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Artists! Submit your material for consideration for review! Send your press kits and CDs to:
Music Monthly
2807 Goodwood Road
Balto., MD 21214
Phone: 410-254-6400
Fax:
musicmonthly@comcast.net
Mary Ishimoto Morris
BE THE DJ Welcome to Metatrack Studios! Near the intersection of Rhode Island Avenue and 14th Street, NW, you step into a foyer that could be the reception area for a doctor’s office, except that there’s techno pounding pleasantly from somewhere inside. If that makes your pulse beat a bit faster, as it does mine, you might feel a sense of coming home and a little upsurge of adrenaline.
Through the next door you find yourself peeking into a studio with two turntables, a mixer and speakers, and someone wearing headphones, head bobbing in time to the music in his or her head, smiling. Down the corridor you pass another DJ studio, then a studio with someone working at a computer next to someone playing a piano keyboard. Up the carpeted stairway and to your left you find a cozy lounge with another DJ setup, comfy looking sofas, and exotic lighting and wall décor. To your right is a computer lab with three people concentrating on the computer screens in front of them. Metatrack Studios is another world, but all the inhabitants seem friendly, usually smiling and nodding when they pass.
Metatrack is an oasis of creative electronic music energy where DJ fantasies come true: It’s you behind the turntables, wearing the earphones, tweaking the knobs, learning how to match the beats of one record to another in your own unique way. DJ dreams take off from here. Metatrack was born of owner Juliette Siegfried’s desire to share her joy and the knowledge of the art of DJ’ing with anyone who wants to explore the mysteries of what goes on behind the decks. Besides basic and advanced DJ’ing lessons (including mixing, phrasing, turntablism, record and equipment shopping, networking, getting bookings, and performing), Metatrack also offers classes on electronic music production (house, hip-hop, techno, ambient, drum ‘n’ bass, trance, progressive, breaks, whatever genre rocks your world), mix-CD recording, mastering and duplication, seminars with established DJ’s, feedback sessions, record recycling, and studio rentals. Soon you’ll be able to hear Metatrack DJ’s spinning coast to coast on XM Satellite Radio.
Metatrack boasts a staff of 30 friendly, knowledgeable professionals, a few of whom are introduced below. Warning to would-be DJ’s: It’s addictive! Turntables are outselling band instruments, and some alternative bands such as Incubus, Slipknot and Linkin Park have DJ’s now. This is the Age of the DJ. But the most important thing to know about spinning, according to Juliette, aka DJ Zelda, is simply that: “It’s fun!”
Hi Octane (Kick Drum), aka Ilya Makedon of College Park, Md., got into DJ’ing in 1996. “It gave me something to do while stuck on the UMBC campus without a car. Spinning helped me cope with loneliness and isolation.” One of DC’s premier techno DJ’s, his influences include “industrial, minimal, IDM, disco, electro, Detroit, Latino, Swedish, banging, glitch, house, etc.” Now a senior computer science student at UMCP, he also builds sculptures, organizes techno parties, travels, kayaks, and enjoys rock climbing and scuba diving. Latest mix: “Insidious Aspirations.” On teaching: “Every lesson and every student is unique and cool in their own way. Each student presents a different set of challenges and results for me as an instructor.” Apple (Chocolate Music, Natural Selection, Odds and Ends, Innerloop Magazine editor & publisher) aka Courtney Reyers of Woodbridge, Va., got into DJ’ing in 1997 or 1998. “I saw Derrick Carter on the main floor at Buzz and had never consciously heard house music before. That was the beginning of the beginning for me.” Now she spins “house, some minimal techno, some disco and r&b.” Apple teaches part-time (K-12), freelances as a print designer, is launching a label with the East Coast Boogiemen, Shannon Gray and Jill Martin. Latest mix: “Boogie Down Reduction.” On teaching: “It doesn’t happen with all students but I’ve had a few who have mastered a mix within an hour lesson. That is just amazing to me. When someone walks in totally clueless and walks out knowing what he or she needs to do in order to mix, that’s a big accomplishment on both the teacher’s and the student’s parts. It’s the essence of teaching!”
Jamal Reid (Defined Print and DJ Hut) of DC, was collecting records in the ‘80s and got into DJ’ing in the ‘90s. “When I got to college and started hanging with a friend, DJ Kilmore, I started getting more into working the turntables. I’ve been into hip hop since I was a young kid. I started breakdancing, then I got into graffiti and rhyming because I didn’t have money for turntables. After I graduated college I started working for 12 Inch Dance Records. I finally got my turntables in ’98 and have been running ever since.” Jamal plays hip hop, funk, soul, reggae, “and whatever else I think sounds good.” Jamal is one-half of the DC-based independent hip-hop group Defined Print with Stylus Chris. “I work at the DJ Hut, which Chris is part owner of. I also work with digital video, skateboard, snowboard and play basketball.” Latest mixes: “Party Pack Vol. 1,” and “Love Glows Amber.” On teaching: “This summer was pretty cool when I taught my teens from Martha’s Table DJ’ing through Metatrack. I had 10-15 teens and taught them through a six-week course.” Jame’ Foks of Northern Virgnia in the winter and Rehobeth Beach in the summer, was a radio announcer for 14 years, supplementing her income by DJ’ing at clubs on weekends. “I practiced in my living room all day, every day for months and eventually got a few gigs where I learned tips and tricks from other DJ’s. I hung out with gay male DJ’s who took me under their wings and showed me their ‘secrets.’” Her first performance was in a nightclub in Bradenton, Fl. She’s been DJ’ing over 25 years now, playing “crossover, house, circuit house, tribal, body and soul.” She is a high school substitute teacher in Fairfax County, a freelance graphic designer and web designer, and her hobbies are motorcycling, boating and the beach. Latest mix: “Lift.” On teaching: “I like doing the group classes, but I love working one on one with the students in private lessons. I like being able to devote 100 percent of my attention to someone as I watch them grow into their DJ skills. It’s like watching your baby learn to walk for the very first time. Very gratifying! Sign up for private lessons with me! You too can be a DJ! It’s cool!”
BUZZ LOVE CONTINUED “Buzz Crew, thanks for all the great memories and support! Best of luck in all your future endeavors! You will be missed!” Oron Haus and EastCoastHappy.com Staff
“The DJ’s Buzz brought to DC were astounding, not to be matched in this area. I have many friends I met at Buzz for the first time. Buzz will truly be missed by me and countless others.” Camille Sevigny aka Dee Jay Clutch, IntheMix
“Thanks for the great times and great music. I will miss Buzz Fridays but I am looking forward to your future events. I know they will be phat.” K-Yun, Inthemix1
“Thanks for five years of good times and great tunes. We’ll miss you. The glass is never half empty. Much love and respect.” Aubrey Torres, Leesburg, Virginia
“Best Buzz memory: I saw Krust play Buzz for the first time a few years back; Dynamite was with him. He opened up with two copies of ‘Dictation’ and completely blew everybody’s minds! The build during the intro on that song is already pretty intense, but imagine hearing it build and build, praying for a drop, only to have him just cut to the other copy, increasing your anticipation. Then he would tease in the bassline ever-so-slightly from the previous copy that had already dropped. When that bass finally hit, everybody went nuts and stayed that way for the next two hours.” matt/mrn, NUCO
Buzz was a landmark club, considered monumental in pushing the very best of not just drum and bass, but all forms of electronic music. To see this club close is a painful reminder of what obstacles we must go through to insure our freedoms as Americans. If Buzz can be closed, what will the future hold? All the best to the people who made Buzz such a memorable experience. Respek. AK1200, Planet of the Drums, Orlando, Florida
THE BEATZ GO ON Dee Jay Clutch aka Camille Sevigny, who hosts a show on the University of Maryland’s In the Mix on 88.1 FM has let loose a banging mix, “Conceptual Integration.” This is my third mix CD. I tell people that I play hard funky house, but this mix leans towards the more funky side of house music. I tried to be consistent with the funky basslines and disco elements throughout. When I make a CD I just play what I would like to hear when I am on the dance floor and if I was DJ’ing for myself. With that said, I try to bring the sound that you would hear if you heard me spinning at a club.” DJ Resistor’s “Psybernetics” mix-cd is an intense infusion of high powered beats that will boost your heart rate, not to mention your adrenaline and serotonin levels. “I just call it ‘hard dance’ because it crosses through a number of genres: psytrance, hard house, hard trance, nu nrg, acid, and hard techno, and that term seems to cover them all,” say Resistor aka Tim Moore (Ruffneckplayazcrew). Includes tracks by Quirk, The Alien Thing, Mark Tyler & Dynamic Intervention, and Injector 2. You can skip the coffee when you put this on. DJ T.E.C. aka Tim Cook (Siempre Foundation) is a madman or a genius, possibly both. His mix-CD “2001 People” is the strangest mix I’ve ever heard, but also one of the most emotionally charged, spanning not only disparate genres such as jazz, hip-hop, trance, house, breaks and r & b, but also scrolling back and forth through time, with startling effects. T.E.C. explains in the next Music Monthly.
CHECK IT New Underworld, “A Hundred Days Off” : inspired. Pure Dance Volume 7 (Nettwerk) locks in time crowd pleasers by Depeche Mode, Daft Punk, Underworld, Green Velvet, Moby, Zero 7, Dido, Kosheen, iiO, Swollen Members and others. Christopher Lawrence, proud father of a new baby boy, takes you on a soaring journey “Around the World” (Moonshine), and coming out in November, “Exposure IV” (System).
Rave Against the Machine! See You at Sonar! - MIM