Post by blackcrowheart on Nov 25, 2005 13:00:45 GMT -5
Quiet Riot
Rockin' the house but shying from the spotlight, DJ Element is the Valley's no-flash grandmaster
By Jimmy Magahern
Published: Thursday, November 17, 2005
Element among the scores of signed album sleeves covering the wall in his practice room at home: "Everything I hear, I'm mixing in my head."
Digging for discs at Stinkweeds in Tempe: "I'll eat Cup o' Noodles for a month so I can have $500 worth of new records."
Rockin' by candlelight at Martini Ranch's Shaker Room: "This place hired me because I have a bit of a name. They tell me, 'Just do you.'"
Element, out standing in his field: "It's like my whole family is all around, in this square."
There's a party going on Thursday nights at the Shaker Room -- if you're savvy enough to find the dance floor. The club, practically hidden across a patio and up a flight of stairs behind Martini Ranch, is, to begin with, too far back from Stetson Drive to draw in the dancers off Scottsdale's party row. Worse yet, anyone itching to shake their booty to "My Humps" must first pass through a moat of pseudo-punks and goths jamming to the live band in the bigger room's weekly "Punk Rock Nation" showcase. It's like trying to run the Soul Train line through a mosh pit.
But by 10:45 on a recent Thursday, DJ Element has found "the vibe," as he calls it, and the crowd appears to be pollinating itself, growing a little bigger each time he smoothly changes a disc. Pulling the people onto the dance floor with the sure-fire hit du jour, Kanye West's "Gold Digger," Element slaps a duplicate copy on the first turntable and begins scratching frantically after about the eighth repetition of Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles impersonation, as if physically trying to pull something out of the vinyl that hasn't already been played.
Sure enough, with another quick flip of the discs, he's morphed the same groove onto an obscure funk workout that only the pair of b-boys lurking in front of the DJ booth seem to recognize, and soon they're popping and locking out onto the floor with abandon. No matter; the groove is already hitting that universal chord, nudging a frat boy at the bar to suddenly bust into some old *NSYNC moves in mid-conversation with his pals, getting the girls in the back booth blowing up their cell phones to click off and start sliding out onto the floor, and getting everybody in the place -- even the stone-faced scrubs watching the basketball game on the south end of the bar -- to start bobbing their heads.
Element watches over the groove like an attentive heart surgeon, vigorously massaging the records whenever the dancers look like they're even thinking of returning to their seats. There's CD gear and electronic effects boxes behind the glass in the DJ booth, but Element, his hefty frame casually dressed in oversize tee shirt and jeans, stays away from the digital gizmos.
Instead, the full-blooded Pima Native, born Logan Howard, grabs and shakes the vinyl discs on the turntables until the beats line up perfectly in his headphones -- then throws a rapid-fire scratch on the next record before releasing it, precisely on time. And it don't stop.
Just as on the three independently released CDs he's put out -- The Origin, Digger's Delight and the recent Freestyle Session mix CD -- Element, who's also toured internationally, keeps the beat flowing while tossing in odd funk, jazz and hip-hop samples and dazzling the listener with his animated scratching style. On The Origin, pal DJ Z-Trip goads Element to pull some words out of a scratch, and Element actually manages to make the vibrated vinyl sing.
"El's basically sick," says Valley hip-hop promoter Ty Carter, bestowing the ultimate compliment on the man he's come to rely on as a can't-miss opener for concert acts like Dilated Peoples and other hip-hop legends. "He represents the Babu and the Beat Junkie type guys. He just brings a lot of skills to the table. But man, is he a humble dude, you know?"
For sure, even though Element's the man with his finger on the pulse of the party, he shies away from interacting a lot with the crowd. When he's not smiling -- as is usually the case when he's digging through his records or seriously working the turntables -- the big, stern-faced Indian can be an intimidating presence. He's not flashy; he doesn't dance and spin behind the booth, and the happily married mixmaster doesn't go out of his way to entice the ladies. Typically, the only people hanging out at his booth are fellow DJ friends and the type of nerdy backpack hip-hop heads who can watch a turntablist as if studying a hot lead guitarist.
"He's definitely the polar opposite of a lot of DJs, who go for that whole New York style of in-your-face aggressiveness," Carter says. "Element's a lot more laid-back. Plus, he's really getting down, cuttin' and all that kind of stuff."
He's got the skills, though, which has earned this quiet giant his rep as a kind of DJ's DJ. Carter, who also manages Pokafase, the Phoenix rapper long considered most likely to make it big -- eventually -- recruited Element as Poke's official DJ because he believes he's simply the best around. "There's a lot of DJs in town, but few of 'em are in his bracket, as far as ability and experience," Carter says. "He knows how to rock a crowd."
Still, sometimes the high-powered Carter can be frustrated by Element's quiet reserve.
"If we can get him to come out of his shell," he says, laughing, "I think he'll really be dangerous. One of these days, we'll have to get him to do a little yellin' on the mic."
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By the light of dusk on an autumn day, with Element whipping through a practice session on his twin Technic turntables, scratching discs and slapping the fader on his mixer with breakneck speed, the vision just outside the window of the spare bedroom in his modest manufactured home looks like a swaying throng of skinny, spiky-haired ravers. When he's really rockin' the decks, and the setting sun casts just the right reddish glow, the image can even take on the appearance of a sea of upheld lighters at a huge outdoor concert, begging for an encore.
In fact, what Element peers out on while running through his daily practices are the acres upon acres of tall cotton fields blanketing the Salt River Indian reservation, where the DJ -- named in part for his role as one of the basic elements in hip-hop and partly for the Pimas' deep connection to the land -- has lived his entire 26 years.
"Martha Stewart's Pima cotton sheets," Element says, grimacing, as he carefully places his records in their sleeves and gazes out over the rapt audience of puffy-topped stalks. "That's probably where most of this goes. The tractors run through every now and then, and you just see it in big bulks after they pick it, waiting to be hauled away."
It's a peculiarly rural backdrop for Element's brash, urban style of DJing, a crash-up mix of funk, jazz, hip-hop, dancehall, rock and whatever else he has in his crates that hits the listener like an electrified walk down a crowded city street, with a bracing surprise around every corner.
Asked if he ever feels oddly out of place, rockin' the cotton with those big city beats, Element shrugs and says he's never given it much thought. "I mean, I've seen DJs' houses where the windows look out on nothing but city," he says. "But this is all I've ever known."
Besides, he says, a DJ's inspiration comes not from what's outside his window but from what's inside his record racks -- which, in Element's case, is an encyclopedic collection of vintage vinyl. Overflowing from two floor-to-ceiling IKEA shelving units that crowd his practice room is what he calls the core of his collection: everything from King Curtis and Nina Simone to classical collections, odd rarities like The Warriors soundtrack (fashionable again, thanks to a new PS2 game based on the '70s gang flick), and even vintage Cheech and Chong. "I've got a couple of storage units filled with seven more cabinets just like these," he says.
Still, the quiet, earthy simplicity of the Pimas' land suits Element's disposition, as well as what seems to be his restrained ambition. While his friends Z-Trip and DJ Radar have each hit big this year with works already drawing attention to the Phoenix turntablist scene -- Z-Trip with his modern-rock radio climber Shifting Gears (the first DJ album ever awarded a coveted four stars in Rolling Stone), and Radar with his serious-minded Concerto for Turntable, which he took last month to Carnegie Hall -- Element may well be the only player in the crowded Phoenix DJ scene who's not consciously primping himself to be the next major-label discovery.
"I suppose I should get around to having more CDs pressed," he says when asked if he's planning to capitalize on the momentum generated by his peers. "I keep hearing all the stores around town are out of stock."
Rockin' the house but shying from the spotlight, DJ Element is the Valley's no-flash grandmaster
By Jimmy Magahern
Published: Thursday, November 17, 2005
Element among the scores of signed album sleeves covering the wall in his practice room at home: "Everything I hear, I'm mixing in my head."
Digging for discs at Stinkweeds in Tempe: "I'll eat Cup o' Noodles for a month so I can have $500 worth of new records."
Rockin' by candlelight at Martini Ranch's Shaker Room: "This place hired me because I have a bit of a name. They tell me, 'Just do you.'"
Element, out standing in his field: "It's like my whole family is all around, in this square."
There's a party going on Thursday nights at the Shaker Room -- if you're savvy enough to find the dance floor. The club, practically hidden across a patio and up a flight of stairs behind Martini Ranch, is, to begin with, too far back from Stetson Drive to draw in the dancers off Scottsdale's party row. Worse yet, anyone itching to shake their booty to "My Humps" must first pass through a moat of pseudo-punks and goths jamming to the live band in the bigger room's weekly "Punk Rock Nation" showcase. It's like trying to run the Soul Train line through a mosh pit.
But by 10:45 on a recent Thursday, DJ Element has found "the vibe," as he calls it, and the crowd appears to be pollinating itself, growing a little bigger each time he smoothly changes a disc. Pulling the people onto the dance floor with the sure-fire hit du jour, Kanye West's "Gold Digger," Element slaps a duplicate copy on the first turntable and begins scratching frantically after about the eighth repetition of Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles impersonation, as if physically trying to pull something out of the vinyl that hasn't already been played.
Sure enough, with another quick flip of the discs, he's morphed the same groove onto an obscure funk workout that only the pair of b-boys lurking in front of the DJ booth seem to recognize, and soon they're popping and locking out onto the floor with abandon. No matter; the groove is already hitting that universal chord, nudging a frat boy at the bar to suddenly bust into some old *NSYNC moves in mid-conversation with his pals, getting the girls in the back booth blowing up their cell phones to click off and start sliding out onto the floor, and getting everybody in the place -- even the stone-faced scrubs watching the basketball game on the south end of the bar -- to start bobbing their heads.
Element watches over the groove like an attentive heart surgeon, vigorously massaging the records whenever the dancers look like they're even thinking of returning to their seats. There's CD gear and electronic effects boxes behind the glass in the DJ booth, but Element, his hefty frame casually dressed in oversize tee shirt and jeans, stays away from the digital gizmos.
Instead, the full-blooded Pima Native, born Logan Howard, grabs and shakes the vinyl discs on the turntables until the beats line up perfectly in his headphones -- then throws a rapid-fire scratch on the next record before releasing it, precisely on time. And it don't stop.
Just as on the three independently released CDs he's put out -- The Origin, Digger's Delight and the recent Freestyle Session mix CD -- Element, who's also toured internationally, keeps the beat flowing while tossing in odd funk, jazz and hip-hop samples and dazzling the listener with his animated scratching style. On The Origin, pal DJ Z-Trip goads Element to pull some words out of a scratch, and Element actually manages to make the vibrated vinyl sing.
"El's basically sick," says Valley hip-hop promoter Ty Carter, bestowing the ultimate compliment on the man he's come to rely on as a can't-miss opener for concert acts like Dilated Peoples and other hip-hop legends. "He represents the Babu and the Beat Junkie type guys. He just brings a lot of skills to the table. But man, is he a humble dude, you know?"
For sure, even though Element's the man with his finger on the pulse of the party, he shies away from interacting a lot with the crowd. When he's not smiling -- as is usually the case when he's digging through his records or seriously working the turntables -- the big, stern-faced Indian can be an intimidating presence. He's not flashy; he doesn't dance and spin behind the booth, and the happily married mixmaster doesn't go out of his way to entice the ladies. Typically, the only people hanging out at his booth are fellow DJ friends and the type of nerdy backpack hip-hop heads who can watch a turntablist as if studying a hot lead guitarist.
"He's definitely the polar opposite of a lot of DJs, who go for that whole New York style of in-your-face aggressiveness," Carter says. "Element's a lot more laid-back. Plus, he's really getting down, cuttin' and all that kind of stuff."
He's got the skills, though, which has earned this quiet giant his rep as a kind of DJ's DJ. Carter, who also manages Pokafase, the Phoenix rapper long considered most likely to make it big -- eventually -- recruited Element as Poke's official DJ because he believes he's simply the best around. "There's a lot of DJs in town, but few of 'em are in his bracket, as far as ability and experience," Carter says. "He knows how to rock a crowd."
Still, sometimes the high-powered Carter can be frustrated by Element's quiet reserve.
"If we can get him to come out of his shell," he says, laughing, "I think he'll really be dangerous. One of these days, we'll have to get him to do a little yellin' on the mic."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the light of dusk on an autumn day, with Element whipping through a practice session on his twin Technic turntables, scratching discs and slapping the fader on his mixer with breakneck speed, the vision just outside the window of the spare bedroom in his modest manufactured home looks like a swaying throng of skinny, spiky-haired ravers. When he's really rockin' the decks, and the setting sun casts just the right reddish glow, the image can even take on the appearance of a sea of upheld lighters at a huge outdoor concert, begging for an encore.
In fact, what Element peers out on while running through his daily practices are the acres upon acres of tall cotton fields blanketing the Salt River Indian reservation, where the DJ -- named in part for his role as one of the basic elements in hip-hop and partly for the Pimas' deep connection to the land -- has lived his entire 26 years.
"Martha Stewart's Pima cotton sheets," Element says, grimacing, as he carefully places his records in their sleeves and gazes out over the rapt audience of puffy-topped stalks. "That's probably where most of this goes. The tractors run through every now and then, and you just see it in big bulks after they pick it, waiting to be hauled away."
It's a peculiarly rural backdrop for Element's brash, urban style of DJing, a crash-up mix of funk, jazz, hip-hop, dancehall, rock and whatever else he has in his crates that hits the listener like an electrified walk down a crowded city street, with a bracing surprise around every corner.
Asked if he ever feels oddly out of place, rockin' the cotton with those big city beats, Element shrugs and says he's never given it much thought. "I mean, I've seen DJs' houses where the windows look out on nothing but city," he says. "But this is all I've ever known."
Besides, he says, a DJ's inspiration comes not from what's outside his window but from what's inside his record racks -- which, in Element's case, is an encyclopedic collection of vintage vinyl. Overflowing from two floor-to-ceiling IKEA shelving units that crowd his practice room is what he calls the core of his collection: everything from King Curtis and Nina Simone to classical collections, odd rarities like The Warriors soundtrack (fashionable again, thanks to a new PS2 game based on the '70s gang flick), and even vintage Cheech and Chong. "I've got a couple of storage units filled with seven more cabinets just like these," he says.
Still, the quiet, earthy simplicity of the Pimas' land suits Element's disposition, as well as what seems to be his restrained ambition. While his friends Z-Trip and DJ Radar have each hit big this year with works already drawing attention to the Phoenix turntablist scene -- Z-Trip with his modern-rock radio climber Shifting Gears (the first DJ album ever awarded a coveted four stars in Rolling Stone), and Radar with his serious-minded Concerto for Turntable, which he took last month to Carnegie Hall -- Element may well be the only player in the crowded Phoenix DJ scene who's not consciously primping himself to be the next major-label discovery.
"I suppose I should get around to having more CDs pressed," he says when asked if he's planning to capitalize on the momentum generated by his peers. "I keep hearing all the stores around town are out of stock."