On Traxx’s inauguration of In The Open
A deck-player, not a DJ
The second (hopefully) annual edition of the In The Open music festival arrives this weekend in Oak Hill, NY. There are somehow still tickets available and you should definitely get them if you can go. I originally wrote this essay in my Notes app shortly after last year’s inaugural edition, featuring the inimitable Traxx, a pure artist on the decks—as gifted as he is diabolical.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen someone DJ,” said a friend who had seen many a DJ perform in her time as we walked out of the converted barn cum club into the brisk and misty Catskills dawn. This is a common sentiment among first-time witnesses to a Traxx performance. But it’s a description that Traxx himself would take umbrage with. By profession, he is a DJ, but he abhors the term and god help anyone who might accuse him of “playing a set.” I’m told “deck player” is his preferred nomenclature, but “exorcist” comes closer to capturing what we experienced on that dance floor.
A flash of the strobe reveals the bulging sinews of his neck protruding from beneath his clenched jaw as sweat drips from his furrowed brow onto the mixer below, onto his frantic fingers busy beating the knobs and switches into submission. A pulsing red siren light comes on, illuminating his jowls undulating from side to side as he shakes his head with no regard to tempo, yet perfectly in sync to the energy of the music. Another flash captures his face tilted towards the sky, eyes shut and mouth agape, as if emerging for air from an unsupported free dive to the ocean floor.
From the subwoofers burst bass notes, charging like rodeo bulls released from their cages. Synthetic hi hats and handclaps hiss from the horns with the impact of fine china smashing onto concrete. Wet synth solos weave around the dance floor like snakes sizing up their prey. A distorted vocal sample orders you to scream, you scream. Another tells you to lose control but you’ve none left to lose. To the outside observer, you are dancing, but the interior experience is one of involuntary motion, entranced by the spells being cast from the decks on high.
The spell is broken by a malfunctioning turntable stuck on a track consisting primarily of samples of a woman’s screams as she is presumably facing murder, or worse, in a fictional film. The venue proprietor rushes to the booth as if a fire has broken out. All movement stops. Until it starts again.
All sense of time’s passage has long since collapsed. Yet if you were to check the statistics, it’s all happening in 4/4 time at 124BPM. The sun begins to rise outside through the soundproof sliding glass doors, but darkness prevails indoors. You don’t remember leaving, but at some point, you awaken and discover you’re no longer there.
If you are lucky enough to spot him in the daylight, you might thank him for the performance. And he might flash a disarmingly toothsome grin as he shakes your hand with both of his and compliments your friend’s Tigger T-shirt, saying of the fictional feline, “My wife and I are big, big fans.” He will do so with a soft voice with a slight lisp slithering through his gap tooth. You are left to wonder how this could possibly be the same man who spent the previous night turning your soul inside out, wringing it dry, and dunking it in battery acid. You accept that we contain multitudes. You make a nonverbal commitment to him and yourself that last night was the first shared performance of many to come.
