Dylan Drazen

Dylan Drazen is one of America's most well traveled and globally
respected techno DJs. Despite his nature to fly steadily below the
world's Superstar DJ radar over the past decade, Dylan has gained
legions of devoted fans in worldwide broadband bedrooms who purr at
the thought of him appearing in their home town.

Dylan is obsessed with finding and exposing new music. Professionally
trained as a studio sound engineer, it was inevitable he'd start to
create his own. His original productions have been showcased under
esteemed labels like François K.'s Clicktracks and Chicago's Blueline,
Montreal's Ascend and Sweden's G-Force. But most of his classic
distorted hard techno work can be found in the archive of Brooklyn's
Remains Records, run by Side Four co-pilot Tony Rohr.

Several of Drazen's tracks have been licensed for DJ mixes, including
compilations from Chris Liebing, Frankie Bones, Germany's Scranzwerk
series, WaveTec, and Portugal's Kaos house imprint. Dylan's most
recent studio credits come as mix engineer for large scale mix CD
compilations, from Ultra Records' Out.Anthems (in which he has a
featured track) to the underground New York 2 "tha" Bone double CD for
2007.

The onset of Dylan Drazen's DJ career occurred in 1993; now he's
performed in four continents and his musical memory is an encyclopedia
of dance music history. When not on the road, he's either mining beats
in his Brooklyn studio or diligently searching for set material in the
troughs of New York's record shops. His productions span the arenas of
house and techno--hard, tribal, deep, floating, pushing and swirling.
Impossible to put to words, it's usually hour four into one of his
extended sets where every style comes together--blending, lifting,
causing a style unto its own.

During performances, Dylan's preferred musical palate consists of
three decks, a couple of CD players, a looping sampler and outboard
effects. During his frequent shows in Spain it's typical to see him
grabbing, twisting and manipulating clusters of knobs buttons and
faders, all precisely moved to follow his momentary sonic path. They
often call him "un máquina," chasing the inspiration flowing through
him. Nothing is planned until seconds before it occurs, and when it
does, it is extremely deliberate. Sometimes daring and unexpected but
strangely fitting sounds are injected into the system on the fly,
displaying a true love for his craft. Not afraid to experiment, he
risks humiliation before thousands.

Given a few hours of warming up, Dylan Drazen will challenge your
taste and sense of what a DJ should be. Few master the flow of
seamless genre shifting within one set with such technical mastery.
His techno roots show as he occasionally dips into the more popular
world of tribal and deep house. But he's also been known to execute
sessions of straight ahead metallic techno without an ounce of
deviation. Many factors contribute to where a set will go, but the
final product won't be known, even to Dylan, until it's over.

Relentlessly rising as one of the world's primary international dance
music luminaries, Dylan has even occasionally been granted access to
the teched out booths in the most respected past and present
nightclubs in his own backyard: Avalon, Arc, The Tunnel, Twilo and
Exit. Refusing politics, a true hero to the underground, Dylan Drazen
displays equal parts skill and sonic finesse, giving proof to the
dream that living what you love can become a reality.