One of the things that makes Jamie xx such an impressive DJ is the depth of his crates. Not only do his sets dart seamlessly from grime to house to techno to his own bewitching, impossible-to-genrify brand of club music; he frequently leapfrogs dance music entirely. In a Boiler Room set recorded on a London rooftop last summer, he dropped Durutti Column's 1989 song "Otis", a drum-free wisp of fingerpicked guitars, in between deep house and U.K. funky tracks. At last year's Primavera Sound, he thrilled an overflowing tent with a set of all vintage soul and R&B. It's not the least bit surprising that he has taken to playing Tame Impala's "Let It Happen" in his sets. The song is essentially breakbeat house by way of the Turtles; between its steady, four-to-the-floor pulse and its soaring synth lines, it's just dance music in poncho and bell-bottoms.
Jamie spun the tune at a set in Guadalajara, Mexico not too long ago, and he did it again at Coachella. He wasn't the only one; the BBC Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong reportedly dropped it in his set, as well. Yet Jamie's play prompted an unexpected reaction on Reddit, where a user named SurfTaco asked, "did [Jamie xx] Play Tame Impala's ‘Let It Happen’ (which was played the night before by Tame Impala themselves) in its entirety without changing/remixing anything?" A few lines down, the same user posts, "because i'm pretty sure that's what he did. I mean, i love that song and loved it, but just seemed weird to play another artist's song in its entirety, especially a coachella artist..."
Is it bad form for a DJ to play a song by another artist appearing at the same event? It is, at least, a reasonable point of debate. It's generally accepted that the opening DJ doesn't play tracks—at least not new, high-profile tracks—by the headliner; better to let them have the honor. (I'm sure there are a million potential exceptions to this rule, but if, for the sake of argument, I got to open for Jamie xx tomorrow, I sure wouldn't go busting out anything from his new album; to do so would be stepping on his toes.)
But when two artists are performing at the same multi-stage festival? If the point of the opening-DJs-shouldn't-play-headlining-DJs'-songs rule is so as not to upstage them, that possibility pretty much goes out the window once two artists are playing different tents—even more so when the songwriting artists have played the day before the other DJ. In this case, Jamie dropping "Let It Happen" looks, more than anything, like an homage; it's a way of saying to the crowd, "Remember how fucking rad Tame Impala's set last night was?"
But the Reddit user went further: It "just seemed weird to play another artist's song in its entirety." That contention jumped out at me, because it underscored what seems to me to be a fundamental misunderstanding about what a DJ does, and should (or should not) do.
Maybe SurfTaco's point of contention is the "in its entirety" bit, but that's a red herring. Yeah, most of the time DJs mix two songs together, but how much depends on a DJ's personal mixing style. Lots of DJs try to keep two records going at almost all times. But others let their tracks play out to almost their full length, and gracefully fade over to the next with little fanfare. In fact, when I interviewed Jamie xx in March, we talked about this very point. He told me, "I've started doing this thing now where if I'm playing last and I want to play a lot of stuff that's obviously not going to mix well together, I just do like a soundsystem, and just play the record." That is, he means, without any overlap with his next selection. "And it really works, because that moment of silence in between [songs] is almost like another part of the mix. People are waiting for the next song. It can grab their attention at the end of the night."
Now, I wasn't at Coachella; I didn't hear how Jamie mixed "Let It Happen", and whether it was blended with something else or just let to run at its full length. But I think we've pretty clearly established that however he spun it, Tame Impala were not upstaged, and his DJ technique was completely defensible.
But let's go back to the first part of SurfTaco's statement—it "just seemed weird to play another artist's song." Because isn't that what DJs do? Play other artists' songs? Is that really up for debate?
As it happens, at least one critic doesn't think that's enough. Last week, the Wall Street Journal music critic Jim Fusilli responded to a list of the most Shazammed songs at Coachella by asking, "Why spin someone else's music?" I assumed he was being ironic, or making some kind of backhanded commentary about the crappiness of said list. (Heavy on the likes of DJ Snake, Deorro, Kygo, Galantis, and Jack Ü, it definitely did not suggest that Coachella's DJs had deep crates. But then, this is Shazam we're talking about. By definition, deep crates are part of the "long tail"; it's statistically impossible for them to be represented in a Shazam chart, unless, say, every single damn person in the crowd simultaneously whips out Shazam when DJ Harvey drops Rrose, which he did. And I guess that could happen! But it's highly unlikely.)
Anyway, Fusilli was not being ironic; he was being serious, and when I prodded him, he responded, "Producer w/ own music has huge audience at global festival & spins trax by others? Is this what musicians do?"
I'm not going to replay every volley in my debate with Fusilli (you can read the entire conversation here), but I do want to summarize the argument he seemed to be making. Claiming that "Coachella is a chance to showcase music, not curation skills," he urged performers to "think like a musician, not a DJ." He declared that "spinning music by others, however competently, is subordinate to making original music." And finally, when I brought up the example of Jamie xx—a good, maybe a great producer, but just as interesting a DJ, if not more so—Fusilli remained unmoved: "Yes, I know. If you're going to spin only, spin your own work."
What we seem to have here is a fundamental misunderstanding about not just DJs but also the "live" presentation of electronic music.
For one thing, to compare "spinning music by others" to "making original music" is an apples-and-oranges proposition; they're different skill sets, and if you think one is "subordinate" to the other, I guess that's your prerogative, although ranking the human capacity for expression feels like kind of a downer of a way to go through life.
Moreover, "making original music" is not at all the same as playing music, certainly not in the electronic sphere. That is because while music is a time-based art, the vast majority of electronic music is not created in real time; it is arranged in layers, often graphically, on a screen, like a collage—or, indeed, like a musical score. It is fundamentally a product of a studio, and, as such, it is notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to re-create live.
Yes, there are electronic musicians who play 100% live, and in real time. Juju & Jordash and their related groups, Magic Mountain High and Mulholland Free Clinic, for example: They take to the stage with racks upon racks of gear, no computers (save one, I think, running a master MIDI clock), and all of their machines' memory banks completely empty, and they proceed to make everything up right there, on the spot.
But the artists who play like this are not the types of artists who tend to headline festivals like Coachella.
Most electronic "live" performances involve taking pre-recorded, pre-arranged chunks of one's own catalog and playing them back while triggering select elements in a staggered fashion and tweaking effects over the top, to lend the illusion of spontaneity.
There are certainly some artists who do more than that—maybe they play some drums, or do a little keyboard soloing—and there are some, even fewer, who do more rigorous work. (In the mainstream, Daft Punk might be said to have set the standard for remixing one's own back catalog in a live context, given how dynamically and unpredictably they weave strands of their work together, but I have no idea how much of that is pre-arranged and how much happens in the moment; I suspect that only they know that.)
There are many great electronic producers who haven't figured out good ways to play their music live. Sometimes that's because they're better composers than they are performers; more often, it's because certain kinds of electronic music simply cannot be played live, except as playback. And that's OK! I saw Karlheinz Stockhausen perform once; he sat behind the soundboard, in the seated part of the auditorium, futzing with faders and EQ knobs while a recording of his composition Hymnen played through the system. (From El País's review of the concert: "In a press conference before the concert, Stockhausen predicted the disappearance of orchestras in the future. 'We don't need them,' he said, emphatically. 'The most important thing in the music is aesthetics, and not whether or not there are performers on stage.'") We weren't there to watch Stockhausen perform; we were there to listen to his music.
And maybe this, ultimately, is the main difference between critics like Fusilli and myself. He seems to want an artist's festival performance to offer a representation of his or her music, and only that. It's a listening party, essentially, albeit one through really loud speakers, with a little bit of auratic presence attached.
I'm more interested in hearing how the artist thinks on his or her feet; I'd like to witness something that will never be recreated. In my case, that's most likely best represented by a DJ set. I want to hear both music and curation; after all, you can't have the latter without also getting the former. I want the DJ to teach me something, to surprise me, to pull out a 20-year-old track I've never heard before, or maybe one—like Durutti Column's "Otis", or Tame Impala's "Let It Happen"—that I'd never think of putting into a DJ set. (I will never forget hearing Derek Plaslaiko drop Cat Power's "You Are Free" into a techno set at the Bunker party at New York's Subtonic, back around 2003, when the record was new. It shouldn't have worked, but it did.) I certainly don't care if the artist plays his or her big hits; I don't think I've ever gone to see a DJ expecting or even hoping to hear any one song in particular. But I suspect that for a new generation of listeners, that may be different. Songs have become extensions of an artist's brand, and they are expected to be delivered.
(I haven't mentioned the techno producer Ambivalent's thoughtful attempt to answer the question, "What does a real DJ do?" But I suggest that you read it.)
Dance-music culture has always been a fundamentally collective enterprise. It is as much about "scenius"—the creativity of the crowd—as genius. So DJing ("playing other people's music") has a subtly ideological dimension, too. It is about acknowledging that you are a part of something much bigger than you. It is about acknowledging that the performance does not begin and end with your skills, your ideas, your music, your ego. It's a tip of the hat to your teachers and peers. It is a way of saying that nothing is subordinate to anything else; the endless succession of segues, from record to record to record, is just another way of expressing the fact that we're all in this together.