserved," to the Daft Punk-slaying "Do It Again," to the catchy, Fatlip-rapped "Salmon Dance."

"An album that has 'Battle Scars' and a dance track living together, side-by-side, is nice," Simons says. "I think the freshness of our records has been greatly aided by being able to work with different people. What they come back with enables us to evolve and keep getting different styles every time."

Dance music is back, my old friends, so light up that cigar and dust off those glow-sticks. But for the Chemical Brothers, don't call it a comeback.

"There was never any death of dance music," Simons says. "There's a basic urge of young people to dance, and that's never going to be wiped out. Tom and I aren't on a real quest to uphold the flag of dance music, though. We just feel free."

Sensual, Layered, and New: 10/11/2007

Trentemøller finds his own way to push e-music forward

By Dennis Romero

Los Angeles Times music critic Ann Powers recently argued that originality in pop is a fruitless measuring stick because all artists draw from a palette of "open source" musical history. She was disagreeing, in a way, with Elton John's bitter-old-man declaration that the Internet was helping pop become inbred, and that the Web should be shut down for five years for the good of musical creativity.

Both arguments are copouts. Originality is paramount. Artists should be pissing off their parents - and Elton John - for the evolution of culture. And the Web has been a breeding ground for originality, including a tidal wave of new sounds coming from the digital-production domain, a virtual palette of fresh paint that's helping to provide a tectonic shift in youth culture. Witness the renewed popularity of house act Daft Punk, the cool kids' enthusiasm for dance punk outfit Justice, and the irresistibly refined sounds of clubland artists such as deadmau5, 16 Bit Lolitas, and Trentemøller. They're underrated and inventive, wired and wireless.

Anders Trentemøller, in particular, has been a breath of fresh air to those of us willing to give originality the high regard it once had when pop actually exploded with freshness in the 1950s and '60s. The Danish techno sensation wowed The New York Times last year with his sweet-and-sour debut, The Last Resort and this week he unleashed a two-disc collection of remixes and rare productions called The Trentemøller Chronicles. The first disc is a moody mix-CD that moves like melting ice until firing up for four-on-the-floor faves such as his sensual, brooding "Moan." The second disc provides bubbly, melodious re-rubs of the likes of Royksopp, Moby, and Djuma Soundsystem (whose Trentemøller-graced "Les Djinns" will go down as a classic). The new compilation is a chance to feed the hunger of global fans who have slowly but surely begun looking for Trentemøller on MySpace and on e-music retail sites such as Beatport.com.

"I just heard that Elton John was saying the Internet has destroyed the whole scene, but I think it's totally the opposite," Trentemøller, 35, says during a break from a sound check at Avalon Hollywood last weekend. "It's opened up music to people all over the world. And it's helped people who can't afford a big studio and who can now come out without having a major label behind them."

Trentemøller himself came out of nowhere after a career gigging for rock bands as a keyboardist and teaching kindergarten during the daytime. In the early '00s, after having discovered dance music on a trip to London in the late '90s, he spent two years in self-imposed musical exile because he was unsatisfied with his own, derivative music. "I was a big fan of Daft Punk and [American techno pioneers] Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May. I found out I can try to sound like them, but it's not me. I spent a lot of time thinking about defining my own sound and being honest with myself."

The self-discipline worked, and in 2003 Trentemøller burst on the scene with a series of remixes ("Les Djinns") and originals ("The Trentemøller EP") that coincided with a creative renaissance in Europe's "minimal" techno circles. By last year, Trentemøller's classically infused sounds, multilayered mindscapes, and contrasting textures had taken the DJ world by storm. Not bad for a kid who started his artistic journey drumming on his mother's pots and pans and who never learned how to read music. These days, most of the major labels have knocked on his door, hoping to put out his next album, he says. It's still up in the air.

At last weekend's performance at Avalon Hollywood, Trentemøller was joined onstage by guitarist/bassist Mikael Simpson and drummer (and fashion designer) Henrik Vibskov for a sensational feast of sound and vision. Ambience gave way to bullet-train bass lines as video director Karim Ghahwagi, who's touring with the trio, tweaked images of (the notorious) Bettie Page. She wiggled, flirted, and gave the come-hither wink-and-finger, but it was just a fetishistic window into a 1950s era that was once rebellious and innovative. Trentemøller, hair over his eyes, banging on his software-controller pads, closed that window, and opened a new one. He calls it "electronic music that can touch you in a deeper way," and indeed, it did.

Disco Inferno: 10/18/2007

Notable moments in L.A.'s electronic dance

By Dennis Romero

1972 "Mayor of Sunset Strip" Rodney Bingenheimer opens the E Club as a night for glam rock. He later moves and renames it Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, which becomes an outlet for electronic-flavored new wave bands, as well as Brit-rock staples.

1974 Gene La Pietra and partner Ermilio "Ed" Lemos start holding parties at a new warehouse-like building they'll soon name Circus Disco. La Pietra wanted to open his own club after his gay friends, including an African-American and a Latino, had a hard time getting into a nearby venue. Circus becomes a gay, Latino mecca, with mixed, superstar-DJ nights hosted there as well.

1986 British DJ Mark Lewis moves to Los Angeles and brings his "acid"-flavored house music with him to parties at Westside hotspots. Santa Monica spinner Marques Wyatt is already hosting house-music parties he calls "BBC."

1988 Marques Wyatt and friends start a house music night called "Mac's Garage" at the Musician's Union building on Vine Street.

1989 Pepperdine University student Steve Levy visits his British homeland only to discover rave culture. He brings it back that summer in the form of massive, roving "Moonshine" parties where DJs are the stars of the show.

1990 La Pietra opens Arena next door to Circus near Santa Monica Boulevard and North Las Palmas Avenue. A former ice factory, it's the most modern, austere venue the city will see for nearly a decade. Doc Martin moves from San Francisco back to his native L.A. and starts DJing at full-on, underground events called "Flammable Liquid." URB magazine launches.

1991 Radio DJ Swedish Egil launches MARS-FM on the 103.1 frequency. It airs far-out sounds from the likes of Moby, the Prodigy, and 808 State. It barely lasts a year.

1992 Rave culture explodes in L.A., with club nights happening at spots ranging from the Palladium to Prince's former Glam Slam. Ecstasy and raving appear on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. Promoter Gary Richards rings in 1993 with a near 20,000-capacity "Raveamerica" event at Knott's Berry Farm.

1994 In post-riot L.A., raving goes deep underground to inner-city dives where methamphetamine becomes the drug of choice and gang members join the party.

1996 "Organic 96" brings electronic dance music culture into the mainstream with an open-air concert in the Angeles National Forest featuring the Chemical Brothers, Underworld, the Orb, Meat Beat Manifesto, Leftfield, and Orbital. There's buzz about major-label interest in dance culture, and Swedish Egil returns e-music to the airwaves with Groove Radio at 103.1 FM.

2000 San Francisco club owner Dave Dean starts promoting his "Giant" nights on Saturdays at Circus Disco, bringing the European, super-club vibe to L.A.

2003 Circus Disco is raided by the D.E.A. and local police who are looking for evidence of ecstasy dealing. They claim to have found it, but the club was never prosecuted. Meanwhile, the owners of Avalon Boston and New York take on celebrity partners such as Bruce Willis and Dan Aykroyd to purchase and renovate L.A.'s old Palace Theatre. They call it Avalon Hollywood. The $1 million sound system, residencies from the likes of Sasha, and early a.m. hours make the venue a sensation.

2005 The owners of a Hollywood Boulevard warehouse once used for rave parties give it a major renovation and a serious Funktion One sound system. They rename it Vanguard and invite Dave Dean to bring his Giant nights there.

2007 Gene La Pietra says he's likely to sell his four-acre club compound that includes Circus Disco and Arena for about $62 million. He says the new owners will probably raze the venues and use the land for a mixed-use, housing-and-retail project.

La Pietra's Circus leaves town: 10/18/2007

The Last Days of Disco

By Dennis Romero

At Circus Disco's 33rd anniversary celebration last weekend, owner Gene La Pietra was dapper in a scarf and tie, happily reminiscing about how he started the Hollywood club with credit cards and a mission to let in the door anyone who could pay. The venue started life in 1974 and, in 1990, he converted the Union Ice factory next door, renaming it Arena Nightclub. He's also added parking lots, a private venue, and other nearby parcels to his portfolio, creating a four-acre nightlife compound for the ages at Santa Monica Boulevard and North Las Palmas Avenue. Since the very first night, La Pietra has manned the front of Circus, micromanaging his loyal staff. And that's where he was last Friday, in the rain, telling the valets where to park the nice cars, advising workers to roll up the carpets, and helping move extension chords out of the way as the skies opened up.

It was probably the last anniversary party for Circus's loyal old-schoolers. The last days of Circus Disco, and Arena, are at hand if a $62-million buyout of La Pietra's property goes through as planned this week, he says. The prospective owners are hoping to erect a massive, mixed-use development - housing, retail, the whole deal - with Circus and Arena likely to be razed in the process, the club owner tells us. For many nightlife denizens in Los Angeles, these venues are sacred grounds. La Pietra says he started Circus because he was out with friends - black, Latino, gay - who couldn't get into a nearby club to celebrate a birthday in the early '70s. And so, Circus became a mecca, perhaps the first of its kind, for the area's burgeoning community of gay Latinos. In the '90s, both Circus and Arena became home to popular mixed nights as well, from rave-like events to Power 106's "Power Tools" DJ-mix shows. But if you think La Pietra, who says he's 60, is reluctant to see the clubs destroyed, you're wrong.

"It's nice to know there won't be someone here to mess it up," he says. "You know what's exciting - going out on top. Thirty-million people have come through here. The time has come to start a new adventure."

La Pietra says he'll forever let go of the reigns and start to live a little with his 27-year-old husband. They occupy a manse in Los Feliz and have a beach home near Rosarito, Mexico. In summer, La Pietra went overseas for the first time in his life, flying to London. It's a long way from the streets of Hollywood, which La Pietra says were his home as a 19-year-old newcomer from Rhode Island at the dawn of the '70s. In 1974, after working odd jobs and cofounding a coffee shop and adult bookstore, he and partner to Ermilio "Ed" Lemos pooled credit card money and loose cash to rent a brand new warehouse and turn it into a dance club and provide a haven for groups that felt shut out of the straight, white L.A. nightlife. When the owner found out, he tried to pull the plug, and so did local authorities, he says.

"There were many attempts to try to close us down," he says. "Hollywood wasn't ready for a couple thousand blacks and Latinos."

But by end of the 1980s, Circus was his for $1.8 million. He also bought the Arena property next door for $2.1 million. Lemos died in 1990. Seven years later, he married his new partner. He also bought more adjacent property. And La Pietra started to welcome a new generation of club-goers raised on techno, house music, and ecstasy culture to his clubs. Many Eastside-bred DJs made their names at Circus and Arena. Montebello-bred "hard house" DJ Irene started her career, homeless and drug-addicted, at Arena, only to arguably become the top woman in global mix-CD sales. La Pietra was known for giving work to the desperate and down-and-out. In the late '90s Circus became home to "Magic Wednesdays" rave nights. And in 2000, San Francisco club owner Dave Dean came to town and promoted the area's first true, European-style "super-club" nights at Circus with name-brand spinners flown in from across the globe. Superstar DJ nights have remained a staple of Circus, even as the competition increased with the establishment of nicer, newer venues in Avalon Hollywood and Vanguard, also nearby. Still, Circus and Arena's engines were fueled by the gay Latino community to the very end, with nights such as "Club Macho Man" and "Caliente."

"We didn't start out to try to be social reformers," La Pietra says. "Clubs are strange vehicles to change social patterns. We were always very mixed clubs. You find less of a need for that now."

James Gomez says he started coming to Circus as a teenager in 1975, fake ID in-hand. "It was a paradise," the 48-year-old Hollywood hairdresser says. "Was it about sex, drugs, and disco? Absolutely. They were nights you didn't want to end."

In December of 2003, DEA agents and local police tried to put an end to Circus. They staged a massive raid and claimed to have found 10,000 ecstasy pills. Five people, including two Circus employees, were arrested, but La Pietra was never prosecuted and, today, the club owner says the raid was purely political. That year La Pietra had become the leader of the Hollywood secession movement, putting nearly $1.5 million of his own cash into the ballot effort to have the community become a city separate from Los Angeles. The impresario also made no secret of his desire to become mayor, should cityhood succeed. It did not. A month before the raid, L.A. Weekly published a cover story highly critical of La Pietra, stating that "he talks big, and can be loose with the facts." The police action, he says, was not about the club's clientele; it "was about me."

And still, La Pietra stands out in the cold, directing workers, greeting old friends, and taking customers' questions. ("For years," he says, "people thought I was the doorman.") This coming New Year's Eve is being promoted as "the last dance," but La Pietra won't confirm rumors that it will indeed be the closing night for Circus and Arena. To be sure, however, the end is near.

"How lucky can a guy be to come to L.A. and have this long a run?" he says. "It's the Johnny Carson exit all the way - short, sweet, and right on top."

Burning Down the House: 10/18/2007

By Dennis Romero

It takes fast hands, a quick step, and arms of Shiva to be a mix-show radio DJ. On a Saturday night, Raul Campos blends a techy 10-inch by Emerald City into the flow, pulls the previous record off a turntable, turns, and then types the title into his PowerBook. He stays cool under the white-hot lights of "Studio 3" as the VU-meter needles bounce into the red. He tells his assistants to "stand by" as he opens up the mike and fades down the chugging beats. "You're tuned to Nocturna on 89.9 KCRW," he tells Los Angeles.

Campos grew up in East L.A.'s defunct Estrella projects, so he's the first to say he's in heaven spinning vinyl at one of the nation's most influential radio outlets. His weekly dance show has helped propel him to the top of the city's competitive house scene, with its few venues, intense infighting, and New York envy. Los Angeles does have a dubby, funky, and percussive house sound all its own, however, thanks to DJs Doc Martin, Marques Wyatt, and Eddie Amador. Campos's influences – the MAW and Sulfuric labels, the producers Deep Swing, Julius Papp, and the Groove Junkies, and New York tribal DJ Danny Tenaglia – fit right in. He shares top billing at Santa Monica club Sugar every Friday with fellow KCRW-FM DJ Liza Richardson. Nocturna's selection, including yet-to-be-released tracks, is a must-listen for "house heads," who often call in for song titles. Campos and his music are also needed reminders of the music's considerable Latino roots.

"I love that he can represent the Latino community," says Richardson, host of KCRW's The Drop, which segues into Nocturna. "He may be preserving some music in Los Angeles, but he's also constantly evolving. His ears continue to grow."

Campos is as mellow and kind as his twangy Eastside accent suggests, but a fire burns within. The 31-year-old went on a tenacious drive to take over the coveted reins of the Saturday-night mix-show airwaves, including his 9 p.m.-to-midnight slot at KCRW and once-a-month mixing duties at after-hours dance show Power Tools, which airs on top-rated KPWR-FM (105.9 mHz).

As a boy, Campos used to ask his mom to buy him 45s on her way back from the market. He still has them. Later, three big brothers flooded him with sounds, from disco to progressive rock. By the time he was a teenager, Campos was DJing at house parties. As an urban planning student at Cal Poly Pomona, he moonlighted at clubs in Montebello and South Gate. After college, he spun at the Eastside's Gotham Bar & Grill as often as six nights a week, holding a button-down career at bay. In 1995, however, the club closed, and he was forced to bust a move.

"In a way I'm very fortunate the club shut down and got turned into a Denny's," Campos says. "It forced me out of the Eastside and made me look around. I went to KPFK [90.7 FM], I went to KCRW, I went to Power Tools – to see what could happen."

That year, Power Tools aired a mix tape he submitted, and not long afterward Campos was hanging around the studio on Saturday nights. Soon he found himself hosting the show's "Community Calendar," and he later took over another segment, "Homegrown," which featured up-and-coming dance-music artists.

After volunteering in KCRW's front office in 1999, Campos was put on air as a fill-in jock for the station's array of dance and electronic music shows, but he quickly got his own slot Wednesday nights, which became a primetime weekend mix show last year. Each week, Nocturna presents a fresh musical journey because Campos mixes vinyl straight out of his white record box. There's no preconceived play list, but the station often posts his favorite tracks on its website, which he updates during the week as a part-time employee. Lately, Campos has been focused on music production, with remixes due out this month on Dirty Pink and house hero Amador's Mochico label.

"He runs to the deep side, and that's what's going on right now," Amador says. "Raul Campos has his hand on the pulse of the dance music underground."

The Politics of Dancing: 10/18/2007

Ravers Invade Federal Building Lawn to Protest New Drug Law

By Alan Mittelstaedt & Dennis Romero

When scores of big-pants ravers swarmed the front lawn of the Westwood Federal Building on a recent sunny Saturday, it looked like a guerilla DJ party. To booming beats, happy kids chased soap bubbles, Rock the Vote volunteers recruited young voters under a red-and-white tent, and campaign workers handed out bumper stickers for underdog Democratic presidential candidate Dennis J. Kucinich. But these are grim times for freedom of expression in America, and these dancers had come to fight for their right to party.

Call it escapist engagement. With every Puma print on the federal lawn, ravers were stomping on a new federal law that could make hosting concerts, clubs, and raves into a federal offense. Some in Los Angeles's budding club-culture industry have organized the Dance and Nightlife Coalition of Electronic Music (www.dancemusic.org) to hold events like this demonstration to decry the law as anathema to free speech and discriminatory toward e-music counterculture. They want it repealed.

"I am concerned that the law will be applied in ways that will be used to silence alternative points of view – any place where a subversive element might be assembling – protests, reggae concerts, any people who dress funny and get together," said DANCEmusic co-organizer Susan Mainzer.

This spring, Congress passed the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act, a renamed version of a bill formerly known as the RAVE (Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstacy) Act, after it was attached to popular Amber Alert legislation, which established a national system of broadcasting and alerting motorists about child abductions. The new act applies the infamous 1986 "crackhouse law" – which makes venue owners and promoters subject to charges, and even to forfeiture of their property – to any concerts, clubs, festivals, or live performances where arrests are made for illicit drug sales. The RAVE Act was ridiculously vague: It equated drug use with any late-night dance party where glow sticks, water consumption, and repetitive beats are found.

After a surprisingly strong show of dissent within the nation's electronic-music community, the RAVE Act language was cleaned up to remove the prejudice against raves. Now, however, some fear the new law is too broad and could apply to everything from a reggae concert where blunts are sparked to a mainstream electronica show at the storied Wiltern – owned by radio giant Clear Channel Communications – where a few partygoers might drop ecstasy.

The prospect has cast a chill over the otherwise recession-resistant club scenes in America's big cities. Club promoters and label owners, many of whom are loath to comment for fear of becoming suspects themselves, say any half-baked cases will discourage much-needed new dance-music venues and thus hurt the burgeoning numbers of artists and record labels of e-music. The massive 30,000-strong raves common to Los Angeles have all but died over the three years that the U.S. Department of Justice has been trying to expand the crackhouse law to target ecstasy-flavored events. As it stands, fines and penalties for venue owners and promoters found guilty of hosting parties where drugs are knowingly used and tolerated can reach $750,000 – not to mention the possibility of 20 years behind bars.

Back on the bass-blasted federal lawn, 26-year-old marketer Phil Long hands out T-shirts with the logo of new e-music fashion company ELEKTRONIKA Musicwear, a launch in the tradition of legendary rave-clothier Fresh Jive. "The law is not fair to those who don't do drugs, such as myself," he says.

"Lawmakers are targeting the scene," Long says, "but it's not all about drugs."

Even Sen. Patrick D. Leahy (D-Vermont) expressed concern about the law, after co-sponsoring the original RAVE Act. "This bill has drawn serious grassroots opposition, and I know that I am not alone in hearing from many constituents about their serious and well-considered objections to it," he told the U.S. Senate. "Business owners have come to Congress and told us there are only so many steps they can take to prevent any of the thousands of people who may attend a concert or a rave from using drugs. They are worried about being held personally accountable for the illegal acts of others."

Unfortunately, according to a recent comment by a representative in Leahy's office, the Republican-dominated political landscape in Washington offers little hope that the legislation will be revisited soon, leaving it up to such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Drug Policy Alliance to challenge any enforcement of the law in court.

"We will be looking for a case that will make sense for us to take," said William McColl, director of national affairs for the DPA. "In the meantime, we hope what the Department of Justice would do is set up a safe harbor where, if promoters are following particular guidelines, they're not going to get tagged."

Ebony and Ecstasy: 10/25/2007

After nearly two decades in separate corners, hip-hop and e-music are back together on the dance floor

By Dennis Romero

Hip-hop and electronic dance music are brothers who have taken different trajectories in their lives. When hip-hop was called rap and emcees still wore leather pants and mascara, the music was up-tempo and DJ-driven, just like the super-club sounds of today. When rap helped to spawn "electro" in the early '80s heyday of Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock," Cybotron's "Clear," and the Jonzun Crew's "Space is the Place," it was one of the last times that hip-hop and electronic dance music were truly in the same gang. Perhaps it's fitting then, that in 2007, a time of '80s revivalism among the cool kids, hip-hop and e-music are getting back together.

Exhibit A, of course, is Kanye West's chart-dominating "Stronger," which samples Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger." Hovering at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop singles chart, it's based on the crunchy analog keyboards and voice-box vocals of the French duo's track, which itself harkens back to an era of electrified, '80s disco. Meanwhile, Dude 'N Dem's "Watch My Feet" is an exercise in "hard house" that's amazingly reduced to half-time break-beats. And Village Voice pop critic Tom Breihan notes that Timbaland has forever had an "overt techno streak," dating back, I might add, to his production of Missy Elliott's house-paced, 2001 club hit "Get Ur Freak On." That was about that time that Sean "P. Diddy" Combs started hanging around the DJ booths of South Beach and Ibiza.

Today, the most unstoppable element of electronic music in rap is ecstatic, Teutonic trance. We can probably thank Usher and his bombastic 2004 track "Yeah." Baby Bash's recent hit "Cyclone" is a feast of stratospheric strings, right out of the glow-stick Netherlands, but set to the low idle of contemporary beat-making. On the e-music side, there have been nods to hip-hop from DJ Claude VonStroke ("Who's Afraid of Detroit") techno producer Dabrye's (Two/Three) and remixer Trentemøller ("Les Djinns"). Most prominent among the e-meets-b-boy crowd is Spank Rock, whose latest EP, "Bangers & Cash" goes off the deep end of "booty music," reflecting reverence for 2 Live Crew's perv-boy antics while employing high-tech production and trance-inspired elements.

Interestingly, Sasha Frere-Jones's recent New Yorker essay, "A Paler Shade of White," argues that "rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties" and became, essentially, free from black influence. Rock, as I argue in "Pop's Living Dead" [CityBeat, October 9, 2003], stopped evolving around 1979, a victim of self-segregation (rock fans burned disco records in Comiskey Park that year) at a time when African-Americans moved on to create rap, disco, and soon, house and techno - new genres far from rock. But with that came a hyperawareness of blackness and masculinity in hip-hop - an almost anti-rock sentiment. As the genre stepped further away from its multicultural roots, it turned its back on its brother, the often-effeminate dance music genre. In the late '90s, a defiant saying in hip-hop clubs - where men would line the dance floor, arms crossed, and bob their heads as women gyrated - was "n------ don't dance."

Today, hip-hop is recapturing the groove. Diddy's super-club exploits and Eminem's ecstasy shouts helped. As well, shared technology in the studio is unavoidable: Reason, Ableton Live, and Serato Scratch software dominate both genres. With shared tech comes shared sounds. Furthermore, hip-hop has also grown up and is flipping the script on cultural appropriation, like Diddy sampling the reggae-crazed Police. But one horizon always weighed heavy on the artistic mind of any Afro-futurist: Space is the place. The biblical prophet Elijah was lifted by a sweet chariot into a sky afire ("The Roof is on Fire"), an image later reflected in the teachings of the Nation of Islam, which preached of an interstellar "mother plane" in the sky, a vengeful promised land, so to speak. This heavenly futurism found its way into the music of George Clinton (the Mothership Connection) and a long line of skyward dreamers (Sun Ra, Afrika Bambaataa), reaching into the electro '80s and beyond. The dance floor, I would argue, has always been a plane apart, a space for freedom of movement literally, and in the mind's eye.

'Stroke-ing Electro: 11/21/2007

Claude VonStroke remixes and reinvigorates a classic e-music sound

By Dennis Romero

“Electro” is the latest buzzword in electronic dance music. The contrived New York school of electroclash has all but died off, the victim of an inauthentic poseur posse – Vocoder- and Moog-touting art-school debutantes in Punky Colours – that could be sniffed out by true club-heads from miles around. Electro isn’t necessarily the redheaded stepchild of electroclash, but it did add the crunchy, bubbly, Reagan-era synths to today’s hottest four-on-the-floor house music. The problem is that record labels and millennial-generation clubbers are often calling “electro house” simply “electro” without knowing that the moniker carries important cultural baggage, not the least of which is that electro already existed in the 1980s, and it had little to do with downtown cool kids. Hot-selling dance compilations such as Thrivemix Presents: Electro, Ultra Electro 2, and Electro Nouveau only feed this wrongheaded definition.

Electro was a cross of hip-hop and techno that had its heyday in the early 1980s. Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” is the genre’s definitive track, but Newcleus’s “Jam On It,” Cybotron’s “Clear,” Jonzun Crew’s “Space is the Place,” Rock Master Scott & the Dynamic Three’s “The Roof Is on Fire” (later reprised in the Chemical Brothers’s “Hey Boy Hey Girl”) and Hashim’s “Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)” are just as seminally electro. This up-tempo break-beat music, designed largely for break-dancing, survived as a genetic thread in the music of such West-Coast-related artists as the Dr. Dre-led L.A. Dream Team, the World Class Wreckin’ Cru, Egyptian Lover, Uncle Jamm’s Army, DJ Unknown, and even 2 Live Crew, which recorded it’s early, electro-flavored bass music for an L.A. label. In rave culture’s mid-’90s, break-dancing heyday, artists from California (Uberzone), Florida (Jackal & Hyde), and the U.K. (Rennie Pilgrem) borrowed directly from the parachute pants tradition of electro. It’s strange, then, to see the word misused and the genre whitewashed like so much indie rock.

Luckily, there are releases that carry the flag for electro’s spirit. The recently released Kings of Electro compilation sets the record straight, by blending iconic ’80s originals (Model 500s techno classic “No UFO’s,” Dynamix II’s electro-bass track “Just Give the DJ a Break”) with modern manifestations of electro flavor from Plastikman, Underground Resistance, and Kenny Larkin. Even “progressive” DJ Sasha’s latest single, “Park it in the Shade” contains some of the electro-tinged evil spirits of synthesizers’ past. But, above all, it has been Bay Area DJ and producer Claude VonStroke who has channeled the cardboard dance mats of his youth though some amazingly kinetic music heard in clubs across the globe.

VonStroke is originally from Detroit, the original home of electro’s close cousin, techno. His odes to the Motor City include his contemporary classic “Who’s Afraid of Detroit,” a break-house blast, and his more recent, “Put Your Hands Up For Detroit,” which is more house, less electro, but all well-meaning mischief. VonStroke’s recent remix of Newcleus’s “Jam On It” is minimal, mesmerizing, and almost psychedelic. His 2006 album debut, Beware of the Bird (named in honor of his label, Dirtybird), prompted the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper to enthuse: “Not since Daft Punk donned robot suits has there been such a quirky, engaging house album as this.” VonStroke’s bleep-and-bass music is so well-engineered for ass-shaking, it’s artfully pornographic (as with “Deep Throat,” his first hit, or his “uh”-

infested “The Whistler”).

Surprisingly, VonStroke is a dance music renaissance man. Under the name Barclay Crenshaw (he also goes by Burnto Bertolucci, Pedro DeLaFaydro), he directed one of the better documentaries on e-music, 2003’s Intellect: Techno House Progressive. He’s also somewhat media shy, at least so far in his career, although he mixed a live DJ set on BBC Radio 1 this month. VonStroke’s music might not be electro proper, but with his faithful robotic soul, electro lives.

Avaland presents Claude VonStroke with Matthew Dear, Sat. at Avalon, 1735 N. Vine St., Hollywood. 21+. Doors at 10 p.m. Tickets $15 presale. Avalonhollywood.com.

Deadmau5 in the House: 12/07/2007

By Dennis Romero

If the world’s core dance floors belonged to Kaskade, Trentemøller, and Claude VonStroke in 2006, this year, Deadmau5 was the name on every super-club DJ’s tongue. And true to these hyperreal times, Deadmau5’s was an almost-instant, web-generated fame that has taken even the man himself by surprise. “I just signed my first autograph,” says the 27-year-old, who has barely a dozen tracks to his name.

Ah, but those releases have shot around the global underground like text messages at a software convention, ending up on at least 15 dance compilations this year, not to mention their presence on the top of playlists of everyone from BBC Radio 1 influencer Pete Tong, to DJ titan John Digweed, to rocker-turned-spinner Tommy Lee, who’s a friend of the Toronto-based phenom. Lee tells us Deadmau5’s music is “beats ’n’ bass that just fucking feel good.” The Canadian’s tunes are constantly at the head of the “top downloads” charts at dance music’s biggest online retailer, Beatport.com. In fact, thanks to his songs’ popularity, Deadmau5 is so in-demand as a DJ on the super-club circuit that he’s booked every weekend through next summer. Even he admits that, before February, when Pete Tong played his “Faxing Berlin” on BBC Radio 1, few in club-land knew he existed.

Like Trentemøller, Gui Boratto, and 16 Bit Lolitas, Deadmau5 has deftly tapped a zeitgeist sound that exists between the operatic drama of trance, the Teutonic precision of techno, and the Baptist rhapsody of house music. His signature songs (“Jaded,” “Not Exactly,” “Faxing Berlin”) move majestically forward on forceful rhythms, like great clippers cutting through white-capped seas. Epic breakdowns give way to perfect arpeggio keyboard chords that are simple yet wholly effective in playing your heartstrings for ecstatic affect. Gorgeous loops are launched into the atmosphere as Deadmau5 keeps them coolly under control. It’s almost as if the producer, born Joel Zimmerman, has captured the ghost in the machine of dance music. He’s yet another example of how the nerds are inheriting the earth. “I owe a great deal of my success to being reclusive,” Deadmau5 says.

“At the dawn of the era when people started making music on PCs” Deadmau5 was in on the ground floor, working at a computer shop during his teenage years in Niagara Falls, geeking out on hardware and communicating online with music software developers, he says. “Growing up like that, I’ve had this stigma of, ‘Am I Joel the Musician or Joel the Programmer?”

At age 22, Deadmau5 finally moved out of the nest (mom was an artist, dad worked at a General Motors plant) to take a job in Toronto as a Flash software developer. Soon he found work as a consultant for a Belgian music software company, which paid the bills as he transitioned to making “random tracks” for Toronto label Play Digital. A few years ago he was investigating a horrible stench in his apartment that eventually led him to his desktop PC, inside which he found a “crispy critter.” He later framed the poor fellow and took on the name Deadmau5 because “dead mouse” comprises too many characters to use as an Internet Relay Chat handle.

This year, a friend passed along some of his music to British DJ-producer Chris Lake, who passed it along to Pete Tong, who played it for the globe. Today, when he isn’t running his Mou5trap label, DJing from city to city, or working on an album he hopes to release next year, Deadmau5 is collaborating on harder-edged “electro house” with L.A. producer, Steve Duda. About three years ago, Duda introduced him to notorious rocker Tommy Lee, a sometime DJ and e-music aficionado who now pals around out with Deadmau5 when he’s in Toronto. Lee says he’s collaborating with Deadmau5 on some music: “Yes, kids! You all just wait ’til 2008.”

“I’ve had a taste of the rock star lifestyle hanging out with Tommy Lee,” Deadmau5 says. “I could get used to it.”

Dr. Feelgood: 12/20/2007

By Dennis Romero

In an age when the term “rock star” epitomizes a vaunted standard of living (to “party like a rock star” is to reach the pinnacle of contemporary Western leisure), one man, perhaps more than any other, personifies those words: Tommy Lee. His vitae loco: enviable endowment, an AVN Award-winning video, Pamela in her prime, Mötley Crüe ruling the hair-metal era, and “Girls, Girls, Girls.” Oh, he also played drums in a band that sold 40 million records. So what does Lee – el rockero mas chingon – see in our little corner of the world, electronic dance music?

I get him on the phone to find out. I ask how he paired up with DJ Aero, with whom he’s headlining super-clubs these days as part of their “Electro Mayhem Tour.” He starts to tell the story but quickly interrupts himself. “Wow,” he says. “Dude, the hottest girl ever just walked by. Stay focused, Tommy.”

Ah. There’s girls in them there dance clubs, too. Where the Sunset Strip’s ’80s rock epoch attracted skinny babes and men dressed like them, contemporary electronic dance music has a similar hedonistic energy that’s rarely outdone by other music subcultures. The sounds may be different, but the sexual electricity isn’t. So, what better candidate to tap into it than Tommy Lee?

“With Aero and I, there’s nothing but energy and dirty bass and sexy shit – and people are getting off on it,” the rocker says.

Indeed, the pair spin and tweak “electro house” music like they’re making a soundtrack for cyber-porn. A recent performance on Sirius Satellite Radio showed that their sound is crunchy, banging, and relentless. The drummer sticks to complementary duties in the DJ booth – he mostly adds electronic effects, drum-machine beats, and DVD visuals to Aero’s well-mixed stream of sound.

“I don’t do anything to disrupt the groove,” Lee says, “but I want to add to it.”

“He’s not just a DJ,” Aero says. “We’ve got an actual drummer at our shows.”

Lee and Aero met in 2000, when Lee’s band, Methods of Mayhem, needed a DJ for its tour. Champion spinner Mixmaster Mike, who contributed to Mayhem’s record that year, wasn’t available, but Aero’s similar DJing style fit the bill. Lee had always had an ear for electronic dance music, and Aero’s sound evolved to include electro house. So they paired up once more in 2004 to perform at Miami’s big-stage DJ-palooza, the Ultra Music Festival. Aero mixed up-tempo dance records while Lee did his thing. The drummer was hooked.

“Once you get a taste of 20,000 kids bouncing up and down, you say, ‘OK, I’m in,’” Lee says.

He’s all in. That same year, he was forcibly removed from the turntables of a Vegas club where he’d been booked to spin: Apparently, management didn’t appreciate his skills. Lee, in turn, reportedly continued to order Cristal without paying. (What happened that night might not have been proper dance music, but it sure was rock ’n’ roll.) In 2005, as legend has it, Lee gigged at a resort outside Zagreb, Croatia, with superstar DJ Erick Morillo. The refund-seeking owner of the resort was not pleased with Lee’s performance and allegedly held him against his will, until Lee and company fled with the help of local authorities. That year, Lee starred in the short-lived NBC reality show Tommy Lee Goes to College, which was executive produced by dance-music legend BT. More recently, Lee contributed some electronic drum beats to the production work of breakbeat star Adam Freeland. And when Lee and Aero aren’t on the road, they’re in the studio, working on original material they hope will someday land on their own mix-CD. Toronto-based friend and dance phenom Deadmau5 stayed at Lee’s L.A.-area home last week so he could pitch in with the music making.

“I must say, I’m over rock music,” Lee proclaims. “I just like everything. I love beats – I live for them.” Spoken like a true dance star.

Tommy Lee & DJ Aero bring their “Electro Mayhem Tour” to Crash Mansion, Sat. at 1024 S. Grand Ave., downtown L.A. Doors at 9 p.m. 21+. Tickets: $25. Info: Crashmansionla.com.

Trance Out: 01/03/2008

Leave this tired genre to the trendy and aim for real innovation

By Dennis Romero

I’ve been avoiding it for some time, hiding this festering hatred behind my general love for all God’s genres. But I have to come out of the closet: I’m an anti-trancite.

In the beginning, I was wooed by the cyclone energy of early-’90s post-techno trance (namely that of Sven Väth and his Harthouse label). Then I was taken by the romantic, ivory strokes of BT and Robert Miles. (Who could deny the elegant innocence of the artists’ Ima and “Children,” respectively?) Then, West Coast trance acts such as Sandra Collins, Deepsky, and Christopher Lawrence added driving, aggressive, straight-line momentum to the loopy, synthetic sound. It was hard not to be uplifted by this California wave.

But by the millennium, trance had melted down into an ecstasy-fueled orgy of synth arpeggios-gone-wild. If there’s good trance out there today, I’d like to know where to find it. It certainly isn’t in the super-clubs, where Armani Exchange-adorned dorks with glow sticks and bottle-service tables have turned the trance scene into a satire about the shallowness of contemporary capitalism.

Trance has come to embody the prog-rock-like excesses of the global club scene. While the image of overpaid DJs playing other people’s music for legions of glow-stickers is an old joke, it’s still a reality in trance. Nearly three years after the British indie film It’s All Gone Pete Tong sent up superstar-DJ culture for the vacuous farce it usually is, hands-in-the-air trance jocks are still dominating dance culture. Dutch trance icons vied once again for supreme position in the annual DJ Magazine Top 100 DJs poll – Armin van Buuren beat Tiesto – and Billboard dubiously dubbed Tiesto the dance-music story of 2007. Billboard was dead wrong. Daft Punk’s resurrection, the indie-kid invasion, and the hip-hop/dance reunion (via Kanye West’s sampling of Daft Punk on “Stronger”) overshadowed trance by far last year. The trade publication’s proclamation was, however, classically human, embracing the familiar, cash-register-ringing genre of trance over a fresh flood of indie hipsters who invaded clubland in search of the new. The fact that the millennial-generation kids were drawn to the dance-punk side of things – Justice, LCD Soundsystem, Simian Mobile Disco – should foreshadow the impending demise of trance.

Much in the way Sasha Frere-Jones describes the white flight of indie rock in his fall New Yorker essay “A Paler Shade of White,” trance represents an ultra-white, soulless faction of clubland, far removed from the black rhapsody of core dance music. Just as most contemporary rock has abandoned its black roots, ultra-synthetic trance is miles away from its daddy – Detroit techno. Trance long ago made it safe for white, suburban kids with spiky hair and momma-bought gear to indulge a once-ghetto pursuit: DJing. While there’s nothing wrong with embracing white audiences, trance has done so to an unhealthy extreme. Point out the black guy at a trance show, and I’ll buy him a drink. It’s a cheesy scene, one abandoned long ago by the American dance-music trade magazines, ranging from URB to BPM to XLR8R. L.A.’s leading super-club, Avalon, went so far as to quietly close its doors to trance for its recent “Fall Winter Series” of DJ performances. Good looking out.

Perhaps worse than the wannabe rock-star spinners and ecstasy-fueled audiences trance attracts, however, is the music itself. If electronic dance music is a beacon for the future path of pop music, trance has become an anchor of same-old sounds. In recent years even its leading men – Tiesto, Armin van Buuren, Paul van Dyk, and Ferry Corsten – have eschewed the typical trance sound for more muted, approachable tones on their artist albums. BT long ago left the genre he helped to define; onetime Madonna producer William Orbit, likewise, left trance for more quasi-classical leanings. They know: The ultra-arpeggiated sound of trance hasn’t much evolved in the decade since it first appeared. And still, at their mega-hyped DJ shows, stars such as Tiesto, van Buuren, and van Dyk spin trance at its most audacious and grating – all victory signs, sky-high strings, and thin, jack-rabbit kick drums. If you’re not on ecstasy, you won’t get it.

It’s un-e-music-like to embrace the staid. It’s 2008. Time to face the (new) music, and move on.