After a brush with death-by-bus while sprinting across Xinzha Lu for a fresh pack of White Elephant brand batteries to feed my sketchy Xujiahui-bought voice recorder, I sat down with DJ Dexter, an Australian DJ, perhaps best known for The Avalanches track "Frontier Psychiatrist," over some chocolate cake. We pondered the relationship between traditional Pacific Island dancing and Crumping, deaf-DJing, and dodging flying bongs in Detroit with Busta Rhymes and David Bowie.

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Dexter: I started when I was twelve... on a crappy belt drive, turntable, and a tape deck. My brother got it for his birthday. The first gig I ever did I was playing for a bunch of sixteen year olds... that¡¯s when I realized this is the lifestyle. Free food, girls dancing -- and I'm making them dance


Dexter: When I was twelve, Fight The Power [Public Enemy] dropped. So in between that, soul, Madonna, pop shit, and R&B hip hop shit... same as now [Laughs].


Dexter: It reached the suburbs. It's a suburban thing, anywhere you go around the world.


Dexter: Ahhhh, the big records for us were the big hip hop records worldwide. There was some underground stuff play, being played by one DJ on the radio back in like 83' 84' who still spins to this day. I heard my first hip hop song when I was five.


Dexter: Yeah.. I still could if you give me a can of oil and a tight tracksuit.


Dexter: Really healthy, really focused on live music, full backing bands.


Dexter: Horns...


Dexter: No one is rocking the didgeridoo... I've got a crew called Gorilla Step, they're like a Pacific Island, traditional and crump hip hop band. Crump dance and music.


Dexter: Huge. Like I said in the suburbs, mostly Polynesian Asian kids have embraced crump like "this is my shit" for whatever reason. Maybe you could read into it from an earth and root perspective. Some of these kids have been doing proper traditional Cook Island dancing for twenty years. What interests me is this interweaving between traditional Pacific Island dancing and crump. It¡¯s got this rawness, more than any other kind of hip hop dancing. So I¡¯ve been exploring that for the last four years, putting together a band.


Dexter: No.... I wish.


Dexter: Records, Serato. Serato has this new feature where you can record anything on the fly... it's gonna open up some crazy shit. With the technology, there's kids in a bedroom making amazing stuff who have never touched a record in their life. But like anything, even when vinyl DJing got big, there¡¯s gonna be a whole bunch of rubbish.


Dexter: Yeah, garbage. But at the same time, there's some fucking amazing shit.


Dexter: I¡¯m doing a twenty-year retrospective of my DJing... so I've been digging, going back into my golden era. Also, with the Gorilla Step stuff, listening to a lot of world music, listening to tribal, Pacific Island music and trying to find out how it relates to the rest of the world, finding the links. You can just pick one Pacific island country and it will fucking blow your mind. For example the Arabs came through, the French, and the Dutch, and so musically all those influences are there... I've been digging.


Dexter: In Chicago I found this record for fifty cents by a French Creole band, this heavy psychedelic record, I was blown away like "what the fuck is going on?" one of those kind of records. Also in Madrid; second-hand stores. But everything good is taken...


Dexter: Ummm, I don't know... Europe, Eastern bloc...


Dexter: Danger... just feels so fucking dangerous. For example when I got to my hotel there, this van pulled up and these two dudes in balaclavas just jumped out of the back of the van and ran into the hotel, and I said "I'm not staying in this hotel." But the gig was incredible, real underground gig....


Dexter: Playing in Detroit with Busta Rhymes, Moby, and David Bowie. And he asked the crowd to throw spliffs on stage...


Dexter: Busta, and so all these people threw spliffs, then someone threw a huge glass bong, full of water, flipping in the air, which broke on the stage. Busta was like "what¡¯s going on" and I thought "this is the shit... Detroit, represent.¡±


Dexter: Yeah.... on my first solo tour, I lost my hearing. In Rotterdam, I landed, jumped on the train, went through this long long tunnel, my ears popped... but then walking up the stairs in the station, my joints started hurting, and realized I couldn¡¯t even lift my equipment and I thought, "wow, I'm feeling like I'm getting sick, really fast." So I went to the hotel, had a sleep, woke up, and my ears were completely blocked. Could only hear about 30Hz and below. Called the doctor.... he didn¡¯t know. Couldn¡¯t play the gig. I had it for two and a half weeks, and I had to do shows, and I did them, purely on kick drums because I could hear those. It wasn't good. That was one of moments I thought, "this is why I¡¯ve been DJing for fifteen years."


Dexter: Haha I'm not on a label... I don¡¯t know, just take care of myself. Looking both ways when I cross the street, especially here.


Dexter: The retrospective stuff, a lot of golden era hip hop, some dubstep, drum and bass, maybe some world music in there too, stuff from Morocco. I've got sections of tracks that go really well together, but I never quite know the order.

***

DJ Dexter performs tonight at Quality Control at The Shelter. Cover is 50rmb.

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