Hogan’s heroics

>> NYC techno DJ Casey Hogan sets the standard

by KRISTA
Casey Hogan isn’t fooling around. He takes his music very seriously and no one had better try to make like it’s otherwise. “There are so many kids these days who think they can be producers just because they got a computer for Christmas and bought Reason,” says Hogan matter of factly, “but they have no sense of history. They don’t know where all that technology originated and they don’t know how to use the real machines.”
Hogan is an intense and methodical individual, but you’d never know it to look at him. His outward appearance is the antithesis of his personality. He’s so got the urban skater thing down—big jacket, big pants, good hair—you think he’s going to talk about how cool it is to meet cute girls and travel around the world. And while he admits to enjoying the perks of his growing fame from time to time, Hogan’s number one priority is his music and for him, there’s nothing funny about that.

“We’re trying to keep a standard,” Hogan says of himself and his label-mates in the NYC underground techno community. “There’s no room for laziness or being sloppy. That just makes everyone look bad. And it makes you look bad as well. These new kids coming up need to realize that until you know what you’re doing, you shouldn’t try to be a big shot. It’s not an overnight thing. We’ve been working long and hard—you’ve got to make sure you’re ready.”

Hogan was born and lived in Miami briefly, but moved around a lot during his formative years. His father was in the commercial radio business and so Casey had an early start at learning the ropes on the production end of things. “There was always something that needed to be edited or looped or whatever, boring stuff that nobody who worked there wanted to do, but I’d be like, ‘Let me do it!’”

After moving to New York about six years ago, Hogan worked for some time at New York’s premier source for pure techno records, Sonic Groove, and with their label, SG. However, a clash of personalities and differing ideas about how things should be run made Hogan see that he needed to be doing his own thing. About eight months ago, he and partner Dietrich decided to start their own label/mastering studio distribution company, which they named, aptly, Complete Distribution. “I just knew that I had to be my own boss. Sonic is good at what they do, but they are still in the ’90s. We need to move forward. Ironically, what happened in New York a few months ago has given us the opportunity to set up shop and get things running properly.” n

With Jeff Milligan at Stereobar tonight, Thursday, Dec. 20, 11pm, $8