Carl Cox

How do you measure a DJ\'s popularity? By club bookings, remix credits, solo releases, and mix CDs? By branding, sponsorship and endorsements? Through glamour quota and celebrity status? Or by radio, television and movie appearances?

By any of these criteria, Carl Cox could claim he\'s got the love. Ultimately, though, it\'s the paying public that makes or breaks - and more importantly, maintains - a DJ\'s popularity. And in that case Carl Cox absolutely has got the love. Time and again, when music magazines print their end of year polls, it\'s Carl Cox who tops them. Alongside accolades from NME, Dancestar and countless other organizations all over the world, Carl was also awarded the IDA \'DJ Of The Year\' two years in a row, and in 2002 Muzik Magazine [RIP] named him ‘Best British DJ’, as well as offering him a regular column.

Across the globe, when club crowds are asked who they most want to have spin, it\'s Coxy they request. Promoters who need an arena to go off at three in the afternoon, or a club to stay full until the early hours, know that Carl\'s their man. He may not be a household name, but in the scene itself, he\'s a living legend, as big as they come. Quite simply, Carl Cox is the People\'s DJ.

A musical ambassador since he was in short trousers, a professional DJ since his early teens, a veteran of acid house and a champion of techno, Carl Cox emits a love of his work that is dangerously infectious. Check him when he\'s behind the turntables and you can\'t mistake his ecstatic visage, dripping with sweat as his head bobs up and down to the beat, his hands pumping the air whenever they\'re not manipulating the turntables, his body swaying back and forth, frequently taking to the mike to share word on the latest underground tune he\'s about to break. You name it, Carl\'s been there and done it, but he\'s never lost sight of the point of it: playing music, breaking tunes, spreading love, celebrating life.

Now, having extricated himself from his own thriving but overly time-consuming business empire, Carl is finally concentrating on his solo career. In 2002 he released the critically acclaimed ‘Global’ compilation, which received ecstatic reviews in a broad range of titles including Q, Independent on Sunday, Big Issue, Mixmag and DJ.

Born in Manchester, Carl and two sisters were raised in the suburbs of south London. Carl\'s parents had emigrated from Barbados, and brought their Caribbean party spirit with them - especially for the annual harvest festival of \'crop-over.\' While mum cooked and made the punch, dad lined up music on a turntable that could drop discs on top of each other. But when the records ran out, it was young Carl who\'d be by the player, checking which b-sides would work, searching other tunes to keep the parents going.

\"It just hit me,\" says Carl of his early engagement with destiny. \"Instantly, I became \'Cox\'s boy,\' who put on good music wherever my mum and dad went for a party. People would say to them \'Don\'t forget to bring Carl.\' I would go record shopping with my dad. And then I would hear something - a new James Brown record I thought was brilliant and I knew they would dance to - and get him to buy it.\"

Carl\'s enthusiasm for black dance music was boosted in the mid-70s when London was granted an independent radio station, Capital, with an American soul DJ, Greg Edwards. \"The first time he played \'Running Away\' by Roy Ayers, I was completely in heaven,\" recalls Carl. \"I didn\'t need any women in my life, not my family, not anything. I was like \'This is it. If they make more records like this, I will be so happy.\' And they did! The Blackbyrds, Norman Connors. . .\" On Fridays, Carl would go to a store in nearby Croydon \"and just buy buy buy. All my friends thought I was nuts, because McDonalds had just come out, and they would all go out and buy double cheeseburgers, and I\'d go off and get myself a record. They\'d have come back and eaten it and gone \'wicked\' and I\'d come back and say, \'This record by Brass Construction is unbelievable!\'\"

Competition from American cheeseburgers notwithstanding, by 1976 soul music was everywhere, and Carl and friends, still in school uniform, would board the bus into central London for late afternoon sessions at the 100 Club and Crackers. In 1977, aged 15, Carl got a set of turntables and began working as a mobile DJ. Disco captivated him. \"I liked how it was orchestrated in such a way that a record could take you somewhere,\" he enthuses, citing Sylvester\'s \'You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)\' because \"it had a 4/4 beat, it had energy, it had breakdowns, and it had a diva singing his heart out - or her\'s!\"

The early 80s saw Cox playing the same music as other young London DJs - rare groove (obscure funk), New York hip-hop, and electro. He was perfectly placed to hear Chicago house music in its earliest forms, and when the epic \'Acid Trax\' by Phuture (a.k.a. DJ Pierre) came out in early \'87, \"I was just \'This is it.\' I would do my parties, and I\'d play old rare groove and hip hop and soul and I would say \'Right you\'ve got to hear this, Phuture,\' and people would just stop. \'What the hell are you doing?\' I was just like, \'You\'ve got to check this out, the 303s, the 909s...\' I just had to go there. It\'s funny because all the people who thought I had freaked out then, are the people who are making the music now.\"

As a founder of the sound, Carl rode the exploding British rave scene. He played the opening night of Danny Rampling\'s legendary Shoom, co-promoted The Project with Paul Oakenfold, held a residency at the Zap Club in Brighton and at the Sunrise rave in 1988, hooked up a third turntable for his dawn-breaking set, got 15,000 kids back on their feet, and established a personal rep for three-deck wizardry.

The next step was to make music, and Carl\'s 1991 debut single for Paul Oakenfold\'s Perfecto label, \'I Want You,\' gave him a top 30 hit and a Top of the Pops appearance. Two more singles also made the charts. But Carl was a reluctant pop star and as the masses moved onto fluffy house and trance, and the hardcore created jungle, Cox retreated into the club world that had nurtured him and instead embraced the underground sounds of techno.

\"Techno drives home somewhere,\" he says of his core music. \"It takes you to an element of surprise, not knowing where you\'re going. It\'s scary but wonderful at the same time.\" A 1995 mix CD, \'F.A.C.T.\', became a techno benchmark, selling over 250,000 copies. His own 1996 EP \'Two Paintings and a Drum\' again broke the British top 30. With then-wife Rachel running the business side, Carl set up Ultimate Music Management, which counted Josh Wink and Laurent Garnier among 27 clients. There was the Ultimatum record label, for which Cox recorded his third top 30 UK single \'Sensual Sophis-ti-cat.\' And inevitably there was a weekly London techno club, Ultimate B.A.S.E., for which Carl was resident.

Carl also began traveling to America, thanks to a deal with Moonshine, which saw the Stateside release of 1997\'s \'F.A.C.T. 2\' (recorded live in L.A.); 1998\'s \'The Sound Of Ultimate B.A.S.E.\'; Carl\'s second studio album \'Phuture 2000\' (\'At The End of the Cliché,\' his debut, was only released in the UK); and that same year\'s \'Mixed Live\', recorded at the Crobar in Chicago.

Carl famously brought in the Millennium in Sydney, then traversed the International Date Line to do it again in Hawaii. His most treasured performances, though, have been for the Berlin Love Parade, which he played four years in a row, often the only British DJ at this trance-European techno-fest. \"I can\'t think of anything that comes close to when you actually stand there and you see a million and a half people waiting for you to play the best records possible to give them the best possible time,\" he says.

After forming his Intec Records in 1999, alongside DJ C1, the label went on to score a series of underground hits, including last year’s inescapable anthem ‘Sunshine’ by Tomaz vs. Filterheadz, which was the one of the biggest selling tracks on the label to date. “In only a few short years Intec has already become an integral part of the dance industry,” he explains. “It’s fantastic to be able to showcase quality music that I really believe in, to a wider audience.” Continuing his mission to conquer the entire world, Carl now also has a weekly radio show fittingly entitled Global, which is syndicated to over 10 million people including listeners in China, Argentina, Colombia and Istanbul.

2002 saw him further add to his “little empire”, by launching 23rd Century Records, an outlet for his own burgeoning production output. “A lot of the industry are not signing artists anymore,” he laments. “They go for bubblegum acts of five good looking girls and boys who dance around to pop…it doesn’t leave much room for what I do! So I thought if the majors don’t really understand this music, then I’ll have to put it out on my own.” The label’s first release was Carl’s acclaimed collaboration with Christian Smith a speaker–freaker entitled ‘Dirty Bass’. “I’d just finished that track and I took it with me to Miami.” he recalls. “I went up to Danny Tenaglia while he was playing one of his legendary sets in Space, and said ‘you need to play this record right now.’ It was 6.30 in the morning, he put it into his CD deck, gave it a quick listen and then mixed it straight in to his set. The place went absolutely ballistic.”

The summer of 2002 also saw Carl launch his now legendary residency at Space in Ibiza, offering clubbers a chance to get into the club for half the normal entry price. Carl flew over a seemingly inexhaustible supply of worldwide DJ talent to join him behind the decks and the night proved such a success that he’s returned to the White Isle every season since. “We really put Tuesdays on the clubbing map,” he beams. “Space has been incredible for the third year in a row. You still have all these people moaning that Ibiza is losing it but we couldn’t be getting any more people through the door. We’re also going to be launching the new single, ‘Give Me Your Love’ out there this year. It’s a real summer track and I want people to think ‘Wow, I didn’t realize he made music like that.’

The track is taken from Carl’s highly anticipated third album, ‘The Second Sign’ which will be out at the beginning of next year and is anything but a straight up techno affair. “I’ve been working with Roni Size, Josh Wink, Saffron from Republica and Onallee of Reprazents. There’s drum & bass, punk, house; it’s got a real festival sound to it. Of all my three albums, this is the one I think I’m most happy with.”

As well as fulfilling his production and DJ commitments, Carl has somehow found time to follow up his cameo role in the 1999 rave flick \'Human Traffic,\' with a part in the forthcoming film ‘L.A. DJ’, written by the team behind American Pie. “I play myself and the film is all about two young Jewish boys who want to become superstar DJs,” he chuckles. “It’s hilarious.”

In November Carl is also going to be releasing his DVD, ‘Carl Cox and Friends’ recorded from a recent live show in Rotterdam. “The venue we filmed at usually hosts people like Britney and Sting,” he explains. “Now they can add Carl Cox to that list! It was amazing, there were 12,000 people going crazy and we had DJs like Kevin Saunderson and Michel de Hey, alongside live percussionists and vocalists from the album including Saffron from Republica. It went on for 7 hours,” he laughs.

It’s his obvious passion for music and loyalty to his fans that are the real reason Coxy is so loved and respected by clubbers of all ages. “I went to Bulgaria for the first time in February,” he smiles. “It was one of those gigs that made me remember why I got into this industry in the first place. The sound system was incredible, the arena was jam packed and everyone was going berserk. I’ve been doing this for 34 years and I just stood back from it all and smiled. It made me feel great knowing that I could still move people that way after so long.

“Even if I\'m just playing records, I\'m into the moment of playing and with that, if I\'m dancing, and I\'m enjoying this moment, then I\'m sure you guys can too, without the record having to be the focal point of why we\'re here. That\'s why I find it a lot easier to push new music on people - because I believe in what I\'m playing, full stop. And everyone can feel that, and go with it, and then they can walk away with the experience of Carl Cox.\"