DANIEL WANG

I want all these Daniel Wang records

You are definitely the professor of disco. I've never heard of a DJ like you who uses an academic approach to dance music with so many great ideas. In an interview for Red Bull Music Academy you mentioned that Disco music is the perfect combination of melodies and rhythm. Would you care to elaborate on this?

Thanks for naming me a "Professor." I was actually on an academic track in University (studying literature and film) and got sidetracked by going out to all-black gay dance clubs in New York and Chicago. For me having fun is still the most important thing, but I also realized that I couldn't have fun unless I made sense of what I was hearing and learn how to produce music myself. So, to answer your question about disco being the perfect combination of melodies and rhythm; "If someone can produce classical & jazz & blues & pop properly and beautifully and applies all that knowledge to making music with a steady 4/4 beat, they'd come up with Disco, as we heard it starting in the mid 70's. If someone tried to imitate the form and spirit of Disco but with machines and without the deeper knowledge of musical theory, they'd make what we call House (starting in the late 80's). If someone got stuck in this world of machines and lost all sight of melody and harmony, they'd make what we call Techno (starting in the early 90's). If someone mostly steals other people's musical ideas from the Disco era as a backing track to their own ego and woes and disregards the joy of music per se, they make what we now call Hiphop (also starting in the early 90's). If someone sticks rigidly to the European classics like Mozart and Bach, they will often get a semblance of beautiful music, but without the joy of African rhythms. If we know the beauty of Bach and swing the rhythm, we get jazz in all its diversity. If someone combines Chopin and the Samba, then they get Antonio Carlos Jobim - he called this combination Bossa Nova.

O_o

...the...hell?

I seriously love this guy's music, but there is something wrong with almost every sentence there.

To Hold You Again

he goes in depth in other interviews about how much he hates sampling

He gives great interviews, one of the few people who really says what he means properly, that thing on DJ history was so great and things he's said about sublimating and aesthetising emotion is really interesting but in other ways he's basically Geir

also I think I've mentioned this on another thread but he is cute

if you watch the red bull thing you get the impression danny has a hard time shutting up about anything he gets passionate about. i wish more musicians were like him in this respect.

i love when he goes on about bach and tuning and harmonics to the red bull audience who i suspect mostly just want to know what kind of synths he uses.

haha, i thought of geir when i read that bit up there too.

is he gay? it seems so from his BIS interview.

Si.

you mean the one where he talks about how cute guys in berlin are? (iirc) (xp)

Also as good a place as any to mention the new 2xCD Balihu comp he's putting together:

http://www.bodytonicmusic.com/news/2009/jul/27/balihu-retrospective/

He's the gayest.

@john: yes. i think it made tim sweeney uneasy, haha.

"he goes in depth in other interviews about how much he hates sampling

― jaxon"

i wonder how mad it makes him that his best tracks are sample-based??? i love his other work, but come on, Balihu 1 and 3 are ridiculously good.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3002/2710844954_c1a9e26ba0_o.jpg

^ aesthetising emotion

Tim Sweeney from Beats in Space has just done a rather tasty Bahilu Records megamix to promote that comp mentioned upthread, which you can download from Pitchfork here

Tracklisting:
1. Daniel Wang: "Let's Go to Mars"
2. Massimo Pagliara: "Beach Birds"
3. Daniel Wang: "On the Moon"
4. Daniel Wang: "Zeit Ist Ein Fluss"
5. Daniel Wang: "Warped"
6. Daniel Wang: "Like Some Dream"
7. Daniel Wang: "In a Golden Haze"
8. Brennan Green: "Behind the Ocean"
9. Ilya Santana: "Wicked Sequence"
10. Ilya Santana: "Crystal Sea"
11. Daniel Wang: "Get Up Get Up"
12. Daniel Wang: "The Twirl"
13. Daniel Wang: "Free Lovin"
14. Daniel Wang: "Glow Worms"
15. Daniel Wang: "In the Street"
16. Carlos Hernandez: "Shyboy 123"

he should do a mix cd.

He did! Japan-only and impossible to find (at least in the US), but it's out there.

really? what's the title?

what's the deal with his mixing? he plays killer tunes of course but the mixing is just like using crossfader. is that intentional or what?

what do you mean intentional? Like he's reaching for a different fader and accidently uses the crossfader?

by intentional I mean that it's his style to not giving too much attention to mixing. it's the tracks that matter. because for a veteran like him the mixing certainly should be better. sorry for my english.

This dude kills it. I saw him DJ in Japan at an all night party in the woods and he was fucking beyond . . .
he was acting out every lyric of every record he played to the crowd, and basically acting like a DJ and an aerobics instructor and the host of a children's television program all at the same time, and the disco music he was throwing down was funky as hell.

as it is not prog house, it doesn't require inute-long transitions between trax.

but still it sounds sloppy compared to other disco dj's..

one of the best disco dj's ive heard had 'sloppy' transitions ... & its not like larry levan was doing all this technical blending wizardry either ... dude would literally decide what track he was playing next when there was 30 seconds left on the record before it

like, dudes heres the deal: being 'technically good' at blending records takes a lot of work, but its not, like, a huge accomplishment in & of itself. It allows a lot more flexibility for DJs to keep the crowd happy, for sure, but treating it like the be-all-end-all is so totally missing the point. Like, I know a lot of DJs who cant rock parties for shit but they'll show u some hella smooth blending.

remember discussing this elsewhere a while back but technical skill is only one element of good djing - track selection and sequencing are as, if not more, important

Yeah, I totally see your points, guys. Danny is still #2 on my list of must-see DJ's. I was just wondering.

seems like dude wld prolly b pretty hung up on levan-cldn't-mix-4-shit type mythology 2

most Classic disco is not tight enough to do hella smooth mixes. one band decides to drop back on the beat and your in the middle of a mix with some galloping horses.

So unless your happy to only mix with Ableton'd reedits, your better off choosing drop-in points and getting away with what you can.

For my money I'd pay to see a hyperactive DJ, Gym instructor & Childrens entertainer before I'd pay to see two kick drums played at the same time!!

I was wondering about that, beatmatching disco records. I always assumed it had something to do with the pressing (when you jam 6 minutes of music into less than 2cm of groove, etc), but that doesn't explain why my copy of thriller beatmatches, but my Chic LP's don't. Are they just not keeping exact time?

I remember first seeing Theo Parrish, or listening to Michael Mayer, still wet behind the ears and subscribing to the Richie Hawtin school of mixing, and being nonplussed by how "lazy" their mixes were. As much as I do love smooth, long, mixing, you can't really apply that framework to all music, especially disco, which often is much more song structured, there's something to hearing it's beginning, middle, and end? Also, the proportion of vocal tracks makes it harder too, given that two people singing on top of each other doesn't make for good mixing either.

In some circles a DJ is measured on how well they can blend and mix disco. It isn't impossible, you just have to know your records and how to ride them.

Remember that you don't play the vocal sides of every record back to back to back. Also, if you know your records and their song structure, you know which record has that 32 bar break that will lock up with other records.

Also, generally it isn't the band that will fuck you up with live drums, but a bad tape edit.

it's probably less being hung up on the mythology and more just not caring. He's been djing for a million years, I'm sure he can mix, I'm sure I've heard him mix, I used to hear him all the time like 9 years ago or whenever and he mixed fine.

You don't have to be all "well Mancuso doesn't do it so I won't" to decide that you'd rather just focus on grabbing good records and throwing them on and not sweating the mix.

Even in the circles where a DJ is measure by how well they can blend, eventually people stop caring that much. When it's done really well it's a lot of fun to hear. When it's not done at all, if the music is good enough, you barely miss it. I do it as much as I can because nobody's there and I have to work extra hard to keep people dancing, so it's best not to confuse the dancers too much.

What would be great though is if people started taking disco records and somehow changing them so there was more space at the beginning before the vocals came in, making it easier to mix. Some kind of editing process to make the music more DJ friendly. I did it once with Vitamin C by Can.

i see what you did there

2cd reissue set on rush hour is so killer

heh.

What would be great though is if people started taking disco records and somehow changing them so there was more space at the beginning before the vocals came in, making it easier to mix. Some kind of editing process to make the music more DJ friendly. I did it once with Vitamin C by Can.

what's even cooler is to then make those original song titles and artists mysterious and put your name on the record.

What would be great is if DJs started taking records and somehow manipulating them so there were more instrumental bars at the beginning, making it easier to mix... some kind of "editing" process to make the music more DJ-friendly.

^^ that was my dub edit of dan's post

lol, you guys are funny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNASMym1nXY

Listening back to the BiS from 2008. He ought to have his own radio show.

halp what's the track on Balihu 002 that isn't "in the street" or "sylver belt"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p3GN6OS0go

i think it is "on the moon", on this release: http://www.discogs.com/Daniel-Wang-Jamie-Hodge-Balihu-Sampler/master/567131

thanks peeps

just listened to his beats in space, he talks between every track and, man, i could listen to him talk forever. so charming