The Brag

Craze
Freshly Baked Beats
By Benjamin Cooper

Winning the DMC World DJ Championship three times in a row is no mean feat. But for Aristh Delgado, aka DJ Craze, such achievements do nothing to quell his present conundrum: brain freeze. “Oh man,” he moans down the line from Miami, “I got to be honest with you. I’ve been chilling with the family all day for Mother’s Day, but I think I ate too much ice cream! Just before I picked up your call I felt the headache comin’ on. Just be prepared for my brain to switch off at times, but know that it ain’t my fault. It’s the damn ice cream.”

While Craze may dedicate himself to his mama on her special day, the rest of the time he is a focused machine who’s constantly ripping and repping on the decks. In an age where every hack with an RCA line and an iPod trades off the ‘DJ’ tag, the young man from Nicaragua is the real deal. His love of turntablism began at the age of 15 when his older brother exposed him to the likes of Magic Mike and Jealous J; he had to know how they achieved those scratchy sounds, so spent entire weeks studying the masters before stepping into the ring himself, after intensive practice sessions on the turntables.

Craze’s memories of his early days as a DJ evidence a certain nostalgia. “Back in the day, music was a little more about the feeling, y’know?” he says. “Nowadays it’s almost expected that you’ll drop some huge chart banger in the mix, especially if you’re playing a festival. When I started out was when hip hop was getting big in the 1990s, and America was really pumped to hear fresher and fresher tunes all the time. I was playing small clubs back then, but it was kinda cool because it wasn’t about getting a reaction from the crowd [as much as] giving them something they’d never heard before. That freshness always blew their minds.”
Craze bears mad love for his audience, regardless of the space he’s playing – but he knows he’s making music that will occasionally frustrate them with its genre hopping style. His reason for traversing such a gamut of sounds is that he cannot bear the thought of getting bored. “Think about what I do: what the hell is the point in dedicating your life to scratchin’
if you stay in the one spot and never try anything new?”

And unlike many other artists who feel pressured by the presence of a huge audience, when Craze plays festival shows he feels he can take risks with his set. “If you’re playing a festival, people think that just because it’s a bigger crowd and a bigger scene than a club show you can’t try out anything too weird. But I think there’s a lot of room to move: festival crowds should be given more credit,” he says. “Sure I’ll play the big tunes that they all want to hear, but I’ll also sneak in at least one surprise that they’ve never heard before, which might be a pretty whacked-out, experimental sample.”

With a background in hip hop, breaks and dubstep, Craze certainly has an array of styles to switch between – and it’s his obsession with trap music, an offshoot of rap that plays more with tempos and rhythms, that is presently providing him the most inspiration. “There’s been a big push from New York lately, with artists like Baauer throwing down some huge tracks,” he says. “My boy Diplo has been hard on Baauer’s track ‘My Nose’, so that’s raising the profile of what DJs can do with trap, rather than it just being a rap thing.”

Craze, alongside DJ friend Kill The Noise, established Slow Roast Records in 2010 to push club music as well as more avant-garde electronica. His forthcoming Australian tour will serve to showcase some of that roster’s talent, with labelmate Codes joining him for all dates. “I’ve known Codes for many years, so it seemed natural that we’d sign him up to the label,” Craze explains. “Lately, he’s absolutely killing it – later this year he’s got a bunch of big remixes coming out with guys like Chromeo and Flinch that are going to blow people away. So when we got asked to come to Australia, there was no hesitation in getting him on board. He’s a master of mixing and cutting, and just having him around fuels me to keep pushing harder.”

But it’s his friendship with Diplo that will yield opportunities for Craze to bring his music to Australians outside of the club scene. “I’m pretty tight with Diplo and all the guys from the Philly brigade,” he says, “so when he asked me to do some work with [local Indigenous outreach initiative] Heaps Decent I said yes straight away. I’ll be honest, I’m known for my turntable skills, so it’s cool to be able to pass that knowledge on to other people. I can’t wait to start working with the local kids, scratching out some tracks, and to see how the scenes are being born down there.”

With: Codes
Where: Chinese Laundry
When: Saturday May 26