Beat-Mixing Matters-

The Village Voice suggested the rise of new rave is prompting a resurgence of beat-matching DJs on New York’s cutting edge alternative-electro scene this week, in a lengthy feature called The Return Of Rave.

“Breaking news: DJs are mixing again! Matching beats,” Trish Romano trumpeted, going on to eulogise Denny Le Nimh's one year old weekly ‘rave-meets-rock party’ Ruff Club as the epicenter of the trend.

"I think it's catching on, mixing, it's definitely the way the music is going as well,” DJ/ co-promoter Le Nimh confirmed.

“A lot of these rock bands are being remixed by house, techno, and electro producers. Justice and Ed Banger records - that French harder house sound - a lot of the jukebox DJs are starting to play that, and noticing that dance music doesn't sound as good when you don't mix it. Dance music is the new dance music,” he told the Voice.

Fellow New York scenester, Bank DJ/promoter Larry Tee agreed, saying, “If you want to manipulate a crowd into a frenzy, I think beat-matching is an important tool. However, having long beat-matched mixes can be a real bore if you are staying in one format all night. Who can tell if the record has changed- Nobody except DJ fanatics,” he laughed.

“I definitely do think that non-beat matching has contributed greatly to the change of sounds in the last couple of years,” Larry added. “Denny Le Nimh is one of my favourite DJs here locally and though he champions beat matching, he switches music formats all the time and isn’t afraid of a quick-cut,” he told Skrufff.

London new rave man-about-town Jim Warboy (who promotes All You Can Eat and DJs extensively) told Skrufff he probably beat-matches more than “a lot of the new DJs around me but I don't consider myself a better or worse DJ because of that.”

“Largely through house, techno, and trance, many DJs started to consider beat matching the main technical skill and they operated with a misplaced superiority which left them wide open to be challenged, especially when the music in their genres hit a stalemate around the end of the ‘90s,” Jim suggested.

“New DJs came along with fresher ideas and helped to break their hold on things by introducing a lot more diversity in rhythms and tempos. Sometimes it's impossible to beat match when the tempos are wide apart, so different skills need to be employed to help make the transition feel right.”

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