HEADLINERS
Oct 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Ken Taylor
The stereotype of “live” electronic music has long been about a DJ standing around spinning records or staring at a laptop. So when a DJ like D:Fuse really sticks his neck out, bringing with him scads of live-band experience and pulling all the stops for a top-notch show, you have to take notice.
“When you're out gigging for 10 years, you really start to get a feel for performance in a lot of ways — technically and aesthetically — on what works in front of crowds and what doesn't,” D:Fuse says. “And that's what I always brought to the turntables.”
The Austin, Texas — based DJ, producer and instrumentalist's approach, both on past mix discs and in the club, has always been a progressive one that's found him simultaneously DJing and playing percussion. But for People_3: Both Sides of the Picture (Moist, 2005) — the latest double-CD installment of the People series — he ramped up his efforts. The ambitious recording of his three-piece band's live debut at club Mighty in San Francisco this past summer involved a multi-instrumentalist, an MC and D:Fuse's own signature multitasking. While playing stripped-down progressive-house tracks, D:Fuse slammed away at a Roland HPD-15 HandSonic and a Roland V-Drum kit of tom-toms and cymbals while Mike Hiratzka handled guitar, keyboards and bass duties and MC Flint toasted rapid-fire lyrics.
To capture the night's spontaneity in the truest manner possible, the band showed up to Mighty without a single rehearsal under its belt. “We sent each other a few tracks beforehand over FTP, and Mike would lay down some instruments on top,” D:Fuse admits, but that was as far as they went in terms of coordinating musically, opting instead to work off of each other when it mattered most.
The only problem they encountered occurred during their eight-hour soundcheck, when the trio and engineer Danny Cheung spent two hours dealing with feedback issues. They worked out the bug by placing Flint just slightly offstage. “You work out, in a roundabout way, what you're going to do, but you never really know what will happen till it happens live, and that's what it's all about,” D:Fuse says. “The biggest thing was to start planning well in advance. I started picking out music and thinking about the show a year before we did it.”
With his past residency at 1015 Folsom and sets elsewhere in the city, San Francisco was an easy choice for recording People_3, but the group's rig took more consideration: The setup had to work for that night's show as well as for other clubs across the country — venues with DJ booths that barely fit one person, let alone three. “A lot of things we did were to be dynamic for the crowd: having a mic onstage so that I could make announcements every now and then, bringing MC Flint along so he could contribute his energy,” D:Fuse reveals. “A lot of it was not necessarily about being as technical as you probably could be in a live show, but doing things that were visual that complemented the music rather than stepped on it.”
D:Fuse recorded the first of People_3's two discs (chilled-out sounds with effects and filters) in his Lift Room studio in Austin. The second disc commanded something different. “We want to really rely on playing live as much as possible,” he says, noting the lack of any sequencing in the new live setup. The result was an 80-minute real-time snapshot of hard grooves, sizzling funk instrumentals and rhythmic lyrical flow that required just a few added aftereffects and volume tweaks — and nearly no editing at all.
“The magic of a live show coming together is an amazing thing,” D:Fuse says emphatically. “And you have to appreciate it when it does.”
LIVE FOR THE PEOPLE
ADA 2×12 Vintage Split Stack guitar cabinet
Allen & Heath GL2400 live mixing console, Xone:62 DJ mixer, Xone VF-1 analog filter modules (2)
Digidesign 192 digital I/O, Pro Tools|HD 3 recording system
Fender American Stratocaster guitar
Hafler G150 Stereo Power Amp, T3 Tube Preamp
Korg MS-20 synth
Lexicon MPX500 effects processor
Mackie 1402-VLZ Pro mixer
Music Man 1971 bass (pre — Ernie Ball)
Pioneer CDJ-1000MK2 DJ CD players (2)
Roland HPD-15 HandSonic hand-percussion unit, V-Drum kit (three toms, two crashes, hi-hat)
Shure Beta 58, SM57 mics
Technics SL-1200MK2 turntables (2)
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