MAJIK MAN
Apr 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Kylee Swenson
A member of Goldie's Metalheadz crew since the age of 14, J. Majik has the drum 'n' bass DJ thing dialed. “Mixing is really sort of like riding a bike,” he says. “Years ago, I used to think, ‘This tune will go with that tune.’ But now it's almost like all tunes will mix together as long as you can match the beats.”
With mixing becoming second nature for the 25-year-old, Majik improvises to keep things exciting. “I know 60 percent of what I'm going to play, and the other 40 percent just gets pulled out of the box,” he says. “I know a lot of DJs plan their set meticulously, but I find it quite boring. And they don't look like they're vibing as much; they look like they're doing something they've done before. I find it exciting to have only heard the tracks once but never have mixed them together. Then, the vibe is wicked!”
Majik recorded his recent Drum 'n' Bass Mix (Razor & Tie, 2001) with the same spontaneity he uses in his sets: straight-up live from his Technics 1210s. However, it took a few takes before he got the one he liked. “I'd play the tune, and after a half hour, I'd realize it didn't blend in with the rest of them,” he says. “So I scrapped it and tried to do the same mix that I started with the edit before, but it just didn't sound the same. So I had a cup of tea, calmed down, left it for a day and then did the whole thing again.”
For his original material, the E-mu E6400 Ultra sampler is “a core piece of equipment in the studio.” Majik also records with a Mac running Emagic Logic Audio, an Allen & Heath desk and “these horrible big army machines,” Oxford Oscar and Sequential Circuits Pro-One keyboards.
Having played countless sets all over the world, including a recent stint in South Africa, Majik's biggest fear is having technical problems. “If anything can go wrong as a DJ, it's if you're playing on a set where the monitors are shit or the needles keep jumping,” he says. “Those are the things that worry me, because when that does happen and you're in the middle of a mix, I'm sure that the crowd doesn't know that the record has jumped, but as a DJ, you just cringe. You think, ‘I hope people realize I'm not sitting here banging tin pots together.’ And when you notice a problem beforehand, you feel like a prima donna when you're saying to the soundman, ‘Can you sort this out?’ But at the end of the day, if you're standing there by yourself with a spotlight on you when the music stops, people are looking at you, and you're pointing at the soundman who has crawled under a table, there's nothing you can do.”
Majik's confidence has grown, but he still gets butterflies before a set. “At the Millennium Dome [in London] on New Year's Eve, there were 26,000 people, and I said to Adam F, who was playing before me, ‘I really do feel nervous.’ My hands were shaking. But I think it's good to get nervous, because it's not nerves of fear now, but nerves of excitement. I think when I stop having that feeling before I go on, that's probably when I'll stop DJing.”
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