Superstar DJS (re)mixing it up
Best don’t just play the tunes, they write and remix them too
You can’t just play other people’s tunes if you want to make it as a superstar DJ.
As more and more spinners start to play arenas — such as Tiesto, Swedish House Mafia, or Avicii, who is playing Calgary’s Saddledome on July 3 — competition is getting sti er.
You have to be able to write your own tracks and remix those by other artists. (Or pay some talented ghostwriters to do so.) You might consider wearing some sort of gimmicky costume, à la Deadmau5’s mouse head, and it doesn’t hurt if you can croon — like Calvin Harris, BT, Martin Solveig or even Morgan Page.
The latter, an L.a.-based producer and DJ, added his vocals to In the Dark, one of 13 tunes on his 2010 album, Believe. His latest progressive house e ort,
In the Air, features two songs with his airy (and computerprocessed) vocals: Missing, a subtle, snappy tune a few steps removed from dance floor euphoria; and S.O.S. (Message in
a Bottle), a breezy, boingy interpretation of the Police’s 1979 hit, Message in a Bottle.
“It’s weird how things morph into their own projects,” says Page. “I was working on an original song and the chord progression sounded really similar to (the Police’s Mes
sage in a Bottle), so I thought, ‘I’m not really a singer, but let’s give it a shot.’ There’s a lot of processing and treatment on it, but that’s the sound I wanted. There may be a release someday where I’m not treating my voice so heavily, but I don’t think I’ll ever sing on stage. Don’t DJS have it easier than most performers when it comes to stage presence? I kind of like where’s it at as a DJ.”
Which means Page still prefers to rely on other vocalists to carry his tunes — vocalists such as Angela Mccluskey ( In the Air ), Richard Walters ( The
Actor, Light Years) and Canada’s Quin twins Tegan and Sara. The sisters appear on two of In the Air’s tracks: Video, a sparkly, poppy number, and
Body Work , a mild-mannered throbber, which is getting regular airplay on Edmonton’s Hot 107 and Virgin Radio.
“We didn’t get together in the same studio, it was back and forth online,” says Page. “I had this song ( Body Work) that had this really ’80s vibe and they sort of vibed o of that draft and did a throwback vocal. The album mix ended up being underproduced and very simple. There’s no huge lift in the chorus or anything. We’re just having fun with it.”
Page formed a friendship with Tegan and Sara after he remixed one of their pop-rock tracks, Walking With a Ghost, without their permission for his album of bootlegs, 2005’s Cease and Desist. They stumbled upon the song, liked what they heard, and years later, hired Page to o cially remix some of their tunes, Back in Your Head and Alligator , which then led to the collaborations on In the Air.
And to think — Page was considered a rebel when he released Cease and Desist, which also featured unauthorized remixes of Imogen Heap’s Hide and Seek, Coldplay’s White Shadows, and the Kills’ Good Ones. Nowadays, if a song doesn’t have dozens of bootleg remixes by aspiring producers, like Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know, it’s considered a dud. Such a shift in thinking is yet another indication of the growing mainstream popularity of electronic music in North America —only 15 years after Britain’s embrace of the genre.
“It was a really big year for dance music in 2011,” says Page, referring to the chart ascendancy of David Guetta, Martin Solveig and Swedish House Mafia, not to mention Skrillex’s five Grammy nods. “I think it’s just the natural cycle of events — hip-hop just had a really strong hold and this is just the next genre in line.”
Page will perform as part of Good Friday on — you guessed it — Good Friday at the Shaw Conference Centre. DJS Armin van Buuren, Jochen Miller and Filo & Perri will also spin. The show starts at 8 p.m.
Tickets are $52 and $97 plus service charges at boodang. com.
EXTINCT IN AME R I CA?
As dance music makes its mark in North America, another big-in-britain phenomenon is losing ground in the former colonies.
Kasabian, a group of rockers from Leicester, recently won Best British Band at the NME Awards. Their last three albums, including 2011’s psychedelic groove monster Velociraptor!, hit No. 1 on the U.K. charts. This summer, the foursome will headline two of their homeland’s biggest summer festivals: Reading and Leeds.
On this side of the Atlantic, however, Kasabian’s fortunes fade with each passing album. Since the release of their 2004 debut, Kasabian, which spawned their biggest acrossthe-pond single, Club Foot , the rockers have sold fewer and fewer copies of subsequent releases in the U.S., according to Billboard.
Not surprisingly, bassist Chris Edwards and his bandmates are relegated to playing 1,500-person venues, such as the Edmonton Event Centre, while their compatriots in Coldplay sell out hockey arenas across the continent.
“We started doing a lot in 2004, 2005,” says Edwards. “It was slowly going up and up and up, the crowds were getting bigger — going from 300 to 1,500 or 2,000, so it was getting there, but then we just concentrated on other places and didn’t really go back.
“So we’re not really bothered that we’re not big (in North America) because, to be honest, when we were there we only had one album.
“Now we’ve got a catalogue of four albums, B-sides and everything, and we’re a major force when it comes to playing live now. So, I think, it’s now or kind of never. It’s definitely a place we’d like to tour more often, it’s nice to go over to the States, get on a bus, go into Canada.
“We’ve never played Edmonton or Calgary, so we’re looking forward to that. We’re going to try to put in a lot of work this year and see what comes out.”
Kasabian performs Friday at EEC. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $27.50 plus service charges at Ticketmaster.