No. 11: PITCHED DOWN: THE ART AND AROUSAL OF DOWN TEMPO JAMS

Is a dance floor a dance floor when no one's dancing?

That's irrelevant to most late-night revelers because they've never seen such a sight.

But for the Opening DJ, it can be a nightly occurrence.

For some, it's a nightmare. You get up there. Plug in. Fumble around with the EQs trying to familiarize yourself with a foreign set up before getting something cued in the headphones before starting to timidly play out over the system.

Many suffer from the pre-beer-number-two-jitters at this point — your hands are still a little bit sweaty and every transition feels like jamming a pick axe into a recalcitrant ice sheet.

Yet for all its terror, all its blank canvas of infinite possibility staring you down, the opening few songs of the night are where many among us find solace — a golden opportunity to play some of the slower and some of the weirder stuff.

It's in this liminal zone, when things are just filling up, that the genre-agnostic experimentation can truly happen.

Could you mix Dizzy Gillespie into Can?

How about just letting Marvin Gaye's "I Want You" play out in its entirety on one side?

This is to say nothing of the ongoing contemporary mini-renaissance in slower house/disco jams from the likes of Fernando, 6th Borough Project (great fucking name!), or Mermaid Chunky. And Benji B has a knack for turning a down tempo intro into an entire show, detonating the concept of genres in the process.

There's something about this slower speed that offers a wealth of space — the music feels like it has more time to breathe. There's more room for instrumentation. A synth chord can wobble and sublimate into something else in a little more peace. And there's also more space on the floor itself — it's less taboo to hold a polite conversation with a friend, or comment on a sound you liked. Or subtlety pocket Shazam a track that you'll steal for posterity.

Sadly, contemporary club culture is all about the headliner. The openers are second class citizens, there literally to fill space and time.

Our advice? Go to the show early. Honor the opening-DJ. Aspire to become the opening-DJ.

Because when it's done right, they can keep people about for the whole night.

There's nothing more satisfying than stealing potential listeners from the main event, or hearing those magic few words as you step out of the booth: "you're a hard act to follow".