Words By Christian Cipollini
Photo by Hilary Charlotte
Anyone with the right equipment can set up shop at the head of a dance floor, possibly even making the crowd move, but it takes more than a couple turntables to initiate what award-winning DJ Mike Relm calls “interaction.” The bespectacled SF native took his art to a new level by releasing an album of his own material, but he knows there’s nothing like adrenaline rush of being able to manipulate the living, breathing masses, always sensing when the beat must change.
“You’ve got to be in control, going into it with almost too much material,” he says of preparedness in a live setting. “There are anchor points like during shows where like now you may need to pick it up, or a good ‘thinking’ moment time.”
His debut role as producer was a natural progression, he says. “I didn’t want to be stuck doing the same thing day in and day out. It’s fine for some people, and I’m not knocking it, but I personally did not want to just mix forever. Producing is a whole other world and exciting. It’s like starting fresh, but not really.”
And the mechanics behind creating an album like Spectacle isn’t much different from the design and philosophy of live performance. “If you listen to it, you may think all these songs don’t belong on one record, but it makes sense to me. A lot of people say it seems like it should be all over the place, but it somehow works. It’s a form of storytelling, where you guide the audience.”
Relm claims never having a defining moment leading him to make the turntables his career tool, and no, he doesn’t profess to be clairvoyant, but over the last ten or so years, he’s taken in plenty of experiences and observations of other greats in the game. “Learn how to mix, learn how to scratch, do some parties, some remixes, some competitions, and then produce your own stuff,” he explains. “That was kind of the way, not so much a path.”
His non-path to making a mark in the world as a DJ certainly worked. What’s more, it helped him master the combined experience of sound and vision on stage, and progress to eclectic narrative, as found on Spectacle, that promotes a listener’s imagination to paint the pictures that accompany the music. It certainly didn’t hurt to have some prized guests on the record as well, such as Mr. Lif, Lateef the Truthspeaker, and vocalist Adrian Hareley of Blue Man Group and Fischerspooner to name a few.
“I had never experienced what it was like to use my own music in a live show because I always sampled music and film,” he closes. “I want people to buy my song now, as opposed to me always looking for the hottest track to work with. This is my very first one It’s a start of new chapter.”
