DJ SOLO: Petere Magister Ludi

text: Greg Sheer

For approximately a decade and a half, a twig sprouted from the trunk of popular music has grown gnarled, distinctive, and strong enough to support the weight of a lasting movement. Electronic music, suffice it to say, now serves far more than hapless douchebags a la “Night at the Roxbury.”

One particular genre of Electronic music, dubstep, is quite a peculiar beast, based on any number of its facets: its ebb and flow can confound the uninitiated, all the more so when surrounded by a crowd of fans who all seem to know exactly what’s happening preternaturally.

It’s easy to dismiss as a genre based on remixing (mash-ups), but seems to possess a tremendous amount of staying power. In other words, dubstep walks, talks, and acts like a new vein of popular dance music, but looks nothing like it. Part experiential, part experimental, and all of it a rollicking masquerade, the best advice one might give is to just go see a show, drop the lime in the coconut and drink it all up, and see where that leaves you.

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DJ SOLO (sometimes known as Dave Abrams), is neither an atypical figure in the dubstep scene, nor a stereotypical case; the very nature of the scene might demand a re-assessment of that sort of qualification. I caught up with Dave, Saturday afternoon at the Summer Camp music festival, in Chillicothe, IL, for a chat about him, his music, and the future of DJ SOLO.

Coming up in Chicago, Dave played in punk bands, starting off on guitar, and picking up the other mainstays like keys, drums, and bass guitar along the way, then went home at night to a four-track mixer where he started pursuing hip-hop and drum n’ bass music. With these in mind, SOLO came to the mash-up as a means of creating a hybrid between ideas.

“I wasn’t gonna do rap-rock, like, I wasn’t gonna be Limp Bizkit or something,” he says. Instead, Dave tried to weave together “what I was listening to coming up, but also just sounds and experiences.” He says there’s an element of nostalgia to the music.

Take a listen to his remix of The Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop,” and you’ll see what he means. Sound-bytes from Super Mario Bros punctuate the minimalist track’s rhythmically modular take on the punk classic. “It’s like, if you go to someone’s house, and they collect, like, Star Wars figures, they’re gonna have them all on display. That’s what I try to do with music, be a collector and display it all.”

This process, casting a wide net, and then weaving together something singular from the catch, has allowed  Dave to craft a pleasing hodge-podge of a resume. He’s produced for the Wu-Tang clan and is a member of Cypress Hill’s Soul Assassins, while also collaborating with Chicago’s Umphrey’s McGee and Cornmeal. Which seems to suit him just fine though, as there doesn’t appear to be anything outside his musical interest. I asked what he listened to on the drive down from his Champagne-Urbana home, and he looked up, maybe surprised at his own answer: “The Monkees Greatest Hits.”

His writing process is similarly disparate. “For drum n’ bass stuff, there are things you learn, things you gotta do, but they almost become like a formula. There’s so much…It can be overwhelming.” In other cases though, he starts off instrumentally, as is the case with his original track “Mile in My Shoes.”

“I started off writing that one on piano…I also perform the vocals.” Dave wears a lot of hats. Figuratively speaking, here. But also literally.

Looking ahead, Dave’s not shy about suggesting that dubstep might not have the staying power a lot of folks think it does: “As much as I love the music, the actual movement itself is over.”

He’s interested in making an album that’s “a whole experience,” as opposed to “oh here’s a single, here’s a single, and then put it all together, here’s an album.” It’s an organic development, for a guy who came to dubstep by way of taste and experience, and not the other way around.

The Vibe Tent is still teeming with sweaty, bedraggled hippies and club kids, come 2am. Painted girls in bikinis with neon hula hoops are hovering a few feet above the crowd. I get a glare from one when her hoop whacks the back of my head. Without a lull between artists, SOLO takes the stage, and there’s a moment when the ship feels like it’s come unmoored. It doesn’t last.

To be in a room surrounded by folks moving in unison, the sheer inertia too great to argue with, well, we hate to break it to him, but he might have already created that experience he wanted to with a new album. Here’s hoping he tries anyway.