Carl Cox - the smiliest superstar DJ ever?

An interview with Carl Cox that I done for Newcastle Metro. He appears at Shindig's 16th birthday celebrations this weekend. I went to his first London date in three years a few weeks back, and he smashed it. It was proper arms pumping, foot stamping, driving hard dance music - tech house, and techno. Took me back to Bugged Out at Nation, Liverpool in my uni days in da mid-1990s, and raving in the annexe with The Birds, while most of Liverpool got down to fluffy house in the main room.

CARL COX

Superstar DJs are so last millennium. Yet Carl Cox is as popular now as in the superstar DJ era a decade ago, and when he started in the UK’s acid house revolution 20 years ago. Why? Because Cox’s a supreme DJ, purveying pummelling techno and tech-house who’s moved with the times; he’s charismatic with a perma-grin and hasn’t bored us into submission by turning out every week. Cox’s current UK tour are his first DJ club dates in Newcastle, Liverpool and London, in three years.

In 1988 ‘Coxy’ (dancefloors often chant this in a football-terrace style), was famous for mixing across three decks. Twenty years on and turntables are almost redundant in clubs, what does the ‘three deck wizard’ think of this? ‘I’ve gone from DJing with one turntable to using CDJs, which enables me to DJ as I’ve always DJed but with 50 hours worth of music. I’ve always enjoyed having a massive selection of music, and the choice is so immense that every single record is of the highest order,’ says Cox

Cox feels CDJs have put the emphasis on music and stimulated creativity: ‘The focus has shifted from the DJ to what’s coming out of the speakers, which is always what I’ve wanted - stop looking at me and get dancing,’ ‘Many years ago you’d have trainspotters standing at the front not dancing and writing down every record- you don’t get trainspotters any more,’ he explains. ‘It’s very creative - before people would go to the studio and remix, now you can do that live which is amazing, that new beat, or sound, you’re going to hear it in a club for the first time - I’m really looking forward to what the next generation does with it.’

Cox believes the next generation experiments’ should ferment organically on dark club dancefloors away from the harsh mainstream glare: ‘Our movement has gone underground, which is no bad thing, when it was over-ground the expectation was too high: where’s the next Prodigy, Moby, Leftfield? Actually what we had was what we had. Now we’re going back to the underground to find these people - it’s a transitional phase and it’s going to take a few years before we get a Prodigy or Leftfield.’

Cox, who’s spent the last three years DJing across the globe and every summer in Ibiza, thinks dance music’s next big thing the next could well come from one of its new frontiers, such as Eastern Europe or Asia.
‘I played in Romania and Bulgaria two weeks ago, in Bulgaria there were 7,000 people and the lighting and sound was better than anything I’ve seen. They’re having the time of their lives and only started five years ago, whereas we’ve had it for 20 years,’ he says. ‘Their ears are 21st century and they’re making music for now, not what it used to be like back in the day. This is where it’s really interesting, and where a lot of the refreshing, exciting music, DJs and producers are coming from now.’