Dylan Drazen - Beach Party 5 - Jones Beach Field - Wantagh US - Jun 2009

Biography of Dylan Drazen

Dylan Drazen is a meticulous and persistent pain in the ass. When not on the road, he is either fiddling in his Brooklyn studio or furiously searching for recent material in the depths of the city's record shops. His schizoid productions span the worlds of house and techno--deep, tribal, techy, hard, and vocal. An identity crisis perhaps, it's usually hour four into one of his extended sets where every style comes together.

On the house side, he has remixed Barbara Tucker, Ultra Naté and Taana Gardner. On the techno side, he's released original material under François K.'s Clicktracks and Chicago's Blueline labels, among others. Most of his classic distorted hard techno work can be found in the archive of New York's Remains Records, run by veteran Prototype 909 member Dietrich Schoenemann. His most famous Remains track, 'Beacon,' was licensed for Chris Liebing's 'U60311' mix CD on V2. Fellow Brooklynite Frankie Bones also licensed one of Dylan's tracks, his first techno production entitled 'It Hz,' originally released on Tektite, for his 'Factory 303' mix CD.

As a DJ, Dylan's preferred palate is three decks, a couple of CD players, a looping sampler and outboard effects. His trademark sound of late is angry black mammies hootin' and hollerin' over metallic techno chaos. He infuses these unexpected but fitting sounds on the fly during a performance, displaying a true love for his craft. Not afraid to experiment, he risks humiliation before thousands. Given a few plus 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 in one set with such technical mastery. However on occasion he's been known to execute sessions of straight ahead techno without an ounce of deviation.

Dylan's mother tells a story of how he lay in the nursery of a Manhattan hospital on the day of his birth, kicking the side of the metal bassinet and making a bang, bang, bang sound in the middle of the night; he was into beats the day he was born. Early on he excelled in music, math, and other rigorous subjects such as video games and early 90s R&B and ultimately became a wildly technical and artistically gifted mind. He studied sound engineering while hosting a college radio mix show for four years in Boston during the latter part of the decade. Soon after graduating he was the hired DJ for David Bowie's 50th birthday party.

For over ten years Dylan has obsessed with finding and exposing new music. His DJ career began in 1993, and within four years he had two of his own productions released. His musical memory is an encyclopedia of dance music history. He's performed in four continents, and is a monthly regular at Spanish clubs where he became a national hero of sorts after his early hard techno mixtapes began circulating around its embryonic scene in 1998. Internet chat boards are a flurry of dylanspeak, indicating his eminent arrival. A rising international dance music luminary, Dylan also performs in his own backyard frequenting New York clubs like Limelight, Vinyl (now Arc) and Brooklyn hot spot Halcyon, as well as infamous fallen venues Tunnel, Twilo and Exit. At home or abroad, whatever beat he's currently into, Dylan Drazen displays equal parts skill and sonic finesse, giving established, stagnant names a run for their money.

http://www.myspace.com/dylandrazen