The renaissance of low quality DJing
While I am a devoted fan and listener of the upbeat, dance sounds of techno and house music, sometimes I prefer a more toned-down melody when going to see a live DJ set. Recently, I have been edging more towards the deeper sounds of Lo-Fi music, specifically those of DJ Seinfeld, Mall Grab and Ross from Friends. Pulling vocal samples from various records ranging from 00s R&B to Drake, to Sara Bareilles ‘Gravity,’ it just seems to work. The voices that you may have heard in the cheese room of a club five or ten years ago are completely transformed into something much more beautiful, and you won’t be able to listen to the original in the same way again.
DJ Seinfeld is one of the bigger names in producing this style and likes to describe himself as someone you may listen to in a bedroom or garage rather than a club. However, as we have seen in recent years, DJs like Seinfeld are getting much more recognition and artists like Mall Grab have become huge, playing in clubs all over Australia and the UK.
Defined by being “of lower quality than hi-fi sounds,” where “imperfections are audible.” The jumpy and grainy style of mixing gives a purposefully nostalgic tone to the music reminiscent of early 90s amateur DJ equipment. This style of music first became popular in the 1990s, but was swallowed up into the genre’s of indie and alternative rock, seen as an ‘alternative to the alternative.’ Now that it’s back, the more prominent beats used means it can be classed as a sub-genre to house rather than indie, and has been completely re-invented.
The DJ’s aesthetic fits in perfectly to this theme, DJ Seinfeld being named after the hugely popular 90s sitcom and a number of his music videos being a montage of clips from old episodes of Seinfeld, One Tree Hill and General Hospital. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought I had clicked on one of those old poorly made fan video montages rather than a music video. Ross From Friends followed suit with his name being based on a sitcom we all know and love, and we even have various other throwback names in the form of ‘DJ Windows XP’ and even ‘DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ.’
I’ll give you a run down of my top Lo-Fi tracks to get you started…