COURTESY OF DJDFUSE.COM Yee-hah! D:Fuse in action at a recent Los Angeles club gig.

Energy equals
emcee squared

An innovative deejay vows
to power up the house

John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com

He's the man who comes from Texas -- Austin, Texas -- and he wears a distinctively blocked cowboy hat in his press photos.

D:Fuse Where: The Maze, Waikiki Trade Center, 2255 Kuhio Ave. When: 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. today Tickets: $13 pre-sale, $15 at the door; 18 and over Call: 921-5800

But D:Fuse is no outlaw country music man. No, instead, the 10-year veteran of the Austin club scene has made a name for himself internationally as something entirely different.

"I'm a music producer and deejay. Basically, I've been writing music all my life," D:Fuse explained when he called long distance Monday to talk about his music and tonight's club gig at the Maze.

Now, about the name -- fans see his professional moniker as an acronym: Dynamic Fusion Ultra Sonic Energy. It also happens to be derived from his birth name, which he prefers to keep separate from his high-profile career.

D:Fuse comes back to Honolulu as the headliner of an eight-hour event that will go until 6 tomorrow morning. Also flying in for the night is DJ Behrouz, who is described as specializing in an "immaculate mixture of silky house with textured tribal rhythms."

D:Fuse and Behrouz could probably split the eight hours between them and still have plenty of musical ideas left over, but the Maze has three separate rooms to fill -- each with a different genre of club music -- so a sizable squad of resident talent is also on the bill. The publicity flier for the event lists Archangel, Jimmy James, Miklos, Rayne, PSI, K Phoenyxx, Paul Shih, Ms. Angel, Kause, Cloned Monkey and the ubiquitous "and more."

But D:Fuse is the headliner, and he brings an interesting set of credentials to his work.

"I started off as a drummer in bands, and then I moved into lead singing and songwriting, and (then) moved into electronic music and started performing industrial music," he said.

"Eventually, I decided to pick up a pair of turntables and check it out. I found (turntables) are a musical instrument just like the drums, and being a drummer -- being a live musician -- really helped me learn how to spin and how to mix."

OVER the last four or five years, D:Fuse has become increasingly accessible as a recording artist, heard on compilations, mix tapes, solo projects and original collaborations assembled with other musician-producers.

He is currently completing work on a full-length solo album that will display his skill at original production as writer, recording artist, mixer and all-around record producer.

The album, titled "Begin" at the moment, is scheduled for release toward the end of the year. In the meantime his fans can look forward to "People II," a double-disc mix CD sequel to an album that came out this time last year.

"It's gonna have about 50 percent of my own material, which is kind of a bridge into releasing my own solo album," he said. Like most of his previous releases, "People II" will be distributed nationwide in stores and also be available through his Web site at www.djdfuse. com. Copies of another new CD, "Illusionmix," are available as a limited-edition release only through the Web site and at his live performances.

Why? Two reasons, he says. First, he wanted to make something special available for his hard-core fans. Second, since he's releasing "Illusionmix" on his own label and selling it direct, he describes it as a statement about the standard list prices set by the major corporate entities in the record business.

"Illusionmix" sells for $10, not $16.99.

"The idea is a lower-cost CD. I think CDs are so overpriced these days, and I think to be realistic with the consumers out there, the prices have to come down. That's what we're trying to do. We only made a thousand, and we're gonna start doing (special limited-edition CDs) on a regular basis."

And, yes, he'll have copies of "Illusionmix" at the Maze tonight.

TODAY'S dance club scene may seem like an uncomfortable place for outsiders whose knowledge of it is limited to sensationalist articles about raves filled with tweaked club-goers filled with semilegal "mood enhancers" and stimulants. Even people more objective about new styles of music can find the ever-growing list of dance subgenres -- techno, house, progressive house, straight-up house, trance, epic trance, break beat, acid jazz and so on -- intimidating and arcane.

Maybe it's because of his live music background, but D:Fuse sees the similarities between club music in general and other older styles as being more important than the differences.

"Whether you're talking about big-band music or underground dance music, if someone does it right, it all strikes the same chord, and that's what music is supposed to be about. There's no such thing as a bad music form. There's definitely bad songs out there, but all music forms are great and I like to embrace everything.

"I think a lot of deejays tend to stick with one exact music form ... and I think that's the wrong way to look at it. I think all the music styles can be married together. They're all woven from the same cloth, so why can't they all belong together? I think that's what given me an edge as a deejay -- to be able to make a name for myself nationally and internationally."

One of the things that sets D:Fuse apart as a club deejay is his use of such regular percussion instruments as drums, timbales and bongos, plus a Roland V-Pad to add percussive sounds to the recorded music he mixes and matches in his sets.

He also does some "vocal stuff" and has experimented with adding a second live voice in several performances in Los Angeles. He says he'll be working solo at the Maze but plans to expand his blending of live and pre-recorded music after his full-length solo album is released later this year.

THE point isn't that electronic music is better or worse than traditional live music, but rather that it gives a musician another set of sounds to work with.

"I'm from a live music background, and I like to incorporate that into with my writing now, but I think electronic music is a beautiful medium. When you go into the studio, you're not limited ... really, the sky is the limit. Any kind of sound is at your disposal, so, creatively, you can go so far with this music. That's what's exciting about it."

D:Fuse also approaches his craft as an entertainer.

"I really try to put on a show when I play and put a lot of energy into what I'm doing. ... I'm really into getting the crowd involved and doing a lot of crowd interaction, instead of just keeping my head down and starring at the turntables all night.

Ultimately, he says, it's all about the love of music.

"I've always loved sharing music with other people, whether it be making a mix tape or playing someone a favorite tune or whatever, and deejaying is really just like that on a big scale. You take other people's songs, you take your own songs and you weave this two- or three-hour journey and try to make it one big, long, fluid song."

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