Cyber-punk DJ makes his Blue Marlin debut
Green Velvet’s career has very much been in two halves. Depending on your age, you will know him either as a freaky cyber-punk with a penchant for dark but tongue-in-cheek house anthems, or as a more serious and mindful preacher who champions a religious way of life. That doesn’t keep him out of the clubs – and, in fact, he’ll make his UAE debut here at Blue Marlin later this month – but it has changed the sort of experience he offers when he gets behind the decks.
Born Curtis Alan Jones, Velvet’s story is linked with that of house music itself. His labels Cajual and Relief were some of the most prolific in Chicago in the early ’90s. After the first house wave with acts like Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy, then a second wave of tougher acid sounds that eventually spawned rave, his place was to strip things back to a mean and kicking sound that could be thought to be a precursor to modern evolutions like juke and footwork.
With harder tackle coming on Cajual and more tracky fare arriving via Relief, now names like Boo Williams, Gemini and DJ Sneak all contributed and became stars in their own right. Around the same time as his labels were kicking off, he unwittingly penned one of the biggest house anthems of his generation, La La Land.
Other hits such as Answering Machine and Flash brought Jones more acclaim, but nowadays he would rather not mention such tunes and, in fact, he no longer plays the former on account of its gratuitous swearing. “Now I do stuff in a way of trying to say what I believe in, as far as being a Christian,” he has opined. “I still believe the kids need to have fun. But I try to make sure my message is clear – it’s fun, but coming from the right place.
The last few years have seen Jones work with some of the hottest names in the game. He has collaborated with DirtyBird boss Claude von Stroke and toured the US as a duo, Get Real. His output is still twisted house and techno designed for maximum impact on the biggest of festival stages. His favoured industrial undertones come from the fact Jones is a fan of hardcore EBM bands like Nitzer Ebb, and means that 2014’s Bigger Than Prince, for example, was another scuffed up analogue banger full of raw funk. Most recently he put out Sheeple with Prok & Fitch, a call to action anthem musing on mind control, government interference and the rise of technology. It’s a political track not enough people make these days. Then again, few could do it with the same sense of authenticity as Green Velvet. March 31
Golden Tulip Al Jazira Hotel & Resort, Ghantoot, Dubai, 1pm to 11pm, free guestlist. Tel: (056) 1133400. Taxi: Golden Tulip. facebook.com/BMIUAE