Hard Times, Good Times?
The dance scene is at an ebb, but influential DJ Troy Roberts sees a creative turning point
It was a sign of the myopic idiocy plaguing the Southern California dance scene: The house DJ at a South Bay cheese-ateria wasn't aware that Troy Roberts was supposed to take over at 10 p.m. He didn't even seem to know Roberts; the DJ brushed him off as if he were a gas-station window washer. So Roberts, who spins regularly on the West Coast's most influential dance-music radio show, KROQ's (106.7 FM) "After Hours" on Saturdays, was left to listen to the grating aural train wrecks of this CD-playing hauteur. "You have to love it to be in it at this point in the game," says Roberts, 30.
The dance craze goes in cycles, and Roberts has witnessed many of them as a progressive-house jock since the early '90s. These days, things have hit "rock bottom" - as he puts it - because club crowds have thinned, the feds are cracking down on ecstasy-flavored events, and music sales are down 12 percent or more. But it's at low points such as this that the music rises to creative heights and the true survivors triumph. The situation was similar back in 1992 - during an economic recession - when a pair of Brits known as Sasha and John Digweed starting coming to America, spinning refined digital house music for anyone who would listen. They weren't yet superstars; they were just two guys who wanted to push a vibe. Roberts gives listeners who remember those early Sasha mixtapes the same feeling. He's an underrated talent who consistently unleashes the future of dance-floor tunes with melodic, bass-line-driven sounds. "He is one of the best DJs on the coast," says Sam Salhab, owner of San Diego-based Pangea Recordings. "And I say that because I think he plays the right tunes at the right times."
Roberts grew up in Portland, Oregon, and spent time managing record stores in his hometown and Seattle. As a student at Portland State University, he says, "I used to order records out of my dorm room." He got a break in 1998, when fabled DJ Jerry Bonham asked him to work at the Spundae Reckords shop in San Francisco. Less than a year later, Roberts was warming up the decks of Spundae's famed Sunday nightclub for the likes of Sasha, Digweed, and Dave Seaman. He spent three years in San Francisco, forging a staircase style of mixing and matching in key, a mathematical yet funky style that helped give the West Coast its own sound in a progressive-house world dominated by U.K. cover-jocks. It didn't hurt that Roberts was one of 40 DJs around the globe who was added to the coveted Balance Record Pool, which funnels prized vinyl pre-releases to the DJ elite (including Danny Tenaglia, D:FUSE, John Debo, and Peter Rauhofer). By the beginning of the decade, Roberts had spun on Digweed's KISS 100 FM mix show in the U.K. and was a headliner at Diggers' third-anniversary Bedrock party.
In 2000, Roberts started visiting L.A. to spin guest slots at Giant's weekly Saturday nightclub, and the next year he began a monthly residency at Pure in the Santa Monica club Sugar. Roberts soon met L.A. dance mogul Jason Bentley - producer and host of "After Hours" - who was dating his girlfriend's best friend (and eventually married her). "I had no idea who he was," Roberts says. "I gave him a mix CD, and he really liked it." Last year, Bentley began airing half-hour mixes put together by Roberts, ushering in a new age of innovative e-music for the area's airwaves. Also last year, Roberts made L.A. his home, moving to Venice with his girlfriend. He released two commercially available mix CDs in the '90s, which were distributed on small labels, but these days he has his eye on producing a mix for a bigger label. "I look forward to the future," he says. "These hard times are going to separate the diehards from the people who were in it because it was the hip thing to do. It's a real turning point."
Published: 06/26/2003
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