Danny Tenaglia: The Way of the Future (2008 Attic Archives)

NYC—Long Island City, Queens, has a strange rhythm to it. There’s the clink-clink of steel on steel: The frames of new residential high-rises being built. The circular chug of the elevated 7 subway line, whirring across the landscape every 10 minutes. The metronomic beeping of trucks in reverse, carrying everything from bread to long lengths of cable to live chickens. The colorful hum off the crowds of art school students, living out their “Fame” fantasies. The pace, the noise, the diversity: It’s the perfect place for Danny Tenaglia to set up shop.

The DJ they call DT—as well as “legend,” “maestro,” and any other number of superlatives—has spent a good part of the last six years in LIC. It was here where he moved the Big Bertha speakers from Vinyl—the club where his Be Yourself residency owned Fridays for five years—after it closed; here where he shipped mementos from his countless international DJing trips, including a life-size white horse; here where he hosted impromptu after-parties—of the “gather-and-listen-to-music” kind—for other DJs’ New York events. And it’s here where I find him on a grey spring day, sitting in the middle of a big white room, right between the Vinyl Berthas, going into a sleepless day two of finishing up Futurism, his first compilation since 2002’s Back To Basics and Choice: A Collection Of Classics.

There was absolutely nothing special about me when I first met Tenaglia in 1999. I was 19 years old, just another kid paying $10 (with a flyer) to get into Vinyl. I danced ’til dawn just like everyone else, staring into the booth, rapt by the sounds coming out of the speakers, and wondering about the man who put them there.

Then in 2000, I was asked to interview him for “DJ Times.” I spent an hour in his studio, talking about music, the club, the mix of Depeche Mode’s “I Feel Loved” that he had just finished (and would soon get him nominated for a Grammy). I didn’t realize it then, but that hour kicked off what became one of the richest friendships of my life, and my true musical education.

The years that followed were big for Tenaglia. His 2000 Winter Music Conference gig, which opened then-new nightclub Space in Miami, is still a swirl of nitrogen fog and impossible rhythms to those who were there: It delivered on the promise of his earlier chart-topping, genre-defying productions, like “Elements” and “Be Yourself,” and the smaller Groovejet sets of previous WMCs. Almost overnight, he was elevated to big-room DJ status, becoming the hottest property on the international club and festival scene. He started racking up awards: “Best Remix,” “Best International DJ,” “Best DJ Set,” “Best Party” for Be Yourself. He traveled the world. The legend of his sets—sometimes over 12 hours long, but always an epic journey, from past to present and beyond—grew, from hemisphere to hemisphere.

We kept in close touch. I even worked at Vinyl during the final year, and helped out at his WMC gigs. When I was asked to appear on the History Channel as an expert on disco, I spent the night before the taping on the phone with DT, absorbing his knowledge of the time, the artists, the mood. It was not the first time we had had a long, unofficial talk about the thing that first bonded us: The music.

Vinyl closed in 2004, another victim of luxury residential developments. And although he was still touring the world—Asia, Italy, Croatia, Spain, South America, just to name a few—and playing regularly in New York, Tenaglia fell silent, not releasing new work (apart from very delayed single “Dibiza”) until now.

Things are different. For the first time in his 20-year career, and after many offers, Tenaglia has accepted an Ibiza residency, each Thursday throughout the season at White Isle superclub Space. He’s assumed a mentor role to two talented young producers, Antranig and Burchan: Plucked, like me, from the Vinyl crowd. They plumb through his music, aid him with edits, and had a big hand in the creation of Futurism, and its Yello-inspired single, “Space Dance.” And Tenaglia sees them as more than just assistants: They are, to him, the very “Futurism” of which he speaks.

For the first time, Danny Tenaglia, 47, talks about winding down, rather than amping up: Of enjoying what he already has, and finding contentment. But one thing is sure: The basis of it will always be music.

DJ Times: Why Futurism?

Tenaglia: Puts on “Elements” voice) “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the future.” It is the future. It’s 2008. Wow. I was in a car in Naples, and the name just came to me. I figured it’s 11 years past [LP] Tourism, and I like it. So that stuck.

It’s also my introducing Antranig and Burchan officially to the world, to say, “This is the future.” I’m doing this more than 20 years as a professional, and a good solid 30 years from when I started as a hobby when I was a teenager. I’m approaching 50: I look at it with a smile, but it’s time for me to think about 2009, 2010, and say, OK, by 2011 when I turn 50, I should be able to help Antranig and Burchan—who I know will still be in my life—to help them get gigs. I really want to put them at the forefront.

DJ Times: How is this different from your last compilation?

Tenaglia: Back To Basics pretty much reflected what I was playing at Vinyl at the time, everything from [Narcotic Thrust’s] “Safe From Harm” to Quicksound, trying to give people the best representation in only two hours and 20 minutes.

Then we were planning to release a Be Yourself retrospective CD. I’m still working on that and licensing a lot of tracks, but we thought that if I put out a five-year commemorative boxed set right now, it’s just like another classics CD. And since I’m doing so well currently—traveling all over the world, the Ibiza residency—that none of the stuff would reflect what I’m playing today. The big question was always, “When are you going to put out a new CD?”—“new” being the key word.

We weren’t always satisfied with offers, labels, who should I go with, and I’ve gotta say, when [manager] Kevin [McHugh] told me that Tommy Boy was still in action, and wanted me, I felt so good about it. I’ve known Tom Silverman for 20 years. He’d even been up here once before. He freaked out; he was like, “You have 45s!” I was like, “Of course, I have 45s!” He was playing in the DJ booth. So we re-bonded.

DJ Times: How did you pick the tracks?

Tenaglia: It was difficult. How do you narrow this down to 15, 16 songs per CD, keeping the integrity of at least fi ve to six minutes per song? And then editing down each one to get the best part, looping if it has that one great break?

DJ Times: What programs did you use to pull all that off?

Tenaglia: For my first CD, Mix This Pussy on Tribal, I did that all with two turntables and a mixer to DAT and tons of editing, just to get the best of each song. And I learned a lot from my doing that that day. I didn’t realize it then, but I was treating that entire CD as a production. Then with Pro Tools, I started realizing, if we put a crash there and a boom there, it would really help the transition. And then all of a sudden, before you know it, we’ve got Ableton and Reason and Logic. It’s unbelievable what you can do. Especially the top of [Futurism] CD 2: Fred Giannelli’s “Midlife Crisis” with Ultra Naté’s a cappella over it. It’s still delivering the title of my fi rst LP Hard & Soul, with the true minimal hard techno record, but it’s not so hard ’cause it doesn’t really have a kickdrum. So in a couple of sections I put in the kickdrum from “Elements,” and—bing-bang-boom—it was in there. Five years ago, it would have been like, “Let’s get out that drum machine and put it through the sequencer.” It would have taken hours and hours to map it out to the grid. But with Ableton Live, my God… So we sort of did…call it a mash-up if you will, but I call it a mini-remix, of the first song with Ultra.

DJ Times: The six years that you’ve been “gone” have probably been the most important in dance music history in the modern era. The landscape has entirely shifted.

Tenaglia: Without a doubt. Majorly. In one way it’s great, with the technology and how wonderful some of these sounds are coming through the speakers. It’s like: Wow! How the hell did they make this sound? What’s this patch? What synth is it? Who are these Wighnomy Brothers, I gotta meet them! I gotta know! So many things like that.

And then the flipside of it is, being a New Yorker and having been such a fanatic with shopping for records all my life, I really, really miss that—the physicalness of shopping, going to the store, coming home with a bag, and artwork, taking that record out putting it on the plate, putting the needle on the groove. I can still do it: We still do order vinyl around here. Burchan and Antranig are my major providers. They go through my promos with me, sometimes they fi lter: “This is more radio,” or “You’re gonna love this—it sounds like ‘Rolling Brooklyn,’” those types of descriptions.

We also spend a lot of time on Beatport; Juno, which we buy vinyl from; some of Kompakt: as well as what comes in through the offi ce up here. There’s also fellow DJs like Manny Freytes, Luca Ricci, even people who aren’t DJs, they give me so much music. They have this humble line: “Maybe you won’t like it.” They call me “maestro.” “We’ll just give you the music, maybe some of it you won’t like, but we think some of it is bombs.” And I say, “Alright, I’ll take it home and I’ll decide.”

You know, if they gave me 20 songs, sometimes between two to fi ve can make a difference in my evening. And I call them up and I say, “Are you kidding me?” Several appear on Futurism.

DJ Times: It’s an extended family.

Tenaglia: It really is, plus the DJs who are out there today right now who I’ve never heard of before. I still get inspired, even by new resident DJs I may have only heard once. In Valencia I asked the opening DJ, “Man, what is that track that you’re playing?” I think he thought I was blowing smoke…

DJ Times: They probably think you’re omnipotent, too. Tenaglia: It’s in my blood and my nature to be a trainspotter. DJ Times: How do you take a techno track from 2008 and draw the line between it and the Labelle and the Moroder?

Tenaglia: This is a very, very interesting question, the most interesting one. Sometimes I joke about it, but it’s also very serious for me. I really am now at a mature age. That “Midlife Crisis” track has been out for a long time under a different name. And I said, “Antranig, Burchan, you’re hearing me put Ultra Naté over this track that I used to call my secret blob bass record.” That’s a midlife crisis! I would play it minus-eight, so it’s not too fast, maybe fi ve or six hours into marathon set, because it just fl ows. And I thought, “Maybe I could put a vocal over it.” And bam, there was Ultra Naté, it went right in the pocket. Let’s get it in the same key. And we all just looked at each other like, wow. It’s just that. It’s putting the time, effort, love, energy, and passion into it. And I tell them, “You get back what you put in. What you’re doing now, I did all of the ’90s.” But I’ve grown tired of doing this. Now I want to sit here and enjoy the fruits of my labor. If you look at my desk, you’ll see Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On—it has the masters and the outtakes, and I want to appreciate them on this fantastic sound system, uninterrupted.

I’m taking these influences from all of my life. I can just walk over to that shelf, and easily pull out mixes by Larry Levan like “Plane Love” by Jeffrey Osborne—what a man, what a voice! I think what I want to get in there is the soulfulness of it, the deep side of me, which I like to educate people with. This comes from church, and this is what’s missing. I’m not trying to come across as a preacher, or because I’m a Christian and I believe in God, that’s my personal belief. I’m just sharing my take on soulful music, and what was when I was young person, pre-disco, disco, post-disco to where it is now. I don’t think it’s coming from those mature singers who were in their 30s, 40s who were trained how to sing, read, write, compose, arrange, perform, and those great singers like the Patti Labelles and Gladys Knights and Marvin Gayes. They were singing from the depths of their souls, and the lyrics had meaning, whether it was about poverty or drugs or crime…

DJ Times: …or even happiness.

Tenaglia: Yes! Janis Joplin, Chaka Khan. It was just much more soulful. The Wynans, The Clark Sisters, I was so moved by hearing these artists, and I was already loving soulful music before I was a teenager. I was around 18 when I heard Kraftwerk for the fi rst time, “Trans Europe Express.” You didn’t need a drug. It was like, “What the hell was that?” That’s what got everyone’s attention. That didn’t sound like Salsoul, Prelude, that sound. I think that’s what comes out of my CDs, is that you feel a sense of history, even though it’s techno…

DJ Times: Even though it’s futurism…

Tenaglia: Even though it’s futurism. Starting out with Yello, a band that I feel really paved the way, I don’t think they got their proper due respect on this earth. But they have amazed me with their element of surprise, from “La Habanera” to “The Rhythm Divine,” that ballad with Shirley Bassey. They embraced jungle, with the best sonic possible sounds.

I was reading about Boris Blank of Yello on the Native Instruments website, really interesting. So [Yello track] “Indigo Bay” [which opens Futurism]…

DJ Times: You had to have it.

Tenaglia: I had to have it, Kerri. This song influenced me so much; I would use the words life-changing. To think that these guys who are older than me, to think they can do something so…what’s the word?

DJ Times: Forward?

Tenaglia: Avant-garde. It’s not even driven by a kick drum, more like a tom that does play into a four-on-the-floor kind of thing, but it doesn’t have the boom-boom of club music. [Futurism] was going to be about vocals, but I don’t really have the token “Safe From Harm” for this one, or [David James’] “Always A Permanent State” [on Back To Basics], or [The Return’s] “New Day” [on Global Underground London], like I did for my other CDs. So even though this is Futurism and reflects more of the techno side of me, which is more reflective of my sets in nightclubs, I still felt a burning, burning desire to start out with tribalism, drums. It always starts with the drums. So the first three and four songs on CD One, Yello…just saying their name excites me! If you look in my iTunes I have over 200 songs by Yello. You see that? [points to large section of large record shelf] That’s the Yello section.

Antranig and Burchan knew maybe “Bostich” and “Oh Yeah” from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” but I said, “You need to listen to ‘Vicious Games,’ and so many more.” “Lost Again,” that bass that starts out? Yello Live at the Roxy 1983 doing “Bostich?” Unbelievable. Then they understood why I needed this “Indigo Bay” record from their new album [The Eye].

DJ Times: Did you buy the whole album when it came out? When did you hear it first?

Tenaglia: I was at a listening station. You could tell they’re getting really experimental again in a not-souptempo kind of way. It’s a downtempo kind of track. This is not me pitching it down, it’s the actual speed.

DJ Times: What’s the operative message? Darkness?

Tenaglia: Aesthetic meaning.

DJ Times: Chaos?

Tenaglia: Antranig is very in tune to how each sound comes in, and how it doesn’t confl ict with the other, and I’ve learned from that. For the element of surprise, Yello comes to mind fi rst. They take you on a journey: Their records can turn around and be this really wacky drum solo, or sound like a movie score, or like jungle breakbeat.

DJ Times: Times change, music styles change, but you always manage to fi nd the records that have those pieces that are so you. You might add more in the compilation process, but the basis is there. What are those pieces? Do you know what they are, and how do you find them?

Tenaglia: I can say it’s the influences that go way, way, way back, as far as I can go back, to everybody from the ’60s that infl uenced me— from Sergio Mendes to The Beatles to Pink Floyd to the Isley Brothers to Gladys Knight And The Pips to Manu Dibango and Patti Labelle. These voices—it was the voices, but it was the rhythms too. Without a doubt I can’t have this CD come out without giving special mention to my Aunt Nancy, my godmother who passed, because she put the music in my life, without a doubt. I tell people, whether they got to meet her or not, had it not been for my Aunt Nancy you wouldn’t know me. She taught me piano by ear when I was a kid, and the guitar. It could have been The Mamas & The Papas, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett. But no matter what it was, my ears were open. I didn’t care about what was on TV, I didn’t care about cartoons, I didn’t care about sports, I didn’t care about checkers, board games. Kerri, I swear to you—it was music, music, music.

So what comes out of the speakers as a DJ, or what comes out my records as a producer, is just infl uences and influences and influences, from jazz to samba to bossa nova to salsa.

DJ Times: The thing I always take from our conversations is that this is all based in music, not just dance music. This is a dance interpretation of a love for music. You go to some of these indie-rock shows, and the kids are dancing, but so self-consciously, like it’s very ironic to dance.

Tenaglia: This is why I’m really glad I’m not shy about being myself in every way, even jokingly performing some of these songs, lip-synching in a way. Because they’re not just listening anymore—they’re watching the DJ. So I’m like, “You want a show? I’ll give you a show.” I played an LCD Soundsystem song at Coachella, and everyone just kind of looked at me. But quite often I get on the microphone and I say, “I need to see you people dance, I need to see this room dance. I need to see some pulsing, because you’re all just standing there staring at me, and I’m the one dancing. You’re looking at me like you can’t believe that I dance!”

I don’t want people to think that I’m on the microphone that much because I’m not. If anything now I hear a lot of DJs on microphones.

DJ Times: They do it because you do it.

Tenaglia: A lot of them, I don’t understand what they’re saying. If you’re going to do it, do it right. I used to work in a roller disco, and I had to get their attention. “The next song is for backwards skaters only!” Between that, plus being raised in Brooklyn, and being Napolitano. DJ Times: Do you still go out? Tenaglia: I still love to dance, I still love going out. I have the best time at 718 Sessions and Body & Soul, because those are mature-type events. You got a dancefloor with people not disrupting my groove. We have a whole bunch of fun when it’s the crew.

I feel like I’m just a DJ mailman delivering other people’s music to other people’s doorsteps in countries and cities, and I feel secure about it. I’m sure once upon a time in my life I was concerned that other DJs would blow me away, but I don’t feel like that anymore. At the end of the day, when the headphones are off, I’m just a punter. If I see people dancing, I want to be where that is, even if they’re playing spoons and a triangle.

BY KERRI MASON