Girl about town Jade talks to DJ Outbreak
The art of the disc jockey
DJ Outbreak has been disc jockeying in Brighton for seventeen years and has recently got airtime on local radio station Juice FM. Urban/street vibe DJ Outbreak has been mixing at the nightclub Audio for four years and has recently started regular gigs on the seafront, at nightclubs Coalition and Wahoo. “I started when I bought my first decks at the age of thirteen,”
he tells us. “It was either that or a bike.” Did you ever think you were going to go pro? “You never think ‘I’m going to do this for a job,’ you just did it with your mates. Then people start seeing you and say; start playing here and doing this gig there. That starts you thinking – I can actually make some money! But it’s taken a hell of a long time.”
It must be strange going from doing a live gig at a nightclub with a pumping crowd to mixing in a radio studio. “There’s a hell of a difference when you’re talking about energy and buzzing off people, obviously you don’t get that in the studio, but when I used to do pirate radio, and you get people phoning you up and asking you to play this track and that, you still get that bit of energy.
“I don’t see how someone tapping buttons on their computer could really be anything
I would buzz off”
With a club set you’re playing songs that people want to dance to, playing on radio, you get to play songs you want to play and you get that buzz from people liking what you actually like, rather than songs you have to play.”
Disc jockeying is still in its toddler days as a musical profession. It was only in the early ’80s, when Herbie Hancock released Rockit, that scratching became popular and DJing as we know it was born. People started pulling all their old vinyl out of the attic and ended up making completely new sounds and completely new genres of music.
What do you think of how the skills and techniques of DJing have changed with technology?
“In a way there’s not that much showmanship in DJing any more. When you look at someone who’s tapping on their laptop, it’s not as good as someone scratching their records, going between and getting into it. I don’t see how someone tapping buttons on their computer could really be anything I would buzz off, or really want to go and pay to see. On the other hand, with the music, you can take it so much further with remixing songs or making your own song live. There’s ups and downs to everything, but the showmanship’s not there any more at all.”
Aside from the technique, what do you think makes a good disc jockey?
“A good DJ is someone who can read a crowd, have the right songs and be able to rock a party.”
Check out DJ Outbreak mixing his set Pump Up The Jam on Juice FM every Friday 11:00pm – 1:00am. Trash Mondays and Saturdays at Coalition, and Friday Night Project at Wahoo.
Contact details for DJ Outbreak:
www.soundcloud.com/outbreezy
www.mixcloud.com/outbreezy
djoutbreak@hotmail.com
Follow me: @JadeHylton
www.jadehylton.wordpress.com
