As a radio DJ, I was on WRIN-WLQI. And even when I repeat it, it's horrifying. My morning sign-on, because it was in Rensselaer, Indiana, it'd be, 'You're on the air with Jim O'Heir in Rensselaer.' Ugh, oh my God, pathetic.
My parents were extreme left so everything was against the system. I was walking barefoot in the streets of Paris when I was eight. When I started to DJ they hated it, because for them, nightclubs, and all of this life, was terrible and fake.
I don't judge anybody because I've been the one to party and look for the after party to begin! I have more fun now both when I DJ and in general.
I was really ambitious, so I was innovative. I was one of the first DJs to do live calls, 'cause I found this phone device that would pick up other people's voices.
I am amazed at radio DJ's today. I am firmly convinced that AM on my radio stands for Absolute Moron. I will not begin to tell you what FM stands for.
I never had any plans to become a producer when I was a kid. I wanted to be a DJ, like most other kids at the time. Then my mum bought me a Casio keyboard and I started to sample sounds that I liked.
DJ Ruby Rhod: What's wrong with you? What you screamin' for? Every 5 minutes there's somethin', a bomb or somethin'. I'm leavin'. bzzzz.
Holland is a really small country, but with a very strong club and festival scene. Dance music has been huge in Holland since the late eighties. So there were a lot of opportunities for producers and DJs to release records and play live.
If I had to play only for people who liked the music because they heard it on the radio, it wouldn't make me happy. That's why I'm working so hard to have, yes, a profile as an artist, but also a profile as a DJ.
I try to get the hip-hop aesthetic, most times without an MC. I don't use a rapper or a DJ to give it the hip-hop style; it's strictly the band that makes that music, which is a lot harder to do.
Radio DJ: This is WZAZ in Chicago, where disco lives forever... [the airplane zooms overhead the building, knocking the radio antenna down, and the signal goes dead]
I knew that as a DJ from 1970 on up that I would eventually come with this sound. I brought out all these other break beats that you hear so much on a lot of these records.
A DJ can't just play one song. It's about playing a set, or how you connect songs in those two hours, and where you place them.
I don't really listen to my work. If I have to DJ and I play something, I hear it. But I don't sit quietly and listen to my work; I'm always off to do the next thing.
Hey wedding DJ, there is no way in hell I'm paying you $1,000 when all you're doing is plugging your iPod into the sound system #AHOLE
I feel my fear moving away in rings through time for a million years.
I like doing things in a very minimal, unconventional way as a personal way of saying, 'Look, I made a career out of carefully and craftfully, though unconventionally, making records on laptops and blown speakers.'
You know, I've learned a lot from every person I've collaborated with, from Madlib to Jean Grae and Hi-Tek, to Mos to DJ Quik, to even somebody like Jermaine Dupri. I've taken something important away from every experience.
If it's time to party, it's time for hip hop. I love Drake, Jay-Z, Kanye. If I'm chilling at home though, I'm listening to Massive Attack, Thievery Corporation, Radiohead, DJ Shadow. I also listen to a lot of classical.
Hip-hop and electronic music are so similar, in the fact that they're both very visceral, have so much bass; a lot of times, it's the same tempos. The culture and some of the sound design is different but a lot of times, it's the same stuff.
I really like iZotope Trash, which is a great plug-in for distortion, as is Ohmicide, which I love. It's an absolutely crazy multiband distortion, compression, EQ and filter, which pretty much lets you do anything.
