EXCLUSIVES

Words by Chris Mace

August 2004

Right under the "no smoking" signs in bars, management should tack up others that read: "DJs: No hipster show 'n tell." They would be an admonition to those content to just stand on stage awash in the light of their PowerBook G4s, pressing buttons, and hopefully more effective than the "no smoking" signs.

Laptops have given more people the appearance of musical talent than lip-synching, so along with a club's cover charge should come a display of said talent, ideally involving turntables, lots of eccentric and/or retro analog equipment, and perhaps inventive and daring fashion statements on the part of the would-be rock stars playing that night.

Raising the bar for performance is Jimmy Edgar, a lanky 20-year-old DJ from Detroit with a gleaming gold tooth. His über-togetherness is in the vein of cult icon Vincent Gallo. One of his missions is to put the soul back into the electronic music that Motor City released into the world just after he was born-after splicing German electro with funk.

He says European DJs first clued him in to Detroit's place in techno history, even though he played raves along side legendaries Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson as a 15-year-old. Much like his forebears he takes what is there and tries to make something new. In the case of Access Rhythm, his focused debut on Warp Records (Vincent Gallo, Plaid, Aphex Twin, Autechre), he enlists hip-hop to that end, or rather reconfigures key elements to help capture the way Detroit feels to him.

The tracks, one of which features a single looped and fragmented hip-hop refrain, flip and double back in unexpected ways without loosing their footing. They are adorned with jubilant bleeps and clicks reminiscent of a Super Mario Brother running through a patch of floating gold coins. One term coined for this is "glitch and error," belying Edgar's programming skills.

The indie record store category might be "electro-hop" but that would say nothing of the album's overall minimalism and finish that confidently set the stage for his upcoming release, Bounce, Make, Model, due out on Warp this summer.

One way to innovate musically is to write your own music software, which Edgar imports into editing environments such as MAX MSP, MIDI and Reactor. "I've written stuff for pitch tracking and equation based quadratics, patches, granular synthesis," he relates, clearly interested in the sonic possibilities these technologies present rather than just becoming the next Moby, though fame could be in the cards.

"Urban Outtake," a track on Access Rhythm, features the snap-crackle-pop of vinyl and gives it a nostalgic, earthy feel. That particular element was in part the result of a computer virus that gave his screen a pixilated rash and did something comparable to his sound card. "That was the basis of another album I made on Audio NL in the Netherlands. It was a concept I accidentally developed and took further," he explained.

The tracks also feature drum sequences and samples he created from old jazz records. "I made sure the samples were clear enough and altered them enough so I wasn't really stealing anything."

Some of the unusual equipment Edgar uses to compose live sets surely has button-pushers rethinking their attack, such as an ARP Odyssey, an early synthesizer "with broken knobs" that "sounds crazy." He is interested in analog equipment from the 1970s, "which sounds the best; I'm definitely more of a hands on person."

Older equipment introduces a range of unpredictability: "It's almost impossible to get the same sound twice with analog synthesis. There are so many possibilities with that. It goes out of tune with the voltage!" said Edgar.

While he jokes that his personal "do's and don'ts" for a performance are a function of how many drinks he has had in the club that night, in general he is trying to incorporate analog synthesizers, his two PowerBooks, and video projection to keep things interesting. "I wrote software where you plug the audio output into a projector and it makes static and all these minimal black and white bars synched up with the beat to go with the music and aesthetic of it."

When not working on his fashion line called E-FAMIN, introduced in Spring 2004, he is experimenting on his Macs, working on video installation and other visual art, sketching code, traveling, and otherwise being 20, not to mention this self-professed member of the ADD-generation is set to shoot a couple of videos and will play a small part in a film.

At this point Edgar says he will stick with Warp Records but that he is always changing and trying new things. "I'm constantly frustrated, constantly not inspired, inspired, creatively frustrated. It's my life; it's really hard. All I do now is art-related stuff. You have to stay conscious of your environment to stay inspired. If you are just slacking around and not inspired, you have to do something to change it. I'm not interested to make a million dollars and get famous. I just want to do stuff that I'm interested in."

www.jimmyedgar.com
www.warprecords.com