Richie Hawtin shared this behind-the-scenes look at his rig for his CLOSE tour.
His set up is a hybrid of more traditional digital DJ remixing gear and analog and modular synthesizers.
“I’ve always been very interested in how far you can push DJing, and my new show CLOSE is an audio-visual experience that allows me to experiment much more than my regular DJ shows,” notes Hawtin. “Hopefully by the-set up and the visuals, it actually allows you to get closer to what is actually happening…”
I saw Richie play the 1.0 version of this show at Coachella and to be honest it was a bit boring and really sounded like he was experimenting and had lost his way. I just wonder if anyone has seen this show and thought it was better or at least on par with his traditional DJ sets which are usually pretty good?
I remember a plastikman show many years ago in Germany where he shows how to empty a huge floor within 15 minutes, with his “ideas”… I mean the idea behind his live shows are really cool but this is a job for minimum 2 people… I prefer Chris Liebing’s live setup…
I like and respect that he’s willing to do this kind of thing. He’s basically the/one-of the “elder statesmen” of Techno and electronic music, so I think he’s earned the right to do whatever the fuck he wants and see if he can find a way to something new.
There’s “something” there, in between 100% modular that can be overly repetitive due to it’s nature of being, well hard-wired, and 100% DJ where you can have changes at the macro level quickly, but no real control over the sound source.
The key is creating a setup with cascading levels of control: from micro-control of the nuance of timbre, pitch, and rhythm moving then to an intermediate level of something like mixing & fx and then finally to a macro level of control like you get with a DJ mixer.
It’s really a UI issue… You need the right controls at the right stages… Unfortunately right now the only choice is to cobble stuff together in terms of hardware, or create a complex midi controller like Monolake/Heinke did and stay 100% in the box, which is boring to watch from a performance standpoint I think.
Richie’s custom Model 1 mixer is dope. I’d love a 6 or 8 channel version of Allen & Heath’s Xone DB4 with FX and loopers on every channel to run drum machines, synths, and samplers through without having to put some of the instruments through the inputs of others before they reach the mixer.
First to say Big Respect to Hawtin as a long time techno DJ.
But ..As a DJ you can have a whole cockpit in front of you with all the great technics aboard.
In the end, it just simply about playing great tracks after each other that will people give a great night and make them dance the night away.
People on the floor have totally no noticeable/hearable idea of all the technical abacadbra a DJ does in his cockpit.
You can mix tracks and mash dozens of loops in your cockpit, if it is all sounding boring it stays boring.
Back in the days a Studio54 DJ could with just a crippled mixer and 2 vinyl decks could make shake the dancefloor way more than a nowadays DJ with a mega arsenal of hi-tech DJ tools around him.
Just my humble 50 cents ofcourse.
I love how he treats his fans:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG5Is5aY9pU
Go Plastikman!!
ich hab die Haare schön …