I get deep: DJ Deep

“I would get so disorganised,” he recalls. “I didn’t find it easy to locate material because I’d have these wallets, so many wallets, and I’d get lost with them. Kerri Chandler was the one who convinced me of the vinyl-USB route. He told me, ‘I know how much time you spend sorting out vinyl, digitizing it – if you plug those machines digitally to the mixer, you’re going to kill it!’.”

The E&S DJR 400 Rotary Mixer, which Deep worked on with Jerôme Barbé, was not his only foray into technological innovation. He also worked, a few years back, with Rémi Dury, one of the last students of Pierre Schaeffer, the great French ‘Musique Concrete’ electronic musician, on the Karlax MIDI-controller, a digital instrument which reacted to movement. It offered an astonishing new way of creating and presenting music. Deep found, however, that the techno community was wary of this strange, utterly original development. It leads him back, once again, to the theme of originality in techno and house.

“Without wishing to sound negative, things have become very polished,” he says. “I like it when the music is quite challenging, innovative and sonically rugged, and I try to play the sounds of producers such as Kareem, Surgeon and Blawan. I suppose what a lot of younger producers are doing is making tributes to the old sound of techno and house, appropriating it for themselves, but I want to be surprised by how we invent the techno of tomorrow. I like the music of 20 years ago but like to be challenged by new music and new sounds.”

DJ Deep has remained at the forefront of both DJing and technological development in the dance world for a quarter of a century. Whatever comes next, expect him to be deep into it.

DJ Deep’s 2017 Deeply Rooted Showcases begin with Robert Hood at Rex Club on January 28