3 minute read
DJ sounds
THE BEAT GOES ON
FOR TREVOR GORDON: DJ/HOUSE MUSIC PRODUCER
BY WYATT TREMBLAY | PHOTOS BY SERGEI BELSKI
At first glance, Airdrie’s Trevor Gordon appears to be an ordinary husband and father with a house and a yard, and he’s OK with that.
However, Gordon, a print technician, is also a DJ/house music producer, and while you’ve probably never seen his face – he covers it with his logo, a self-caricature for promotional photos – the genre of music he makes has a massive global following.
“One of the reasons I like house music so much is that it has a mix of electronic and actual (sampled) instruments. It touches a lot of people,” he says.
Made for night clubs and festivals, house music (HM) is booming and hypnotic. Using keyboards, drum machines and sampling, producers create rhythmic dance tracks.
“Rhythm, base, drums; that’s the signature soul of house music,” Gordon explains.
The term is attributed to a ’70s Chicago underground club called The Warehouse, Gordon explains. HM legend Frankie Knuckles was a Warehouse DJ who was instrumental in creating sets that mixed underground disco, independent soul and European electronic disco records.
Today, tracks are produced in a studio combined into mixes by DJs, and performed using professional hardware, a laptop, and software specific to DJing.
Gordon discovered HM in the late ’90s when he heard the Daft Punk single, Musique. The French electronic dance music duo is one of his top influences, he says.
“I listened to this and was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’”
He immersed himself in the genre, eventually buying equipment to produce his own tracks.
“I did a lot of this in my spare time, but I wasn’t really serious about it.”
He took a break from producing in 2003, wanting to focus on work and life. However, in 2014, Gordon remembered a promise he had made years earlier.
“I want to do this,” Gordon had said as a teen. “I want to make something of myself with this music. I love it so much.”
He’s experimented with different genres, such as Down Tempo and Breakbeat, but settled on Deep House, which is characterized by drum pads, chord structures, muted baselines and a repetitive fouron-the-floor beat with a tempo of 110 to 120 beats per minute.
Gordon DJs for the occasional podcast or radio show but prefers working in the studio. “I’m an introvert,” he says, “I like life working in the studio.”
His energetic tracks emerge from a place of calm, he says. “I love the Prairies. I draw inspiration from my daily walks and hikes.”
By 2017, he was getting signed to HM labels. The labels sell tracks through platforms like Traxsource, which sell to DJs and stream on services like Spotify. Gordon is now on more than 10 international labels, including in Russia, Spain and the U.K.
“I recently signed to (California’s) Salted Music,” he adds, “which is run by Miguel Migs, one of the top Deep House producers in the world.”
Gordon’s latest EP, Night Train, has been featured on four different charts for Beatport, an online store for DJs, taking the No. 1 spot on the Deep House chart. Another of his tracks, If You See Love, was recently featured on Data Transmission, a top dance music website.
He does regular guest mixes for S.W’s Urban Night Grooves, an Amsterdam podcast, which features DJ mixes. The program is broadcast in Europe on radio and via the Internet. He also enjoys collaborating with fellow producers and DJs from around the world.
Gordon says he keeps a balance between family, nature and working in the studio. “It all brings me joy and direction in my life.” life
“Rhythm, bass, drums; that’s the signature soul of house music”
