DJ, music producer, label manager and all round music business entrepreneur Carl Cox has been in the public eye for over 20 years and needs little introduction. Since early childhood he seemed destined for a career as a music performer. Prior to age 10, he was entertaining friends and family in their lounge rooms with ‘70s soul ‘45s like Aretha Franklin, Booker T & the MGs and Elvis Presley. He progressed to buying funk, soul and rare groove records with his pocket money, to purchasing decks at age 15. Almost ten years later, and he was a regular at the famous M1/Orbital raves in 1988 – the ‘Summer Of Love’, when dance music really started taking off in the UK. For one of his sunrise sets, Cox first had the idea to set up a third turntable. He is said to have tempted 15,000 weary ravers back onto their feet with his experimentations and since then his phone hasn’t stopped ringing.
Going on to play the opening night at Danny Rampling’s legendary night Shoom, running The Project with Paul Oakenfold, as well as holding a residency at Brighton’s ZAP club, it wasn’t long before Cox secured his place in the UK’s clubbing history. In ‘92 he released his first record I Want You on Oakenfold’s Perfecto label. The track, along with it’s follow up Does It Feel Good To You, made it onto the UK Top 40, however with Cox more interested in exploring house and techno than becoming a pop star, and went on set up his first record imprint, MMR.
Fast forward and Cox proceeded to establish multiple record labels such as Intec, Ultimatum Breaks, Worldwide Ultimatum and more recently 23rd Century Records, club nights like Ultimate B.A.S.E. at London’s Velvet Underground and management and DJ booking companies including Ultimate Music Management. To date his debut long player FACT (Future Alliance of Communication and Technology) has sold over 250,000 copies worldwide, and with steady follow ups like FACT 2 and mix compilations like Phuture 2000 and Global, Cox has remained at the top of the DJ ladder for a number of years. Continuously voted number one in a plethora of DJ magazine polls around the world, Cox now commands fees of 5000 pounds for club gigs, 10,000 for big club gigs, 20,000 for festivals and around 60,000 for New Year’s events like his famous Dawn of the Millennium stint on Bondi Beach in 2000.
As big in personality, as stature, multiple-deck mixing utilising FX combined with his energetic and bouncy on stage persona and marathon DJ sets have become Cox’s signature. In contrast his phone manner in interviews is reserved and gentle, although he does talk like a thoroughbred Englishman, using expressions like “crikey” and “blimey”, and doesn’t carry any of sign of his parent’s Barbados, West Indian heritage.
In recent years, Cox’s hectic jet-setting lifestyle has inspired some re-evaluation of his life and career, culminating in buying a home in Frankston, south east of Melbourne last year. 2005 sees Cox return with his long awaited, perhaps prophetic, third artist album Second Sign. Although Second Sign mirrors Carl’s introspection and soul searching symbolised in the range of musical ground he covers, the album isn’t as genre-hopping as the publicity might have you believe. Sure Second Sign sees Cox experiment with fresh sounds and collaborative partners such as Norman Cook a.k.a. Fatboy Slim, Mistress Barbara, Christian Smith, Josh Wink, Detroit techno pioneer Kevin Saunderson, and drum & bass reprazent(atives) Roni Size and Onallee, however the album doesn’t fall that far from the tree that Cox has already planted.
Mixed by Cox, the album is seamless and builds gradually like his DJ sets. Filtered techno meets breakbeats with Norman Cook; blends into Cox’s loop-driven bleepy soulful tech-house; moves into house with vocalist Hannah Robinson; then into “do the hussle” disco funk on Reel The Real with Light of the World; which leads to Kate Bush-style vocal teases amid wound up dub house come space techno; into ‘80s electro pop meets early ‘90s dance with Onallee; before stepping into funky disco house; then into multiple techno explorations with Christian Smith, Josh Wink and Kevin Saunderson; to jazz house with Roni Size and Onallee; finally ending up at industrial with Saffron and jazzy drum ‘n’ bass with Onallee. “I wanted to approach this album purely on working with other people, to see what kind of vibe can come off each other,” explains Carl, down the line from his home studio in Brighton.
“I really enjoyed standing back and thinking, ‘Crikey, I would never have thought of doing that’, and vice versa for them as well. It was good to work with people rather than it be a full on Carl Cox album. Meanwhile I do Carl Cox tracks on the album which I really want people to listen to as well, but it’s made the whole project a lot more interesting. It took a while because it was hard to track down people like Roni Size and Fatboy Slim for what little time they had. It was a massive conceptual idea to do this, but it’s nice to be able to work with people. That was the main goal.”
With so many different collaborations, it’s Cox’s own spirit and ability to create a journey that really ties the myriad of approaches together. “What holds it together? That’s a good question,” he chuckles.
“I think it is just my spirit. I could be here talking about each track individually for hours and that’s the strength, there was a reason they came out the way they did, it was sort of like putting together a jigsaw but also there’s a journey which goes from one point at the beginning and ends up completely somewhere else. That’s my musical scope, I’ve been into all different types of music for many years so representing that style on the album seemed natural. I had a lot of fun but my spirit is what synergised it. If I thought that I wanted to make a certain sound going into it, then it would have been monotone, track after track, the same, but I didn’t want that, I wanted to have that individual sound.”
From soul and disco in the ‘70s, to hip hop, electro, rare groove and acid tracks in the ‘80s, into techno and house in the ‘90s and beyond, Cox, has grown up with three eras of music. In his recent mix for the Back To Mine series, Cox particularly highlighted his penchant for disco sounds. “I grew up with disco,” says Carl. “It became a dirty word in the end, but there are so many elements of disco in music today. It was a phenomenal force then and I have a love for that sound. It puts a smile on my face and for me to hear it and still represent that sound today is something I hold dear to my heart, so within my music realm there’s always an element of funk, disco and Latin in the sound I like to play and create.”
“There are not a lot of bass-lines in what you’re hearing in new tracks out at the moment. The bass-line for me has always been what does shake people, make people move. When I hear a good bass-line I’m like ‘I like that’, and on my album there are a lot of bass-lines and that’s an integral part of all music. I have a strong root with growing up with black music – rhythm & blues, jazz and funk – the album is full of that.”
Most of Second Sign was recorded in Cox’s main home in Brighton, but he also went to Detroit to work with Kevin Saunderson, Montreal to work with Mistress Barbara and two minutes down the road to his good mate Norman Cook’s house. In addition to his Brighton and Frankston homes, Cox also juggles his time between Majorca, Spain, his base when DJing for long periods in Italy, France or Germany.
Returning to Melbourne, every January 2 or 3 for three months of the year will be a ritual for Carl until he fully comes to terms with the move from northern to southern hemisphere. Building his studio here is also an important part of the transition process, plus he gets the opportunity to bask in three of his favourite passions – sunshine, F1, particularly Ferrari, and football, or rather, soccer as it’s commonly known here. “Eventually I’m looking to be there full time. Meanwhile I can only utilise it as a holiday home. I just can’t be there full time because there’s just so much to do in Europe that it doesn’t allow me to take much time off. At least I’m able to spend three months there – go and see the F1, see Footy, enjoy summer, it’s great for me. I’m getting a taste every time I come over there until one day I just say that’s it, ding, Australia.”
Last year on In The Mix, Cox’s neighbour and close friend Eric Powell, label manager of techno label Bush Records, who has also made the move to Australia, talked about the strain of changing continents. “Sometimes you just have to pull back,” explains Carl determinedly. “My life is hectic, but that’s what I’ve created. I’ve created a monster!”
“I decided to make this life change to be more grounded, be my own person, do what I want to do, rather than being slave to what other people want me to do. I took three months away, to find my own self rather than keep DJing in all different countries – work, work, working… by the time I do all this for everyone else, I forget about myself. Once the party’s finished, I have to go home and I’m on my own and I go ‘Blimey, what am I supposed to do now?’ The only thing I can do is keep myself busy. I’m in the studio, buying records, creating businesses and stuff, but I don’t really have any time for myself, so me coming all the way to Australia, I actually get some time for myself, to do the things I really want to do, and I’ve found that Australia is the only place I’ve ever been able to do that, and that’s its purpose. Once I’ve done that I can go back to Europe and go ‘This is what I want to do and how I want to do it’, and when I get back to Australia again I can be the person I want to be in the sense of being able to do the things I want to do.”
Although thousands of people screaming your praises at parties every weekend is quite addictive, there are some drawbacks to the being at the top of the ladder. “If I hear elements of mistakes, non passion, cold and soulless DJing, then I’m not going to be in the room one second more,” says Cox when looking to his peers for inspiration. “But I do get surprised. Some of the young ones coming through have loads of energy, enthusiasm and a different sound to their music and I love that. Then you’ve got the old school DJs who’ve been doing it for years and get it right and Danny Tenaglia for me gets it right in the way that he produces music and gets people drawn into his sound it’s amazing. He has such a love and passion, that for me, he’s definitely one of these DJs I have a love and respect for. Danny Tenaglia is the only DJ that has got me to dance on a bar in Miami for five hours. We DJed at a club together where I DJed from 11pm till 7am, then we played together, then Danny went on from 8am till 5pm. That was a night!”
In some respects Coxy, as he’s affectionately now known, has brought underground techno out of the basements and into mainstream clubs and parties all around the world. Championing the driving and mostly instrumental sound of techno, with his technical wizardry, a crucial part of the techno approach, with his individual passion for Latin, funk and soul elements, Cox has been able to crossover and become one of the highest paid DJs in the world.
After heading off to Europe for a promotional tour for the new album Second Sign, followed by his regular summer season at Space in Ibiza, Cox hopes to escape back to his special new home in Australia for a couple of weeks to experience the winter for the first time. If not, he says, he promises to be back on January 2, 2006 at the latest.
In the meantime, check out his new album Second Sign, available now through PIAS Recordings, distributed locally by Creative Vibes.
