DANCER IN THE DARK
Aug 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Chris Gill
Most Global Underground releases are inspired by one-off gigs in international locales. But Lights Out, Steve Lawler's new GU mix CD, is based on the artist's current worldwide tour: an ambitious undertaking that incorporates trippy lighting; thought-provoking projected messages; and sexy, provocative dancers. “Lights Out is about the sleazy side of clubbing,” says Lawler.
“When I first started going to clubs, the total experience changed my life, not just the records,” says Lawler. “With this tour, I want to bring an intense atmosphere into clubs, turn out the lights and get dark and twisted. I want people to leave the club as blown away by the visuals as they are by the music.”
Creating that mood on two CDs was no easy task. Lawler spent several weeks of 10-hour days listening to records to find the music he had in mind. Then he took five months to work on the mix; licensing hassles delayed the process considerably. “I'd get the perfect track order, but then I'd have to take a song out because I couldn't clear it,” he says. “But it's never a case of just taking one record out — sometimes you have to change the other two around it, as well.”
Instead of simply mixing a couple dozen songs together, Lawler edited most of the tracks significantly, adding new bass lines, atmospheric chords, a cappellas, voice samples or effects. “Sometimes I'd loop the end of a track to make it blend better with the next record,” he explains. “There's a track on CD 2 called ‘Photographt’ by Crossover, which runs at about 115 bpm. The next track, ‘Get It Girls’ by Soul of Man, is a 129 bpm breakbeat track. To get that track to mix with ‘Photographt,’ I played it at the wrong speed. It's supposed to be played at 45, but I played it at 33 and layered the two together into one track. As the break came in, I sped them up together to mix them into Psycho Radio's ‘In the Underground.’ It took me about four weeks to mix those three songs and get it right. I've never worked so hard on anything in my life.”
Lawler's production setup consisted of a pair of Technics SL-1200 turntables with Ortofon Concorde Nightclub cartridges, a pair of Pioneer CDJ-1000 CD players, a Boss SP-303 sampler and a Pioneer DJM-600 mixer. He recorded his mix live to DAT, controlling the mixer's effects and dropping in vocal samples on the fly, and transferred it to Digidesign Pro Tools for editing. “I played the mix over and over until I nailed it,” Lawler says. “It's still better to physically mix the tracks. That gives you the feel. But there's only so much you can do with a mixer and a pair of decks or CD players, so I use Pro Tools afterward to add trickery. It's not easy to do things like instantly drop the bass on one tune and turn the bass up on the other with Pro Tools, so it's never going to replace my mixer and decks.”
In the style of Seb Fontaine's Prototype releases for Global Underground, Lights Out is the first release of a new series. “I want to push boundaries with Lights Out,” says Lawler. “Progressive house lost its house element. It lost its funk. It went so dark and flat that it got boring. I don't see myself as a progressive DJ, because I play so much variety. I just want people to have a good time.”
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