Too Much Junkie Business
Junkie XL reboots the music industry in his own image
By Matt Diehl
Holkenborg’s dream of youth appears throughout Booming Back At You as well. In a sense, Junkie XL’s latest artist album is a journey through his musical past, present, and future. Raised in a musical family, Holkenborg, now 40, started playing numerous instruments around the age of four. By the time he turned 16, a job in a local musical-instrument shop provided an electronic epiphany he would never turn away from again. “Early synthesizers like Synclaviers and Fairlights cost a million bucks,” Holkenborg recalls, “but then they finally became affordable in the mid-’80s. I was fascinated by the new keyboards, Midi technology, and the birth of sampling. I knew that combining all that with traditional musicianship would be it for me.”
To further these ideas, Holkenborg joined the Dutch new-wave outfit Weekend In Waikiki; later, he formed the Wax Trax-influenced industrial-metal duo Nerve. The canniest tracks on Booming can indeed be traced back to this early musical lineage. “I picked influences that were important to me over the last 20 years,” he admits. As such, there’s a raw, dancefloor-dynamite cover of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Cities In Dust,” a proto dance-rock classic from 1985. Elsewhere, “Not Enough” mixes the anxious piano runs of Sparks with Depeche Mode’s electro-pop drama, while “Clash” collides Bad Manners bluebeat into Gary Glitter glam, and the title track pumps up the volume like M/A/R/R/S. All, however, get retrofitted with volcanic beats suitable for today’s modern club systems.
Strangely, Holkenborg admits “I didn’t like dance music in beginning. I was a big fan of electronic music like Yello and Kraftwerk; Trevor Horn’s work for Art of Noise and Frankie Goes To Hollywood was also very important to me. As a result, I didn’t like the first techno releases from
Detroit; I thought the production sounded really crappy. It took me until 1990 to get it, when I first went to underground dance parties. I realized it wasn’t about the production, but the community vibe – the experience of being with each other in one room, with the smoke, the drugs, the repetition of rhythms … I was like ‘Wow, this is the shit!’” More full raver disclosure: While he plays live at festivals, like at the upcoming Coachella, you’ll never catch Junkie XL behind a pair of decks onstage. “I can’t DJ!” he admits. “I’ve tried a couple times, but I just can’t sync the records; I don’t know how it works. That’s why I’ve always positioned myself more as an artist and producer.”
Still, since that one fateful rave, Junkie XL hasn’t ever looked back: Typically, he’s incorporated every passing club genre, from big beat to progressive, into his grooves. Booming proves no different:
Decidedly contemporary aspects contrast evocatively with Holkenborg’s retro-futurist nostalgia. Lauren Rocket of local Warped Tour-friendly band Rocket adds howling vocals to three tracks; celebrity Angeleno DJ Steve Aoki collaborates on the mosh-pit-meets-acid squelch of “1967 Poem.” It’s all part of Junkie XL’s role as club statesman, uniting the dance-music factions under his digital umbrella. “Steve Aoki wakes up with a million amazing musical ideas and can only execute four of them,” Holkenborg explains. “It’s magic when we work together: Steve knows what people like and is totally connected with all the cool dance music out today. I really love the new bands like MSTRKRFT, Justice, Digitalism, and Boys Noize. Still, while their music is super interesting, it’s not ‘clubby’ enough – there’s a gap between genres like progressive and house and this new movement. With my album, I’m trying to build a bridge between the two, combining that punky aggression and roughness with all the other dance music styles.”
Junkie XL’s diverse, inclusive take epitomizes the dance-music expat scene that’s given Los Angeles clubland new dimension: superstar dancefloor pioneers from Paul Oakenfold to Daft Punk to Adam Freeland have all moved here from foreign lands for a more widescreen angle on things. “Judging L.A. by Hollywood is like judging the whole of London by Leicester Square,” Adam Freeland says. “This is the only place I’ve lived where you feel that you can do anything. Eat any food you want; see any band; find any subculture; meet any creative mind; experience any art. You can be totally involved in the core business side, yet be on a beach, up a mountain, or in a wild desert within no time.” Holkenborg admits that his own cultural mishmash would never have come about if he’d stayed in his native Netherlands. “L.A.’s a great place to live, to be an artist,” he says. “People respect me more here than they do in Holland. There, I would always be told something I wanted to do wasn’t possible; it was always like, ‘Act normal – you’re already crazy enough.’ But here, the crazier you are, the better! It’s a really thrilling life.”
Published: 03/26/2008
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