RIP Trilogy: An open love letter

Dear Trilogy,

It’s over.

I guess the lack of promotional texts, un-replied emails and the quietly announced press release told me as much, but it still took a while to realize that you and I (and about 2000 people every weekend, you whore) are over.

I’ve been through this clubbing heartache before with iBO and Alpha, so I know what to expect. You all gave us a weekly alternative, but you went one better as you were smack bang in the heart of Dubai’s commercial hub, Madinat Jumeirah. You gave us hope that big clubs with cool line ups could not only survive but grow, you gave us a reason to get excited on a Thursday night (thanks iLL Communications on the roof!) and every Friday when Deep were the biggest fish in the ocean.

You might have been relatively restrained compared to other Middle East clubs (no sparklers, no Superman music, just those rather garish cages above the floor), but you brought out DJs like Sven Vath, Todd Terje and Chase & Status, when no one else dared. You gave us names like Erick Morillo (back when he was good), Pete Tong and 2ManyDJs on a regular basis, forcing queues back out into the sweaty night, packing the club out week in, year out. You were all about the music, and for that I (we) salute you.

You gave local DJs a platform to shine, with warm ups and main slots across all 3 rooms. The hidden and hugely under-promoted 3^rd room became an exploration in sound, hosting some of the first dubstep nights in the city. Your DJ console in the main room was like commanding the Enterprise (although shorter DJs had to do so standing on a box), and your Funktion 1 monitors in the booth were the best party place in the club. And when you did do commercial, you did it as well as anyone as DJ Bliss and Shef Codes held it down on the rooftop.

You weren’t perfect. Why did you have a 20m high dome in the middle of the club, it certainly wasn’t for the sound it caused. And why, after you re-opened for the nth time, had no one done anything to the cigarette stained furniture? And sometimes, just sometimes, your programming was a little too ahead of the curve, meaning that your dancefloor would be more a morgue come 2am.

But over the years (how many years were we together now, 7, maybe more – time flies when you’re ordering Dhs50 shots), you’ve been there, our dependably forward-thinking bastion of music amongst the pop and (c)rap that dominates other clubs. I'm forever in debt to the recent manager (Buff) and resident (Ejaz) for making me a resident at the best club in town. And let's salute the hundreds of DJs who've played to thousands of clubbers, to those who worked the door, rung the tills, cleaned the toilets and escorted drunk clubbers out of your doors, you've all flown the electronic flag loud and proud. One last closing party would have been epic, but sometimes it's easier to slink off quietly into the night, so I understand.

I'll miss the long, lonely, post-clubbing nights punctuated by tinnitus, the snaking taxi queue at 3am and the hastily arranged after-parties with newly made friends. But you’ll be missed most for your music, for keeping your head (and musical morals) high and maintaining your love of back-to-basics clubbing when all around venues were succumbing to commercialitis. 

Thanks for the memories, Trilogy. 

Don't believe the hype

Hype ting 

When it's done right, hype is anticipation, it's excitement, it’s organic.

But if you think about it, hype has become advertising and publicity. Clever advertising and publicity, granted, but it’s become a man-made phenomenon, something thought up in board rooms and offices and not powered by the weight of public opinion (just look at the carefully orchestrated corporate 'Flash mobs' for evidence).

The film and music world have been subjected to over-inflated opinion forming, with a steady stream of teasers, trailers, innovative advertising and aggressive marketing causing consumers to binge on carefully provided information which is then eagerly dissected by on air, online and print media. And when the excitement levels have been built up to tantric levels and the album/film is released, you can almost guarantee box office receipts and top of the pops results. But – and this is the crucial point – consumers are nearly always left cold shouldered and disappointed, the hype almost never living up to the content.

We’re not short of big-budget examples: Prometheus and Man of Steel from the film world, and Daft Punk’s recent Random Access Memories have all promised brave new worlds and failed to deliver.

In Daft Punk’s case, the Parisian robots come with a natural weight of expectation – their first two albums helped shape the current dance music climate, ushering in a new wave of bands and DJs, while the 8 year gap between their 3^rd and 4^th album only heightened the sense of occasion.

Sony cleverly tapped into that natural hype and created a precise military-style campaign that started with targeted 15 second TV trailers (just 8 seconds of which consisted of music, and even then it was just one chord progression), and ended with blanket advertising across virtually every medium on earth (no, really). 

Then came a series of in-depth Contributor interviews, where Nile Rodgers, Pharrell and the rest all gave fawning interviews in which they added further fuel to the fire, proclaiming the new Daft Punk album to be the second coming (and we all know how that turned out, Stone Roses fans). This was swiftly followed by a longer, 2 minute clip of ‘Get Lucky’ debuted on huge screens at Coachella which promptly went viral quicker than puppy in a onesie, and drew bigger cheers than festival headliners Blur.

This supremely limited content was enough for Soundcloud warriors, however, who quickly drowned the internet in bad re-edits, extended remixes and mashups, gaining millions of downloads and hits within hours.

Next came the predictable interviews where the ‘Da Funk’ duo proclaimed that the current state of dance music was in dire straits (the insinuation being that their absence had caused it), and that their album would be the antidote to the current rash of EDM sweeping the world. By looking back to the classic disco sound of the 70s, they’d bring the funk and soul back into dance music, giving us more than processed beats and wasp-in-a-bottle basslines.

Finally, it was time for the journalists to stoke the flames as part of their carefully guarded album play back sessions. With a huge stereo primed with their fourth album, Daft Punk allowed some of the world’s media into their world to listen to the album just once. NME, no stranger to hype themselves, called it ‘the best party of the decade’, said that the album left ‘the tatters of 21st century dance music strewn around their robot feet, vanquished,’ while also commenting that it sounds like the ‘theme tune to a 70s US sitcom.’

And therein lies the hype. Because nothing should ever sound like a 70s US sitcom and receive praise, and especially not when it’s been created by Daft Punk.

Yes, Sony’s marketing team have pulled off an astonishing feat, propelling Daft Punk to countless records (their first ever No.1 single, the most requested track on Pandora, the No.1 album in over 28 countries) and have made the Guy-Man and Thomas Bangalter millions, and the record company gazillions.

But in doing so, they’ve pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes – the music fans bought the hype, pushing it through carefully orchestrated social media outlets via the Daft Punk homepage. The journalists bought the hype and gave it more column inches than any album or event in living memory. And ultimately, the fans bought the hype, desperately wanting this carefully woven story to be true. Taken alone, Daft Punk’s album would probably have been seen as an ambitious failure, on a par with Human After All.

But under the mountain of hype and unsustainable pressure heaped on by layer and layer of expectation, it’s one of the most disappointing albums in recent time. As Public Enemy wisely said, don’t (always) believe the hype :: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LK8sxngSWaU

Up in smoke

Imagine for a second I'm at your work, I'm sitting next to you at your desk.

I spill a drink down your top, and as I apologies, a little bit of spickle lands on your cheek as I propel my words out, battling with the soundsystem. I stumble around the office doing a discombobulated dance looking for the toilets before forgetting what I was doing and start hitting on your female boss. And finally, I light up a fag and start exuding noxious fumes all over you, fumes so claggy, so hard-to-shift that your pens, your stapler, your hair, your shirt, your XL documents reek of smoke. And then I stub said fag out against your jumper mid dance move, burning a hole through to your scarred arm.

Well, that's a pretty ordinary day at the office for a DJ. And largely, it's fine - you head into a club to have a drink, to have a chat, to have a dance, even just to be a bit of a dick. They're all choices, and most don't have a definite or lasting impact.

But smoking does, and increasingly it is becoming a choice around the world.

The UK brought in non-smoking 5 years ago, New York and Toronto long ago opted out, and while smoking has been outlawed in various areas of Dubai (public and municipality buildings), it's still to find its way into club land. And I for one can't wait for it to come.

Through various decisions, a lot of my life revolves around bars and clubs - from writing about them for DJ Magazine, Time Out and now Infusion, to DJing in clubs most weekends, I spend a lot of time in smoke-filled, poorly ventilated clubs. And my laptop, headphones, CDs, hair and clothes reek of smoke, which means my lungs can only be gasping for fresh air.

While the UK argument might have been paused to think about the reduction in cigarette tax revenue (perhaps offset by savings to the NHS?) and smokers' reluctance to stand in the cold getting their nicotine fix, we're faced with different pressures and problems in Dubai.

Firstly, fags cost next-to-nothing: Dhs10 at most for a pack of 20 (that's about 1 pound 60 embittered UK dwellers). So there's little tax impact, and zero health benefits as medical care is private. But the Middle East has long been a smoking haven, and it's ingrained in the UAE culture thanks to shisha - some of the best venues in town offer a shisha terrace or facilities (360, N'Dulge, Trilogy etc).

This in itself should provide a hint at a possible (and easily implemented) solution - smoking should be outlawed everywhere but on the terrace/rooftop/somewhere outside. And considering the year round sunshine (a 40 degree fag has to be better than a nicotine hit that risks frostbite) and the outdoor spaces, this has to be a strong contender. Or, as a friend suggested, clubs could actually spend some of their hard-earned dirhams on properly ventilating their indoor rooms - it wouldn't alleviate the problem entirely, but it would go a long way to helping beat second hand smoke. But we're talking industrial sized fans, rather than a makeshift fan which has less huff than an asthmatic fish.

Clubs would then be smoke free, and thanks to the proclivity of rampant DTCM inspectors happy to enforce nonsense rules like this, they can patrol the premises and hand out fines to the venue (which could even be put towards lung cancer charities?).

Having grown up in smokey pubs and clubs (not literally - my folks aren't bad people), I can see the advantages smoking brings. It lends atmosphere, it blurs the edges and adds depth to a room which otherwise might be too clean cut or stark. The smell also covers a multitude of stinks: having been back to the UK post-ban, I can confirm that venues now reek of BO and farts, a truly devilish concoction. Some clubs have even had to pump in synthetic smells to cover up the stink. On top of that, some clubs have suffered as clubbers rush for a cigarette hit and desert the floor. And of course, smoking is cool.

But fundamentally, clubbing is about choice - the right to choose your music, what you wear, who you go with, what you drink. But you haven't chosen the right to breathe in someone else's second hand smoke, and be exposed to any number of far-reaching, life-threatening illnesses.

And that's a choice we all should be able to make ourselves.

The rise of the deckheads

Friday May 8, 2013, Miami Music Conference

Welcome to Dave's world, Dave's 9-5, Dave's line of work. Not for Dave the stifled hell of a cocooned office job, not for Dave the laborious monotony of construction, or even the fact-or-fiction number crunching of a banker.


Dave conducts sweeping, synsape-popping electronic music in a room rammed full of weapon's grade narcotics and bowel-loosening bassbins. His office has nitrate-swollen sweat drips from the ceiling, his water cooler gossip is supplied by gurning punters who clamour like the living dead at the front of Dave's office (AKA the DJ Booth).


And Dave, stood stock still in his finest All Saints threads, index finger perfectly poised above the play button, is paralyzed by a potent mix of fear: fear of being found out, fear of being revealed like a bad magic gag by 'not a lot' Paul Daniels, but ultimately, the fear that inexorably rises inside every DJ that's been faced by an unruly hoard of beat-hungry clubbers, the fear that without this artificial environment, without the tinnitus-inducing sound system and without the toxic cocktail of booze and chemicals eviscerating the crowd, he's simply Dave. For 4 hours every weekend (and during grandstanding press interviews when Dave pretends he really does live the hedonistic life style, snorting a home-made mix of ants, Bolivia's finest and, inevitably, some crushed up toilet cleaner for Elevenses), he lives the dream at work.


He gives a worrying percentage of the population a reason to live as they countdown the 9,600 minutes from when they leave the club as a mangled, A&E ready corpse at 6am until they can re-enter a week later. He lets shadow-dwelling drug dealers hustle their way to a conscience-free fortune, he lets high rollers flash their cash (and cold-plated credit cards) in the VIP area, he lets students blow their bank loans as they embark on a 48 hour bender learning in the process that comedowns really aren't conducive to a degree and that home-made bongs really should be tidied away before the parents come round.


But the sad, inescapable truth is that Dave is ordinary - like off-white, beige kinda ordinary, like Saturday afternoon down at Ikea sort of ordinary. Dave is the most boring man he knows (and having become embroiled in more after-party chats that are a spectacular combination of narcissistic hot air fueled by after-party supplies), he knows all about stultifying degrees of boring.


He spends his time Googling his name, eager to find any relevant - and often non-relevant - reference to himself in the online world. And when he's not Googling himself, and sending his analytics into a self-propelled spin, he's selling his own distinct brand of hidden boredom via Facebook and Twitter, making sure his social media output is a direct reversal of his actual social output. He spends hours - sometimes days - locked away in his sweaty, socky study hunched over his laptop trying to decipher which of the 86 almost identical sounding tech-house tracks will detonate the dancefloor into a seething mess of clubbers. He spends his time looking wistfully at the party pictures taken during his set, the over-tanned and out-of-his-league club girls he never gets to meet leering at the camera while he's up in the DJ booth making the trainspotters froth with nervous excitement as he drops unreleased white label after unreleased white label.


The fact that Dave is even up on that raised podium, spreading his arms wide in a Jesus-was-never-this-good pose is a cosmic fuck up of biblical proportions, the likes of which haven't been seen since Jimmy Saville inadvertently spawned the birth of DJ culture. Dave makes progressive house sound like seismic, earth-titling dubstep in comparison, he's that dull.


Before Dave actually became a big DJ, he dreamed of becoming a big DJ, he dreamed of commanding per-hour fees that would put a small African's GDP to shame, he dreamed of controlling the every move of thousands of clubbers, he dreamed of touring the world playing his counter cultural, revolution stirring (in his wildest dreams at least) mix of house music.


And the thing is, Dave is not alone in having this dream, oh, far, far far from it. Rightly or wrongly, Dave is a very real, very tangible by-product of today's society Decks Factor society. For Dave is merely the tip of the DJing iceberg, one of quite literally millions who believe that playing other people's music - and if they're supremely talented, their own music - to other people is not only a worthy occupation that should be pursued, but one that should fulfill their every waking thought.


But right now, none of that self-importance, none of that hype matters, as Dave is blissfully unaware of man's greatest fear. Dave is about to experience quite what his success means to other people, quite how far DJ disciples will go to try and turn the tables and flip the script. Because Dave, or Dave Van Pyke as the rest of the world knows him, has a flickering red dot hovering just below his bespoke customised Dave by Beats By Dre headphones and above his vintage-but-not-vintage t-shirt, with a hidden sniper about to pull the trigger at the signal. How did drastically dull Dave end up here? Well, that's a story best told in Dave's own words…

The (not so) subtle art of promotion...

DJs get into DJing to play good music to good people to help them have a good night out. It's that simple.

But increasingly DJing has become promotion. Both self promotion (hmm, gotta love endless self aggrandizing) and promotion of the event you're playing.

And both are fine - necessary evils if you will, especially for producers turned DJs,  happier with their head in a copy of Ableton than shouting said head off. If you're good, there should be no problem telling people about it. And presumably as you've been booked to play a night, you're happy to be associated with that event, so telling people about it isn't going against any DJ code of omerta.

Having DJ'd and run events in Dubai for 6 years, I like to think I've got a handle on what it takes to promote a night reasonably well (the main thing is passion for what you're doing - without that, you're dead in the water), but over that time, the lines between Djing and promoting have got blurrier than a night out with Brandon Block.

Increasingly, promoters want their DJs to co-promote the event - to invite their FB database to the event, send round email blasts to your friends, and put the word out on their social networks.

But in return they're offering, well, nothing. There's none of the financial gain that a promoter has (or possible losses, equally), and you're certainly not getting paid per click as you literally invite each FB friend by clicking through a list well into the thousands. And if the event goes tits up, people will come to you for answers as you've been so visibly pushing and promoting the event.

Shouldn't the DJ's time be spent hunting down tracks, making dancefloor edits, remixes and their own material, sorting out their record collection so they've got the right bombs to drop at the right time?

I'm as guilty (if, in fact, it is something to be guilty for) as the next person - Loaded runs on a pretty low budget, so word of mouth is key and that starts from the ground up meaning me and the resident DJs. Conversely, we play a niche night which we put on largely because no one else is playing the tunes we play, so it's not a financially motivated night (even more so when you consider the drink deals and free tequila we give out). Where do resident DJs fall into though? Should they spam their followers, friends and interested internet bystanders, or is it their job to, you know, play music? Does the number of people they bring down to the event impact the way that promoters look at them?

Equally, do those who do the most shouting get the most gigs, even if, for example, they're a more limited DJ than those who prefer to let the music do the talking? Not all DJs are socially adept, some probably prefer the sanctity and solitude of the DJ booth where they don't have to answer to questions (apart from fielding crappy requests).

The worst though are those who brag and promote without substance, just shouting 'look world here's me doing stuff, and here's me again doing more stuff,' the inane drivel slowly mounting into a torturous mountain of promotional babble. And some are just offensive: 'Yeah, smashed that gig in the FACE. Who's your Daddy now?' Really?

And then you get those that either buy in their promoting powers (1 million Facebook fans, a sudden rush of 20,000 extra Twitter followers?) and those that abuse their powers by telling their Twitter denizens that the club was packed to the rafters last night, when in actual fact the bar staff were quietly mopping the dancefloor at 1.30am.

In effect, it's a null and void question. Social networks are such an ingrained part of our life now that if you refused to help out on the promotion front, it would surely mark you out as the black sheep of the Djing family. Promotion is the art of making noise, and noise is something all DJs know a lot about. But with sifting through all the garbage out there increasingly becoming a full time job, alongside your normal DJ duties, it's never been harder to make yourself heard.

Best of 2011

I love it when people tell me that it's been a bad year for music, or that there's nothing new, or that the scene is dying. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bands and DJs don't revolve around your ever-decreasing musical circles, they carry on regardless. You put in what you get out as someone surely famous once said. Quite what I've put in to get to this rather scatter-gun Top 10 tracks and albums of 2011 I'm not sure, but they all have a special place in my iPod and in my DJ sets…

The Black Keys - El Camino

Like The White Stripes: big, bold basslines, scuzzy 60s guitars. Unlike the Stripes, pulverising, in-time drums. This is their 7th album, and hopefully the one that sets them onto super-stardom. And not only is this an amazing track from the album, the tongue-in-cheek video sh*ts over most of the crap shown in Dubai's cinemas.

Gil Scott Heron vs Jamie xx - I'll Take Care Of You

Like The Jesus and Mary Chain covering the Beach Boys (No, really! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb4OJ4EQajk), this really really shouldn't work, but it really, really does, as Jamie xx's reworking of Gil Scott Heron's album took it to bold, dazzling new heights. And this song, the album's finest moment, was criminally short at just 4 minutes of bass-buzzing beauty, hence this more DJ friendly re-work.

http://soundcloud.com/i-am-andy-buchan/jamie-xx-vs-gil-scott-heron

The Horrors - Still Life

Vivid, psychedelic but now imbued with a withering pop sensibility, The Horrors' 3rd album featured their best moment to date, the utterly bewitching 'Still Life.' A word of warning to the die hard Horrors fans out there: this version comes with a little added extra from Richard Ashcroft…

http://soundcloud.com/i-am-andy-buchan/the-horrors-vs-the-verve-still

I Break Horses - Winter Beats

Beware 3 Swedes who conjure up anti-equine names and profess they don't know how to play their instruments, when in fact they create soundscapes that echo and reverberate like a lost Sigur Ros album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sg7YkPnEYw

M83 - Midnight City

The weirdest pop single of the year, and also one of the best. Ghostly shrieks, intergalactic breakdowns and an 80s sax solo that would give Kenny G a run for his money combine into something truly special. And with a beats and bass re-rub, also fitted into my DJ sets rather nicely.

http://soundcloud.com/i-am-andy-buchan/m83-midnight-city-da-funct

SBTRKT - SBTRKT

The poppy, acceptable face (or mask) of the British bass scene, with 'Pharaohs' the stand out track from an outstanding album.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErYAGQZs8e0&ob=av2e

Rustie - Glass Swords

Dubstep/Post-dubstep/future garage - the fragmented bass scene never sounded as unified as on this Warp Records release, with frazzled melodies, fractured beats and warehouse vibes combining to euphoric effect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4AqCrR_nAU

Tuneyards - Bizniz

A one-woman band and yet capable of sounding like a magical mashup of Sonic Youth and Vampire Weekend? Yes, yes please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ1LI-NTa2s

And 2 to avoid

Bjork - Biophilia

I'm the biggest Bjork fan. I even like 'It's Oh So Quiet' despite it being the worst. song. in. the. world. But this monstrosity of beats and bleeps, where 90s rave collided headlong into 6th form poetry and prose was hideous from start to finish.

Justice - Audio Video Disco

The 'new Daft Punk' were left standing naked in the Emperor's clothing on their second album. Only 2 tracks - 'Canon' and 'Civilization' - escaped the 70s bad-rock pastiches. Bof.

Is DJing an artform?

“It is not the job of artists to give the audience what the audience want. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artist. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need”- Alan Moore

While that might be all very well and good for the comically hirsute Alan Moore, who spends most of his time writing vivid, comic book prose for nerdy manboys, it's unlikely that he's been faced with a brunch-drunk crowd baying for some pop pap while you're intent on discovering the point where future garage dissipates into post-dubstep territory.

But the quote raised a fair bit of debate when a friend posted it on Facebook recently, with nearly 50 DJs, music-lovers and FB addicts all pitching in to give their thoughts. Essentially, it boils down to how much credence you give DJing: can playing one song after each other be considered an artform - can a selector be placed on the same critical elevation as writers, for example?

Well, put in that context,  and yes. The lexicon as we know it isn't growing (well, it is, but the annual addition of words like staycation and reggaeton isn't exactly on the same level as early caveman grunts or Shakespeare's wordplay), which means that writers simply use the existing vocabulary to paint their pictures (apologies for the mixed metaphor). So in turn, with every chord structure having been discovered (it has) and music effectively eating itself to create new genres, DJs are simply using existing songs to create their masterpieces. And if the artist is deified for their work, why not the DJ?

While doubters might argue that Tom, Dick or David Guetta could play one high octane song after another - and increasingly that's true in this pop-trodden world where DJ technology can take the skill out of your hands - it's not as simple as that. The following statements aren't cliches, they're truisms: DJs need to observe the crowd, they need to adapt the pace of the music to the night, they need to know when to drop the right tune, at the right moment create dancefloor combustion, they need to know when to step it up, and when to drop it down. A large part of that is getting the right DJ in the right venue with the right crowd, but beyond that, a good DJ has to know how to work a crowd. And they need to play good music, first and foremost, which used to mean hours trawling record stores and plundering contacts, but now means days trawling the ever-expanding internet in search of new tunes and remixes that no one else has.

Increasingly, the DJ is becoming the artist at the ground level - it's rare for DJs to be just DJs these days: to get to the upper echelons, you need to have some production and remix credits under your belt. And if making music isn't art, then I'm not sure what is.

But while good music taste is something that can be worked on, etched at and manipulated, for most people it's a life-defining passion - it's the sense to rule all senses. And being able to share that music with 2/500/10,000 like-minded people (admittedly a little giddy and boozed-up) is up there with scoring a Wembley Cup Final goal, completing your first Rubick's Cube or successfully navigating Diera for the first time.

Consider what art is though: it's something that is beautiful, or appealing, that inspires emotion. And there's no denying that when Sven Vath or the BO18 residents lead you kicking and screaming into the dawn of the next day with a beautifully judged set of house and techno, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Or when a Mambo DJ perfectly soundtracks the setting sun in Ibiza (or, equally a 360 DJ), with a funk, soul and disco journey that raises the hair on the back of your neck. Then there are those DJs who exist on the limits of the ever-evolving DJ technology, cutting and scratching, looping and live editing to create a unique soundtrack.

And it's commonly acknowledged that artists suffer for their art - and having been asked countless times to play 'something we can dance to' by a cackling harridan while the rest of the club is bouncing, I think I know the feeling.

So, DJing is an artform then. But should the DJ pander to the audience, or should we dictate the flow? By the very definition, the DJ dictates the musical flow, but the question is how you balance the audience's expectations? And as mentioned earlier, that's largely up to the planning - finding the right DJ for the right venue and attracting the right crowd. Get that holy grail right, and everyone's a winner. But get it wrong, and you then have to balance the commercial and underground, what you want to play vs what they want to hear.

At the end of the day, you DJ to make people dance, pure and simple, but how you achieve that dancefloor detonation is your call. Some might consider it slightly less fulfilling, or arty, if you dropped a Black Eyed Peas remix to work your dancefloor into a frenzy, but if that's what it takes to make it work (and let's not forget that DJing is an artform, but for a large number it's a job as well) then so be it.

Ultimately, art is in the eye of the beholder. And even if that eye is squinting through one Bullfrog too many, it's still a valid point of view, and one that's endorsed by thousands of people every weekend who go out clubbing in Dubai every weekend to hear new and old, exciting and moving music.