DJ Life - That moment after the club closes.
It has been a month since I ended my residency at Transmission at The Mercury and took a break from club gigs. I’ve been using that time to reassess creative outlets and even enjoy some music that I normally wouldn’t be able to enjoy because I was trying to farm up more content for my gigs. While it was very hard to give up this event, the time away has been great because it has allowed me to figure out want to do as a DJ from here. Burlesque Events: I have been asked to help Atropa Productions a few times now to help with their themed burlesque shows and I have had a blast doing them. Every time I get to explore a new genre or theme of music and build some great mood building sets up for opening and intermission. No pressure to get people dancing or get on the microphone and banter. Just play the music to set the mood, and follow the tech notes for the performances. The last one even required watching for specific cues from the performers to stop and start the music throughout. This also gets me back into a technical theater type of setting which is where I found sanity in High School and College. Podcasts: I recorded Darkbohemia and my Dark Mother Media mixes for 3 or 4 years. I forgot how instinctive it was for me to just whip out a show over the course of a day or two and get it uploaded to Mixcloud. Of course life has a way of blurring the time it actually takes with the mental energy that we percieve that it will take. Lethargy, and I think burnout is what killed Darkbohemia for me. I didn’t have the passion for it that I did before. I had been talking with another “salty old DJ” that I have worked with off and on for a few years and we decided that we wanted to do a podcast together. After enough “it would be cool” conversations we have begun laying down some solid foundation work for a new Podcast. I have the gear set up to do it. We just need the time to lay it out. Thankfully while we wait for that weekend to record we can hammer out details on the format and music selections. So a new podcast is coming soon. One that won’t just focus on Gothic, Industrial, or EBM. One that we will be exploring a lot of different musical genres and even giving a look into the mindset of those maniacs that like to get in a tiny booth and “Press Play” for the drunken dancing masses. Club Gigs: I hate to be a cynical DJ but I’m done with doing gigs where the pressure is up to take requests and watch the dancefloor like some paranoid maniac that overanalyzes the number of people dancing vs those judging from their tables. If I do any gigs from now on out, it will be because what I play fits the night and that my talent and knowledge has been cultivated to a point that I can at least trust myself to make a night go well and even play more than just the “top 40″ Goth/Industrial/EBM tracks to make a floor bounce. Hell when my peers can play weird shit out of Sweden that sounds like early Erasure and also fill the floor, I think I can allow myself some mental freespace to play around. Reviews: I don’t want to commit to regular review columns again. I always do, and then fail to deliver, and about 2 months out find myself flooded with new albums needing 500 words or more on why they do or do not suck. There are some new artists and albums I want to gush about, and comic books as well. Maybe when the bug bites me I will hammer out some semi-coherent and minimally edited content, but for the time being I don’t really have a big battle plan going forward. I would much rather promote via playlist than word. So that’s the plan going forward. No timeline. Just create and book as I want. DJ Kantrip isn’t a brand I will be driving forward with the intensity that I had back in my 20′s. It is who I am, and what I do. So just be and do as every day allows.