Daft Punk
Mixed Live
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As with a “real” band, a DJ’s live performance has a lot to do with his synergy with an audience. A band can respond to a crowd by improvising, holding the mike out over the masses for a chorus, maybe varying the tempo–all things you can capture on tape. But most dance sets tick to a specific tempo to keep people on the floor–drastically speeding up or slowing down tends to kill the vibe. DJs are also pretty much at the mercy of prerecorded sounds, which limits improvisatory possibilities, and most interact with the audience by “reading” it to plot out the course of a set–something done at least in part on a visual basis: are they young or old? urban or suburban? casual or dressed to the nines? Unfortunately, most official mix CDs aren’t even recorded live, per se; instead, the selections are often spliced together in Pro Tools. Even the ones that are cut on turntables and a mixer are frequently made in the isolation of a studio.
Previous editions of Moonshine’s “Mixed Live” series featuring Carl Cox, AK1200, and Donald Glaude lived up to their documentary billing almost too perfectly, each catching the DJ on an average night. Trouble is, the point should be to capture him on an ideal night. Six-foot-six Londoner Paul Newman, a veteran DJ and producer with a long association with Moonshine (he mixed the 1994 comp Dance Hits U.K.), delivers a more eclectic set than any of them, moving from Chicago house to epic trance to speedy hip-house.
This tends to be more interesting than enjoyable, not least because those songs were already pretty well formed. What makes Alive fun is the way the audience responds to the manipulations. Where Tall Paul’s mix feels grab-baggy, Daft Punk’s manhandling of the crowd is expert. Right off the bat, with the gibbering 303s of “Work,” the audience is already yelling en masse: Come on, give it to us! they seem to be saying. We can take it! Let us have it! As they mix into “Da Funk” layer by layer (a squiggling subriff, the walloping disco kick drum, and finally the main hook), the dancing fools erupt a little more; by the time the track takes off, you can hear them collectively lose their shit. It’s the kind of sonic tease that, in the middle of a crowd, in the middle of the night, high on adrenaline or pharmaceuticals or a lot of Red Bull, induces spasmodic dancing fits, makes you feel 110 percent alive, keeps you moving even through the dull spots that inevitably follow, and wakes you up the next morning humming “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.”
