“The last time I played Trak was two years ago and I loved it. I love the venue and I love crowd because they get what I am trying to do. I play music you can’t get on Beatport and it’s very hard to track down – it’s purely what I have collected over the last few months so I can play brand new hot shit records that you won’t hear unless you go to Ibiza. I love to see a crowd rock out to music they haven’t heard before!” states Cox, openly talking-up the show. He discloses that this three hour set won’t be for the faint hearted. “Secondly I am on holidays here and this is the only club show I am doing before I go into full on work mode so my energy levels are very strong so watch out you guys because you’re going to get plastered to the wall!” exclaims Cox addressing his future audience directly. At this show Cox revealed he will also be debuting the production fruits of a recording session he did with Nile Rogers in Langwarrin when Rogers was here for Meredith Music Festival – but more about this later.
The beauty of Carl Cox is that while peddling audio entertainment he takes his work very seriously, refusing to ever stop challenging audiences by taking the educative roll of a DJ very seriously. Cox now takes on the very difficult question, ‘What does he think as allowed him to remain relevant in the ever changing sonic aesthetic of EDM?’
“It’s really difficult to answer this question because I am an individual person that has made it through the ranks by just loving music. However, unfortunately EDM is now understood as a form of music that can bring 50,000 people together by a DJ playing music on a laptop that is already pre-recorded, that’s what’s going on. You got a 17-19 year old kid who has downloaded the 20-30 most popular tracks from Beatport, put it together on Abbleton or Serato, he pushes play and has then got his hands up in the air in time with popular music. Therefore everyone in front of him thinks that he is amazing, therefore it’s understood as a form of entertainment,” vents Cox. He now relates this point back to his longevity in the scene. “If I did that, myself right now, I would get no respect because there is no art-form to what is happening via that process. It has happened because technology has allowed it to happen. But from where I came from and where I started I had to create an art-form of what a DJ is about: an entertainer first, someone who has a passion for what they are doing and they love what they’re doing based on that they are sharing something that they love,” concludes Cox on the art-form of DJing.
As mentioned in the introduction, in December this year Cox worked with soul and disco maestro Nile Rogers when he was here for Meredith. “I had the opportunity to have pop and dance royalty in Langwarren in a small studio in a back garden of a guy called Steve Ward’s home/studio. I had Nile Rogers sitting there playing his guitar in front of me and I am just like ‘that’s what I am talking about!’. He plays with pure passion – a belief in what he is doing. For me to able to sit there with someone whose records I used to buy and all of a sudden 30 years later he’s sitting on a couch in Langwarrin doing the exactly same thing, those riffs that formed some of the seminal dance tracks.
“People forget about where it all came from – the idea of what it’s actually all about is getting so lot that we forget the organic-ness of the dance sound actually came from people who could actually create magic with an instrument. He just sat there and was playing on the guitar he had written all those incredible hits on just throwing together what felt right. Everyone in the room was just sitting there with their mouth dropped just thinking all we’re seeing is raw talent, nothing more, the guys just has it. He wasn’t even looking at the fret board – it was ridiculous.”
Cox now reveals that at the Trak show Cox will be playing the one of the tracks that was written that day with Rogers. “You will definitely hear the one that we did with a techno track with his solo – it was difficult to lay down over a beat because he is so musical but it’s very cool and if I drop it at the right time – probably at the end of the night it’s got such a beautiful soul and energy that it will blow people’s minds. The song isn’t available anywhere yet and title wise we just call it Solo Heaven.”
BY DENVER MAXX
