Interview with DJ Gordon Gekko
Who exactly is DJ Gordon Gekko?
I’m a 21-year-old junior at Swarthmore College.
Where does the alias come from?
Michael Douglas’s character in Wall Street (1987), who embodies 1980’s excess and yuppie swagger.
How did you get into mashups?
I’ve always been a big music head, but I never really got in to popular/top 40 music. I think the first mashups I ever heard were some 2 Many DJs tracks during the napster/limewire era. During my freshman year of college, my buddy gave me a few Max & Vibe mixtapes – they made mashups with a lot of music that I listened to. After seeing how popular Girl Talk got by mixing wack top 40 music, I decided that I wanted to get in the game by creating a unique sound. When I got to college, I started out by making Garageband mashups before I had any other software, manually cutting up rap verses word by word to fit them to the beat. A bunch of these early Gek tracks are great, I used less dance-y electronic and indie music like MGMT, Cut Copy, Daft Punk, Depeche Mode, Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, etc. – I’ll either throw the good ones up on my blog or remix them with Ableton in the future, though there are definitely mp3s floating around. Another DJ at Swat introduced me to Traktor 3, which gave me the ability to match BPM’s and loop tracks – basically make professional sounding music. At this point I realized that I had all I needed to start making legitimate mashups. I mix electronic/dance music with rap, synth pop, and indie music from all genres. I don’t isten to other mashup artists aside from DJ Vibe and Max Barbaria – their sound is similar to mine, the tempo is just a few BPM slower. I really don’t like pop mashups at all.
What software and hardware do you use?
I made my first mixtape, Virga, entirely in Traktor 3, which is live DJing software that allows you to beatmatch, loop, and record four mp3 tracks at a time on the fly. Traktor definitely isn’t ideal for music production though; all recording and editing must be done live, as the tracks play. This makes it difficult to rearrange and layer songs. For 2CB, I used a combination of Traktor 3 and Garageband: Typically, I’d beatmatch and do basic looping in Traktor, then bring the tracks into Garageband to cut them, rearrange them, and adjust volume levels. However, because my bootleg pirated copy of Traktor 3 abruptly stopped working while I was abroad in Rome this fall, I’ve finally made the switch to Ableton live, which is more or less a synthesis of the two programs I’d been using previously. Currently, I do most of my production in Ableton, but still plan to use Traktor for live DJing once I get back to school/get another working copy.
Do you prefer producing music or playing live?
Playing live, without a doubt. The best part of performing live is improvising. I typically go into my shows with a loose playlist. But as the show goes on, and I start feeling saucy, I’ll drop other tracks and acapellas – sometimes projects that I’ve been working on, other times completely new combinations. I just try to read the crowd. Towards the end of my shoes, depending on my level of intoxication, I tend to get more ambitious with my song choices. You might hear some new wave, space disco, 60’s psychedelic pop, ambient electronic music – anything goes.
Any cool stories from playing live?
Nothing specific. I would DJ with a friend of mine at school (Splut) who mixed dubstep and darker electronic music. Because we both had our laptops hooked up to the venue’s audio system, we could independently drop tracks at the same time. My favorite thing to do – usually as people were just starting to show up – was to make mashups on the fly together. One person would drop a base track, the other would throw down an acappella, and so on. Because we had different tastes in music, we usually had no prior knowledge of the other person’s song choice; everything was done on the spot. It made it much more satisfying when songs came together. Oh, and once while I was DJing at a small club in Rome they stopped serving me because I abused the free drink privilege, which I thought was extremely rude.
What are you doing in your free time?
Aside from downloading, listening to and making music, I read a lot, mostly intelligent, drug-riddled, subversive stuff. I’m big into all of the beat generation authors, like Kerouac and Burroughs. Right now I’m reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I’d been trying to start it for a while, but it seemed so huge and intimidating. I finally had time to make a dent in it over winter break. I’ve been getting into European cinema after taking a course while abroad, and love 70’s films in general. I also play on my college’s varsity lacrosse team, which takes up most of my free time in the spring. I buy and sell clothes and sneakers for spending money/to stay fresh. Other than that, I’m an amateur horticulturist and a recreational shaman.
What music have you been listening to lately?
I’m a big fan of experimental electronic music. I rep AC hard, loved the Fall Be Kind EP – I was waiting for the final version of “What would I want? Sky” since I heard the BBC session broadcast this time last year, and it exceeded all expectations. I’ve been listening to a lot of the lo-fi & ‘chillwave’ stuff that’s been coming out recently like Memory Cassette/Weird Tapes/Memory Tapes, Real Estate, Woods, Toro Y Moi, and Washed Out. I’m really into the nostalgic nu-disco/electro sound of the whole Valerie collective; I’ve already used a few of their songs on my upcoming mixtape. I’ve also been listening to some real 80’s new wave/space synth/italodisco, my favorites are Koto, Modern Talking, and the Associates. Rap-wise, I’ve been listening to Chip The Ripper, Gucci Mane, Project Pat, and G Side. I’m always bumping Wu, the new Raekwon album has gotten an absurd amount of playtime on my iPod. As usual, I’ve also spent a lot of time finding electronic music on blogs and hype machine.
What’s your most favorite song you’ve made?
That’s a tough one. “Bellevue Haterz (Miami Horror vs. BOB ft. Wes Fif)” has a special place in my heart; it was the first song of mine that I heard playing around campus in dorms, at random parties, etc. Plus it’s an undisputable banger. My new favorite song is “I’d Rather Get Some Heartbeats (Three 6 Mafia vs. Grum [Joe & Will Ask Remix])” from the upcoming mixtape, its just ridiculous in every possible way. Peep it on the blog.
It seems that a lot of the instrumentals you use are electric music that isn’t necessarily well known. What inspires your song choice?
I never use pop music or top 40 songs like other mashup artists because I’ve never been into popular music or listened to the radio regularly. At the same time, I’ve always been a music head. In middle school and the first years of high school, I predominantly bought records (psychedelic rock, classic rock, etc) and listened to alternative rap (MF DOOM, Count Bass D, RA the Rugged Man, Wu Tang). During this time I discovered the Flaming Lips, which turned me on to electronic and experimental music. From there, I started to get into dance music and synth pop junior and senior year after my friend’s older brother went off to hipster college and came back with a ton of fresh new music. Since then, my tastes have developed. With the explosion of blog culture over the past several years, it’s much easier to discover new artists and genres. For my mashups, I only use ‘indie’ (for lack of a better word) electronic music – mostly remixes and digitally released albums. Most of my songs are some variation of dance music, but nothing too house-y. I just want to make people move.
Plans for the future? Any Goals? What can we look forward to?
I want to do as much live DJing as possible, send an email to djgordongekko@gmail.com to get me at your college/party/club/whatever, I’m down. On the side, my buddy and I are going to try to make some wild electronic music, we’ve just started working on it. Ideally, the sound will be some hybrid of Memory Tapes, Discovery, The Field, and Fuck Buttons – weird melodies with a dance beat and robotic vocoder lyrics. We just have to get motivated and start recording/editing. Other than that, I’m trying to get in shape for the spring season.
When will the next mixtape drop?
I’m working on it now, you can listen to/download new tracks at www.DJGordonGekko.blogspot.com. It should be done sometime this semester, I’m currently about a third of the way through. Look for it to drop in the spring.
Favorite pizza topping, candy, and color?
Prosciutto crudo, buffalo mozzarella, and a shitload of crushed red pepper./// Nutrageous bars/Gummi bears./// the whole spectrum
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