Luxy’s most-booked international DJ, LTJ Bukem returns tonight with collaborator MC Conrad for his sixth gig at the club.
“The way … music is made has changed a lot over the 20 years I have been playing drum ’n’ bass,” Bukem, real name Danny Williamson, told the Vinyl Word.
But after two decades in the business, Bukem said he still only plays vinyl and dub plates.
A dub plate “is basically a plate of metal in the shape of a record and is used to test cut tracks to see how they sound before final mastering,” Bukem said in an e-mail exchange. “You can actually push the levels of any track harder when cutting into metal due to being able to cut deeper grooves, thereby getting a louder, bassier cut.”
These new tracks are played in clubs to gauge audience reactions before vinyl pressing takes place. The system ensures that only privileged DJs receive copies of the latest produce.
Drum ’n’ bass, more than any other electronica genre, makes use of vinyl and dub plates.
“We have gone into an age where sound quality is secondary to expense, [which is] a shame, but [an] understandable progression,” Bukem said, alluding to the growing popularity of digital deejaying equipment.
One development Bukem does take issue with is the classification of drum ’n’ bass using labels such as “liquid funk,” a term coined at the turn of the noughties, or “intelligent.”
To Conrad (last name Thompson), “liquid” is “a loose metaphor for the current beat patterns, trends, sounds and style … Differences lie in rolling drum patterns, spacious trippy grooves and a ‘less is more’ attitude applied in production.”
The term, said Conrad in an e-mail interview on Monday, reflects the evolution of drum ’n’ bass rather than representing something completely different: “This style has been around for sometime but a broad selection of producers have focused on it … so it was given a nickname.”
“It’s not new. It is what I have been doing and supporting always: musical drum ’n’ bass,” said Bukem. “Just a different name for the same thing.”
Using “intelligent” as a taxon is also controversial.
“I never liked the term intelligent,” said Bukem, “and have never referred to it as a style of music … [I] don’t know where it originally came from.”
“I think everyone who has used or not used this phrase by now knows it was not meant to belittle other forms of drum ’n’ bass,” Conrad said, “but at the time the feelings of others outside of the reference felt it was a diss. I personally hate the tag.”
With fans of other forms of electronica, drum ’n’ bass occupies a special position, in that it is either loved or loathed.
“To really understand drum ’n’ bass you got to be in it twenty-four-seven, and I think that contributes to the love [or] hate of it,” Conrad said.
“Isn’t this the case with all music? You either love or hate it,” said Bukem. “I strongly feel it’s not about how a piece of music is made or constructed … but how it sounds when complete and therefore do you like it or not?”
Given the prevalence of house and formerly psytrance here, it is perhaps surprising that a drum ’n’ bass DJ is Luxy’s most-booked international act.
But then again, “there is always something in every style for everyone if you have the time to listen,” said Bukem. “I have never classified my music, everyone else has always seemed to do that for me.”
LTJ Bukem and MC Conrad tonight at Luxy, 5F, 201, Zhongxiao E Rd Sec 4, Taipei City (台北市忠孝東路四段201號5樓). Entrance is NT$500 with one drink before 11pm, or NT$800 after 11pm with two drinks. Call (02) 2772-1000, or 0955-904-600 for reservations (English service available). On the Net: www.luxy-taipei.com.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless