Local Heroes Unite
DJ music from L.A. may still be unknown to much of the world, but Droog is plugged into a global groove
From the locally administered Grammy Awards’ relatively new best dance album category to the dance-crazed Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival’s influence on pop currents to the who’s who of part-time, fulltime and onetime residents – Daft Punk, Paul Oakenfold, John Digweed, Tiesto – you could argue L.A. is where it’s at for those who’ve mastered two turntables (and no microphone).
Still, you’d have a hard time finding an organic, homegrown DJ scene that has been heard around the world. Certainly the divergent styles of the Crystal Method, Doc Martin, DJ Dan, Christopher Lawrence, David Alvarado, and John Tejada, to name a few, have had their days in the sun at e-music festivals across the world. But if your club-head cousin from Europe ever asked if there is an L.A. sound in e-music you’d probably be silently scratching your head.
A group of professionals-by-day is trying to change that notion, one Saturday night at a time. Spend some time on the smoke-filled higher plane that is Avalon Hollywood’s terrace, and you might be uplifted by the bubbly, propulsive tag-team DJ mix from the steady hands of a three-man, resident crew called Droog. Avalon Hollywood’s upstairs terrace, a place graced by such DJs’ DJs as Hernan Cattaneo, Charles Feelgood, and Kazell, is a coveted perch. Droog’s Brett Griffin, 32, Justin Sloe, 33, and Andre Osyka, 30, might not be seasoned DJ veterans (actually, Sloe has been spinning around town for nearly a decade), but they are in-the-know vibe merchants plugged into a global network of minimal-techno and tech-house artisans. If you’ve been lucky enough to have been handed one of the trio’s 500-pressing promo discs, you know these guys have tapped into a groove that minimizes the “electro” cheese of today in favor of bottomless kick drums and buzzing, evergreen, ever-forward euphony. The trio is also showcasing its sounds after-hours at its Hollywood Hills “Bunker.” The post-Avalon events have attracted some of the club’s major headliners: Tiefschwarz, Radioslave, Gui Boratto, Damian Lazarus, and Josh Wink.
“A lot of our parties have gone to the next morning and, as people are leaving, neighbors are walking around doing their Sunday chores,” says Droog’s manager, Matt Zamias.
Droog didn’t come to the music as much as it came to them. The web-driven, file-sharing music world has been a boon for DJs, who are fostering a new era of cooperation: Techno talent is just as likely to come from Brazil (Boratto) as Sweden (Adam Beyer) or Los Angeles (John Tejada). When Avalon’s promoters decided last year to eschew trance in favor of these revived, tech-focused sounds, they invited the complementary flavors of Droog to anchor the club’s terrace. This “white collar DJ mafia,” as Griffin calls it, consists of a business attorney (Griffin), a database administrator (Sloe) and a photographer (Osyka). “We’re all overeducated and slightly artsy,” Griffin says.
They were clubbing pals who decided to join Sloe on the decks as a collective in 2005. One of the crew’s first gigs was at L’Scorpion, a Hollywood tequila bar, where payment usually came in the form of that liquid gold agave. Even today, the Droog men say, profitability is not a realistic goal. “None of us get paid to do this, but we spend more time on it than we do at work,” says litigator-by-day Griffin.
“To us, it’s not an opportunity to be in front of a lot of people,” adds Osyka, who is Ukrainian. “I would rather be in a club with 100 people I can feel, and who are feeling me, than in front of a thousand disconnected people.”
The guys are pooling their resources and, with the help of manager Zamias, working on a pair of original releases to promote in Miami next month at the global DJ retreat known as the Winter Music Conference. And when they’re not organizing their own one-off events (the next is March 23 at the Standard Hotel downtown), they’re also working on an ’08 debut for their own label – an outlet to showcase L.A.’s take on the global techno resurrection.
“It’s nice to think,” says Zamias, “that people from other world cities will be talking about what’s happening here.”
Check out Droog’s schedule at myspace.com/droog_la.
Published: 02/27/2008
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Love these guys <3