The more tightly choreographed a live show becomes, the easier it is to wonder what’s being lost.In DJ culture, where reading the room and pivoting in the moment are paramount to the craft, precision can seem at odds with spontaneity.
Ad 0:00 Click for sound 0:00 / 0:00 For bass music producer and ZOT Records founder AHEE, the opposite has been true.By merging his music and visuals into a single system through Rekordbox Performance Mode, he’s expanded his creative freedom and gained more flexibility behind the decks.
Although the feature has existed for a decade, he believes he’s the first “touring dubstep act to take advantage of it to the fullest extent.” So what happens when music and visuals are conceived, designed and performed as one? Traditionally, DJs control the music while VJs run the visuals.AHEE collapses that divide by building both into a single file, controlling the entire audiovisual experience in real time on CDJs.
AHEE, whose real name is Chris Adams, says he’s always viewed music and visuals as interconnected.He has a background in VJing and even created a music video for Weezer early in his career.
“I’ve had synesthetic experiences, which is the combining of the senses.So it always made a larger impact on me when both visuals and sound were aligned,” Adams tells EDM.com.
“I never really got to combine those two things in a professional sense until just this year.I’ve done both things professionally, but now, it felt like this was the time where I could truly have the technology to combine them.” Scroll to continue more from edm Inside Hotel El Ganzo, the Cabo Resort Where Artists Come to Record, Recharge and Reimagine Their Sound True to form for Rekordbox, the much-maligned software often bemoaned for its compatibility issues, there are still some technical hurdles to overcome before Adams’ system is ready for...