Dylan Drazen - Beach Party 3 - May 2006

Biography of Dylan Drazen

Dylan Drazen is one of America's most well traveled and globally respected techno DJs. Despite his nature to fly steadily below the world's Superstar DJ radar over the past decade, Dylan has gained legions of devoted fans in worldwide broadband bedrooms who purr at the thought of him appearing in their home town.

Dylan is obsessed with finding and exposing new music. Professionally trained as a studio sound engineer, it was inevitable he'd start to create his own. His original productions have been showcased under esteemed labels like François K.'s Clicktracks and Chicago's Blueline, Montreal's Ascend and Sweden's G-Force. But most of his classic distorted hard techno work can be found in the archive of Brooklyn's Remains Records, run by Side Four co-pilot Tony Rohr. Several of his tracks have been licensed for DJ mixes, including compilations from Chris Liebing and Frankie Bones.

The onset of Dylan Drazen's DJ career occurred in 1993; now he's performed in four continents and his musical memory is an encyclopedia of dance music history. When not on the road, he's either mining beats in his Brooklyn studio or diligently searching for set material in the troughs of New York's record shops. His productions span the arenas of house and techno--hard, tribal, deep, floating, pushing and swirling. Impossible to put to words, it's usually hour four into one of his extended sets where every style comes together--blending, lifting, causing a style unto its own.

During performances, Dylan's preferred musical palate consists of three decks, a couple of CD players, a looping sampler and outboard effects. During his frequent shows in Spain it's typical to see him grabbing, twisting and manipulating clusters of knobs buttons and faders, all precisely moved to follow his momentary sonic path. They often call him 'un máquina,' chasing the inspiration flowing through him. Nothing is planned until seconds before it occurs, and when it does, it is extremely deliberate. Sometimes daring and unexpected but strangely fitting sounds are injected into the system on the fly, displaying a true love for his craft. Not afraid to experiment, he risks humiliation before thousands.

Given a few hours of warming up, Dylan Drazen will challenge your taste and sense of what a DJ should be. Few master the flow of seamless genre shifting within one set with such technical mastery. His techno roots show as he occasionally dips into the more popular world of tribal and deep house. But he's also been known to execute sessions of straight ahead metallic techno without an ounce of deviation. Many factors contribute to where a set will go, but the final product won't be known, even to Dylan, until it's over.

Relentlessly rising as one of the world's primary international dance music luminaries, Dylan has even occasionally been granted access to the teched out booths in the most respected past and present nightclubs in his own backyard: Avalon, Arc, The Tunnel, Twilo and Exit. Refusing politics, a true hero to the underground, Dylan Drazen displays equal parts skill and sonic finesse, giving proof to the dream that living what you love can become a reality.