Chris Galvin - the : metronome : interview

With a new successful club night in San Francisco (Dirty Dirty Techno) and a new wife, the : metronome : project catches up with Chris Galvin.

You have been a DJ for quite some time, how did you initially get into the music and what has influenced you to develop you current electro / tech house sound?

Oh man, that’s a tough one because there have been a lot of variables that have influenced my sound. I guess It really goes back to what I was listening to when I was a kid.

When I was a punk little kid in the 'burbs of Orange County, a good friend of mine's (Chris Grim) sister would collect these really obscure underground records from the UK. He would sneak a few select records out of her room a week, bring them over to my house and then we would record them to cassette tape. There was also this movement of megamixes that were floating around at the time from producers like Cameron Paul and Shep Pettibone. I would save all of my money from doing chores and just order these subscription services from DMC and Mixx-It. I was also really into the electro hip-hop records of the 80s too, like: Pretty Tony, Freestyle, Egyptian Lover, World Class Wrekin’ Cru, Megggatron, etc. That’s really where my love of the 808 for me began. You can still here that in my sets today. I really like to lean towards that 808 kick sound.

I think I was 17 when a CD shop opened up near my house. The guy who ran the place was also into obscure English records. He had crates and crates of these records all in the back room. It was like a gold mine for me. Mind you, this was all pre-rave in the US. I would go down there after school and just listen to all of these records from like Mr. Lee, Todd Terrry (Royal House), Ralphi Rosario DJ Pierre, Frankie Knuckles, and the Fingers Inc.. I had no idea who these guys were, but I really got into those records. Eventually, he started to order the more raver stuff from the likes of Stakker Humaniod and A Guy Called Gerald’s “Voodoo Ray.”

Ultimately, this all came together at around the age of 18 when I met Aldo Bender. He was running and DJ’ing this club in Laguna Beach called Club Post Nuclear. I called down to the club and asked if they were hiring DJs. Aldo, laughed at me on the phone, and told me to come down an audition. The audition went well and I became Aldo’s protégé. I would roll down to the club on Friday and Saturday nights and stand in the booth just listening to Aldo drop mix after mix after mix until finally I was allowed to throw down a half an hours set. He would hand me the records to play, from his kit, and then I would mix away. Finally, I was free to start playing my own records and sets.

It must have been around 1989-1990 when I started going to underground parties in Los Angeles that were put on by Gary Blitz, Steve Kool-aid, and a couple of other promoters. My first rave was in downtown Los Angeles in some rickety old meat wearhouse with no lights and a sound system just blaring acid house, techno and rave tunes galore. I remember specifically the moment I walked in the door that this is what I wanted to play.

From there it has morphed into what I play today.

It seems like in the early days of DJing, equipment choices were made for you, Technics turntables and a DJ mixer, now days the choices are not so obvious. DJs can use turntables, CDJs, or be laptop based. What are the primary factors for you in choosing to use Serato? Is there a missing piece of kit that would lead you away from your current setup?

Back in the day there weren’t that may options to choose from when buying DJ gear. There wasn’t really a DJ supply stores within a 20 mile radius of my house, so when I first started out DJ’ing, I would use a dual cassette tape deck and an old Hitachi belt-drive turntable that my Dad had given to me. I would fade a song out, press the “Turntable” option on my amp to play the next song. Right around my 14th birthday, I had saved enough money to buy an audio mixer from Radio Shack. My friend, Chris Grim, and I would get together once or twice a week after school and we would set up all of our gear and just play for hours. We both had a set of these old belt-drive turntables, a couple cassette decks and this crappy little Casio sampling keyboard going through our rickety Radio Shack mixers. We would mix two copies of some crappy 80s records and try to beat match them with electro hip-hop tracks. We were trying to extend the track for as long as we could. Making each extension sound different. It’s insane how many options DJ’s have nowadays. I mean, seriously, look at James Zabiella he has been weaned on technology and the things he can do with two CDJs, a 600 and EFX are insane. Imagine what is going to be available in a couple of years and the kids coming up are going to be able to do.

There are many reasons why I latched onto Serato and that was for the flexibility of carrying around thousands of tracks in my laptop, I’m able to download tracks at any given time and play them and I don’t need to carry around a big ass box of records.

I think if there was a way for me to plug my iPod directly into a mixer, like you do with the Wii remote for Guitar Hero, I would ditch my laptop and Serato.

What gear are you currently using in your studio?

For production, what I use Ableton, Reason, Absynth, and a couple of other plug-ins for creating loops and writing music. Once I’ve come up with a few elements for a track, then I’ll team up with my production partner, Marcosis, and we will export the loops into a super “special” piece of equipment and then sequence. We also use a plethora of obscure and vintage rack effects.

For DJ’ing I use two Technics 1200s, two CDJ1000s and Serato Scratch. Call me old-school, but I still like the interaction with vinyl. With CDJ’s I can have different beats and elements running while I mix over the top with vinyl.

What are your plans for the future of F4 Music? Any thought of making it a netlabel?

I really like the notion of net labels, but I also really like vinyl still. Ideally, I would like to concentrate on doing a really limited edition of vinyl, say 500 pieces, with some very special mixes and packaging. Then, for the net release, provide another set of mixes.

It seems like traditionally there was a lot more risk in releasing music, how do you think the advent of net labels is affecting that?

It’s not the net labels that are in question here, it’s the archaic licensing and traditional distribution channels of the major labels and the old-guard still in place. Net labels are smart. Distribution across the Internet is much smarter than pressing millions of pieces of CDs or vinyl, shipping them to thousands of stores and then hoping the masses will buy them. Now, I can just go to my favorite online shop and sell them tracks without some tangible return – aside from money. This is amazing. I mean, just five or six years back, the distribution channels were really small and there were just a few buyers who bought records, so getting a record labels tracks into those distribution channels was really tough. I use to go down to the record store every Thursday and wait for the shipment records to arrive so I could be the first one on all of the new releases. I don’t have to do that anymore. Now, I can go to beatport or djdownload and get all of the latest tracks I want in less than 10-15 minutes…and for cheaper than the price of an import piece of vinyl.

Nowadays, I can sell to net distribution channel and the tracks on the label can be in the hands of some kid in Bombay and on the turntables in Prague in just a matter of minutes. I think that is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Has working in Silicon Valley, specifically at Apple Computer affected your view of electronic music?

Not really, if anything, I think it has opened doors to other types of music that I would have never heard of before. There is such a diverse and intelligent group of people working here. And it’s not just working in Silicon Valley either. San Francisco is such a diverse a vibrant city. On any given night I can go out and see amazing live show, DJs, art installation or whatever. You name and San Fran has it.

Dirty Dirty Techno has moved from Anu to The End Up, what are your future plans for the party?

Yeah, Alland Byallo and I have teamed up with DJ Ladyhouse to merge Dirty Dirty Techno into Phonic for a bi-monthly event at The End Up here in San Francisco to continue to showcase quality artists and DJ’s.