Tommy Lee & DJ Aero
May 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Xania V. Woodman
ONLINE AT BEATPORT.COM
Photo: Drew Ressler
To look at them, world-renowned rocker/drummer/producer Tommy Lee and his Electro Mayhem touring partner, relative newcomer DJ Aero (Chester Deitz), are a somewhat mismatched pair. Descending upon the deserted House of Blues' Foundation Room in Vegas for a soundcheck, the pair demonstrates its unique performance relationship over a few electro-house tracks they just purchased on Beatport.com. Aero chooses and serves up the raw track, and Lee manipulates it, adding racy, edgy, dirty effects. “He's the nuts and bolts,” says wiry Lee of the stockier Aero, “I'm like the whipped cream on top.” Dissimilar as they look, their rhythmic bouncing becomes one fluid movement under the influence of music.
“Aahh! Too much reverb on the vocal,” Lee recoils as Aero pushes a disappointing remix of Beastie Boys' “Fight for Your Right” through the sound system of the Palms' Crib suite. “That's fucking terrible. That's the worst ever.”
“Tommy's not a fan of reverb, I'll tell you that,” says Aero with a laugh, moving on to a Mark Mendez track. “Hmm, pretty boring,” he declares. “It definitely wasn't thick enough, that's for sure. Sorry, dude. Next!”
Music shopping with this entertaining twosome — even digitally — is part adolescent window-shopping escapade, part serious critic's corner; just when you think you're addressing the peanut gallery, they deliver industry insight and wisdom so sage as to make even the most confident label exec adjust his tie and scoot forward in his seat.
It's easy to see the youthful energy beneath Lee's ink, piercings, shaggy hair and dental bling, the childlike innocence tempered by a wise man's experience that allows him to take on project after project, gunning at life full speed ahead. “I had left Mötley Cruë to go do a hybrid solo project called Methods of Mayhem, and I was like, ‘You know what? I've been doing that for so long…the only thing I want to do right now is anything that I haven't done yet.”’ Colleagues urged Lee to explore new ways of looking at beats. On tour with the rap-rock-metal group, DJ Z-Trip, Mixmaster Mike, Shortcut, Q-Bert and others, Lee discovered his niche, manipulating recordings with a Pioneer EFX-500 or 1000 and matching video on his Pioneer DVJ.
“I'm a drummer, so I've always been completely attracted to the beats and curious as to how all that went down.” At this he drums on the suite's pool-table lights, cracking one in the process. Breaking things in a hotel suite — how very rock.
“And I think that's a big misconception of what people think that we do together,” Aero continues the tale. “They think that we're both behind two 1200s or whatever. A lot of people ask Tommy, ‘So how was it, touching the turntables or scratching or whatever?’ And he's like, ‘Well, I don't really do that.’ That's why I'm here.”
Every Electro Mayhem performance is a unique, live remix event complete with cameras capturing live feed. “I want people to see what we're doing back there,” Lee says. “We're not sitting back there going ‘Fuck yeah! This is rad!’ while the disc is playing. The last thing I want anyone to fucking think is that we're just up there pressing play.” Aero nods in grave agreement: “I think there's a lot of that going on nowadays — pressing play.”
Atop their grueling schedule of live shows, Lee and Aero have occasionally taken their act off the road, laying down tracks for a studio album, a collaboration with DJ/producer Deadmau5 and Steve Duda. The album, WTF?, launched right before the 2008 Winter Music Conference in Miami and, as Lee says, it still captures the energy and madness of a live set. Their personal Jägermeister machine even makes a cameo as a sound effect in the track “You Can't Afford This.”
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