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London callingDJG has a musical epiphany at Mass in Brixton
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by JACK OATMON Two years ago, Dean Grenier, aka DJG, had something of a reawakening in South London. A longtime DJ and producer, he had been interested in the dubstep style, but it hadn’t fully smitten him until he went to Brixton’s Mass, a nightclub converted from a former church. “I’d gone out to the parties here in San Francisco and I didn’t really get it,” says Grenier. “Then I went to the DMZ two-year anniversary in Brixton in 2007. I heard the music on a sound system played by these amazing DJs and all of a sudden, I understood the sound. If I look at my history in terms of music, I’ve always loved sound system music. You can understand it and it can make sense to you, but you haven’t experienced it until you’ve had that bass hit your body.” The connection was bolstered by his memory of hearing Jamaican dub plates just two nights earlier on the same system. “It was a room full of dreads and David Rodigan going mad, playing reggae dub plates.” As serendipity would have it, during his time in London, he also happened across many of the producers defining the dubstep sound at that moment. “I was at this girl’s birthday night, hanging out with all these people I had just met, and six months later I thought back to that night. I didn’t know it then, but I had met Kode9 and Benga and all these other big-name dubstep producers and DJs. I remember thinking that these people were so humble and sweet and passionate about this music. Totally switched-on and motivated. That was another huge source of inspiration for me. This attitude and this vibe I wasn’t seeing in any other genre.” The decision to begin producing dubstep was made, and Grenier now crafts his own trippy, high-energy blend of dub reggae, minimal techno and jungle, taking cues from his experiences in London. “It’s this bass-heavy, deeper, dancefloor-oriented music. There’s this techno emotional tension in my music, but it’s all built on the structure and vibe of traditional sound system music. WITH JACOB CINO, KOMODO, |
