Do you think that after a very splintered and very tribal period in music where you just went to a jungle club and thought househeads were all lightweight wankers, or you only went to hip hop nights or reggae soundclashes or whatever, we have reached a point of maturity, depth and openness where everyone wants a bit of every flavour chucked into the mix. People going out to the clubs these days have grown up listening to music in a totally different way to how I did and probably a lot of your readers did too. No-one’s listening to albums any more – they’re cherry picking one track from here, one from there, loading them into the ipod and shuffling. I don’t have to go to a rock record shop to buy a rock record anymore – I can just buy it online alongside soul, funk, drum n bass, hip hop – you name it, so I do think that the supply of music has had a direct effect on how it’s experienced and understood. There’s still jungle raves and purist nights, but I think that the return of the multi genre DJ comes down to the very simple fact that people don’t want to listen to one style of
music all night long. Or maybe attention spans are getting shorter – I know mine’s pretty limited. The lay of the land as it stands with no one wanting by buy albums or having the patience to get into a 12 track ‘concept’ could either be the downward spiral of music as we know it, or a whole new way of listening to it. You can view it either way, but to me it’s exciting, vibrant and interesting. If you do it in a non corny way. And that’s critical, because it can easily become like a wedding. You’ve got true multi genre DJ’s and then you’ve got wedding DJ’s. And there’s a line. There is a line But it’s still a fine one. Ish. My sets at Pacha were actually called Edgy Wedding. That was how I named my style. Class Slightly left of centre wedding tunes you wanted to hear – guilty pleasure type shit. But that’s a very UK take on it. Go to America and that’s how it’s always been. Electronic music is a much more recent phenomenon over there – at least in the mainstream and before that – it was always multi genre. A hip hop party DJ would always play loads of different styles.