Digital Descendent
If Any Young DJ Has Fully Embraced the Future, It’s
James Zabiela. He’s Re-Invented Uses for Digital Decks & Effectors—And Now He’s Even “Scratching Harrison Ford.”

By Emily Tan
Photos by Rahav Segev
Published in the January 2005 issue of DJ Times Magazine
Volume 18 - Number 01


New York City – Perhaps more than any jock today, James Zabiela represents the next generation, one unencumbered by the physical limitations of DJing with vinyl and traditional turntables. In fact, you could call Zabiela the poster-child for this new wave of tech-savvy spinners—artists who embrace the latest gear with surprising dexterity and mechanical prowess. As much as his talent has afforded him, Zabiela’s youth—he’s only 25—has allowed him to work and thrive in an age where technology’s rapid spurts are finally viewed as opportunities, not shortcuts.

To say that Zabiela’s rise has been rather abrupt is no exaggeration. At a time when he was handing out mix tapes to anyone who would listen, Zabiela in 2000 gained notice by winning Muzik magazine’s “Bedroom Bedlam” DJ competition. He soon benefited tremendously from subsequent connections with top U.K. jocks Lee Burridge and Sasha, who were impressed with his ear and his skills. Now a scant four years later, Zabiela has released his second compilation, ALiVE (System/Renaissance), an impressive double-CD that varies from tech-house and electro, trancey breaks to numby chillouts. He mixed it live, using three Pioneer CDJ-1000 digital decks, a Pioneer DJM-600 mixer, and a Pioneer EFX-500 effects unit in a single-pass recording.

Today, Zabiela rocks dancefloors across the globe (like Ibiza’s Space, New York’s Crobar and Tokyo’s Womb) with his special brand of innovative mixing. Although Zabiela has a well-earned reputation as being a “digital wunderkind,” 30-percent of his set, he says, still consists of vinyl. Due to his time constraints, he admits, he can’t digitize all of his new vinyl, or he would be an all-digital jock.

His journey to top DJ status didn’t begin with enormous promise. At the age of 12, all that the young Zabiela wanted to do was play with his Nintendo Ninja Turtles and listen to the alt-rock of the day. He didn’t care for the blaring techno tunes his dad blasted during those halcyon days of British rave. Luckily, that changed. One afternoon, he says, electronic dance music just clicked for him, and he was sold on it forever.

While working at his father’s local record shop, Zabiela admits to having spent more time borrowing and copying Sasha and Paul Oakenfold mix tapes – and practicing his DJing skills on the store’s equipment – than selling records for the store. It’s hard to believe that up until he exploded onto the international dance music scene, Zabiela hadn’t even boarded an airplane. After having toured with Sasha on the U.S. leg of his Airdrawndagger tour and being examined (and over-examined) by the snarkiest of DJs in our midst, James Zabiela remains unfazed and almost bashful about his rapid ascent. DJ Times caught up with the boy wonder and talked shop during a New York visit.

DJ Times: Did you intend for the explicit liner notes on ALiVE to serve as a tutorial?
James Zabiela: It’s for people who are mainly DJs, so someone can listen to the CD and read along with it and know what’s going on. Actually, I’ve made a six-minute video as well, basically just goofing around on the equipment, but that’s only on the U.K.-edition of the CD. The liner notes actually came about when I did my last CD, and we were trying to get sponsorship from Pioneer, so I did that and sent it to Pioneer so they could see how I was using their equipment. It got emailed to someone and then it was on a message board, and then everyone was like, “Oh, this is fantastic!” I had all these emails from young DJs wanting copies of it. So for this CD, I thought, “I’ll just put it inside the sleeve.”

DJ Times: How would you compare this CD with your first, Sound In Motion?
Zabiela: Sound In Motion was more of a groovy, house-music CD. While I’m not ashamed of that CD, I always thought it never really represented what I did in a live set, in a club. So, that’s why I called this ALiVE.

DJ Times: Have you released any original artist tracks?
Zabiela: I’ve worked on stuff and I’ve done remixes here and there, but what I’m thinking of doing is releasing a load of [artist] tracks under a different name, to take the pressure off myself. And then, perhaps with a new CD, be like, “Oh, that was all me, by the way!” [Laughs] I think it would be good practice to do that, and then eventually I’ll write songs that I’m really happy with, and then I’ll release them under [my name].

DJ Times: Your ride has been pretty fast. You started as a bedroom DJ, and you didn’t have any technical or musical training?
Zabiela: Right, no, nothing. I practiced in my bedroom for a long time. I used to go see local DJs play, but there wasn’t anyone you would’ve heard of—just local DJs in Southampton [England], where I used to go out. This DJ called Gary Benetton. It was Gary who actually showed me what mixing was. I didn’t know. He showed me what I had to do and basically, instead of selling records while I was working in the record store, I stood there practicing.

DJ Times: Who are some of the artists who inspired you early on?
Zabiela: Depeche Mode. Before I was in this scene, I never really liked dance music at all. I just really liked R.E.M., Nirvana, the sort of things you listen to when you’re 12 and you think it’s cool. Probably the reason why I didn’t like dance music was that my dad was so into it.

DJ Times: Cool dad!
Zabiela: Yeah, well, he used to go out raving in 1992. He’d come home, and I was 12-years old, and I’d be trying to play [Nintendo] Ninja Turtles in my bedroom, and all I could hear was this, Bvoom! Bvoom! Bvoom! And I was like, my whole room is shaking, and I used to hate it. But when I worked in [my father’s] record store when I was 15, I had only been there for two weeks, and something just made sense. I forget what record it was—some Strictly Rhythm record or something. It wasn’t even a big tune or anything. It went from, “Oh, this is just a repetitive groove that goes over and over and over” to, “Ooh, now it makes sense!”

DJ Times: Was there someone who made you want to be a DJ?
Zabiela: Yeah, obviously, it was Sasha. I was too young to get into the clubs, and I also looked so young. Even when I was old enough to get into the clubs, I still couldn’t get in. So, I borrowed all the [live mix] tapes from the record shop, took them home and listened to them while I’d ride my bike. We had a Sasha tape, Oakenfold, and everyone like that. So, my experience in dance music for about two or three years was strictly off of the mix tapes. I’d be borrowing them, recording them, taking them back to the shop [laughs], and I remember just listening to a Sasha tape and thinking, “Wow, that’s awesome. I want to do this!”

DJ Times: This is before you’d ever gone to a live show and experienced the whole club atmosphere?
Zabiela: Yeah, this was when I was still in school. I’d done the school disco, but I wasn’t that great a DJ, back then. [laughs]

DJ Times: What was your first professional gig, or did it all start after you won Muzik magazine’s “Bedroom Bedlam” DJ competition?
Zabiela: Actually, I played out in my hometown quite a lot before I won the competition. I entered the competition because I was playing in my hometown doing warm-ups here and there, and I wanted to progress further. Also, I gave a tape to Lee Burridge, who is a main factor to my success at the moment. He gave that tape to Sasha, and Sasha listened to it in the car going up and down the motorway.

DJ Times: People have the perception that you’re a kind of digital wunderkind. Did you ever
play vinyl?
Zabiela: Oh, yeah! Until two years ago, I was strictly vinyl. As far as going, “Oh, I’m never going to play CDs,” I never had a go on the [Pioneer] CDJ-1000s, so at that time I was playing a lot of records. Nowadays, about 30-percent [of my set] is vinyl [on Technics 1210 mkII turntables]. But, to be honest, the reason I still play vinyl is that I buy so many records, and I get given so many records, that I don’t have time to put them onto CD—‘cause, obviously, a lot of the things I play originate on vinyl. I record them into my computer and put them onto CD, so that I can then manipulate them more. If time were not a factor, I’d probably play 100-percent CDs. But, I still have a huge box of records, which I take everywhere, and I get sent vinyl all the time. There is a sound you get off of vinyl you don’t get off of CD, a particular source. In a club, where they’ve got a really amazing sound system, that’s where the main difference is, especially if you’re playing an MP3 or something like that. You can definitely hear the difference.

DJ Times: Do you play any MP3 files?
Zabiela: Sometimes. I just put them onto CD. I get tracks sent to me from artists over their FTPs or whatever. The sound quality depends on the encoding.
DJ Times: You mixed ALiVE live using three Pioneer CDJ-1000s. What are you doing with the CDJ-1000 and the Pioneer DJM-600 mixer that nobody else is doing?
Zabiela: The main thing I use is the [Pioneer] EFX-500 unit. And with the Pioneer DJM-600 mixer, you can make a feedback loop using the Echo utility on the EFX unit, so you can make these four-bar loops, and you can also tweak them. So, you can chop the loops up and you can go as far as making Aphex Twin-sounding drum edits on the fly. The reason I like to use that mixer with that effects unit is that you can move the feedback loop from channel to channel with the channel selector, so essentially, you can actually DJ off of one CD player all night. There’s a DJ called Phil K. from Australia, who’s amazing, and we talk on the phone and we geek out about this sort of thing all the time. We’re like, nerd-bunnies. [laughs] But he’s a wizard with the EFX unit and the CDJ-1000.

DJ Times: What things are you doing with the CDJ-1000 that the equipment wasn’t originally intended to do?
Zabiela: The Echo thing isn’t meant to do the loops; it was never devised for that. You just make an echo that doesn’t degrade. Obviously, if you make a four-beat echo, you’ve got a one-bar loop. But, you can effect that loop with the other side of the EFX unit, and it allows you to hop around the track really easily. So, if you’ve got a track playing, you can virtually remix it live. I also use the EFX unit to do some video scratching with techniques, like with the Transform and the Wah effect, and making a loop of a sound on the CDJ, a really tiny loop, so that it’s a continuous sound. And then you can gate the sound with the Transform. Because it’s gating it for you, you’re not using the crossfader to do the transforming. You’ve then got your other hand to do a third effect on top of that. The EFX unit is the thing that I really can’t live without—but, combined with the CDJs. On their own, they’re OK, but when you get them together, it’s really brilliant. You can make those loops, stop the CD player, but the sound is still going on, and then you can come in at a different point in the track.

DJ Times: Are you involved with Pioneer, officially?
Zabiela: No, but they were talking about me doing some product endorsements for their new EFX unit that’s going to come out. It’s going to be called the [Pioneer] EFX-1000. I’ve used the prototype, and it’s really good.

DJ Times: Did Pioneer create the EFX-1000 taking into account your suggestions?
Zabiela: Maybe they did. But what they do is – and this is a situation I’m very comfortable with, because there’s no money involved and there’s no contracts or anything, and I don’t have to appear on billboards or anything like that – they’ll send me a piece of equipment, a prototype or something. I’ll muck around with it at home, break it, and then I’ll write them an email and say, “It broke, and this is what happened. I liked this, I didn’t like that.” I’m just really happy to be able to try out the new equipment.

DJ Times: Do you consider spinning on vinyl to be old-fashioned?
Zabiela: Not at all. I think that – technology and everything else aside – what comes out of the speakers, at the end of the day, is the most important thing. I had a long conversation yesterday with DJ Three, and he’s kind of a vinyl die-hard, and I really don’t think it matters what you’re doing or how you’re doing it. It’s not how you do it, it’s how you do it. That’s actually what he said. [Laughs] I’m quoting him, now. But, it’s not important if you’re using 10 turntables, or one, or two; I think it’s the butts shakin’ on the dancefloor. That’s what counts. You have a load of people who are there to watch, and you have people that are there to dance. And I like to try and please both types.

DJ Times: Give us an example of something you do with the CDJ-1000 that’s impossible to
do with vinyl.
Zabiela: I think it’s the real-time cuing, the hot cues, which is a major factor. There are things that you can do with turntables, but you need two copies of the record, like when you’re doubling up things, old-school style. But with the CDJs, you can jump out of a loop, jump to this or that part of a track. You can do stuff all over the place with it—that’s what I really like. You can make samples and have a different sample assigned to a different hot cue. So, you can have a drum, a hi-hat and a clap, and you can play the drum just using three buttons, perhaps over the top of another track, using it where it’s better. Or you can have samples, like on “Age Of Love,” [the lyrics] “Come on, dance with me, move your body, dance with me…” I took the sample from that, and I had the words on different hot cues, so I could play the words separately. But obviously, I made a feedback loop with the EFX unit, so once you play them in once, they’ll continue, and you can then chop it and edit it and filter it, adjust the timing and really mess things up. The reason I do all this is because it’s a lot of fun! I’m always learning new things.

DJ Times: Are you using the DVJ-X1, Pioneer’s DVD turntable?
Zabiela: Yeah, I’ve used it twice in a club. I used it for the first time at Womb in Tokyo, and it was pretty amazing to see the reaction. Earlier this year, I did an Essential Mix for Radio 1, and all through the Essential Mix, I had film samples, like “Blade Runner” and all sorts of things just tweaking in and out of the mix. When I played at Womb, I had all those films with me on DVD, so I started to do that. When I was doing that, I had a huge screen behind me, and the visuals are coming-up on the screen and I’m, like, scratching Harrison Ford! I was playing both the visuals and audio from the DVDs over the [audio] tracks that I had playing as well. I get visuals put to all of my music, so it’s playing the track and the visuals. If you had a track with perhaps a vocal in, you could have the singer on the wall singing behind you. Or, like I was saying about the hot cues, you could have a picture of a drum, a hi-hat and a clap on each one—with the sounds. So, I could be doing that like I just described, but every time you’d hear the drums, the drums would appear on the screen. Every time you’d hear the clap, that would appear on the screen.

DJ Times: It must be a trip to see the crowd reaction in a real-world setting.
Zabiela: Yeah, it’s pretty cool. I mean, it only works when you have the screen behind you or in front of you. I did it in Zouk in Singapore, and although it went well, I was over here, and the screen was over to my left in a completely different place. So, while I was doing it, it was like watching a football match or something; half the crowd was looking at me, and half the crowd was looking at the wall. It’s when people can see both at once, that’s when it really makes sense. I have a load of scratching sounds, and what I’ve done is, I’ve got a picture of my hand on the scratch sound, so I just put the fader up and it’s just a hand, it doesn’t move, and as soon as you start to move the platter, the hand will move in unison. Stuff like that, it kind of trips people out. [Laughs.]

DJ Times: How would you describe your sound?
Zabiela: I’d have to say, “acid house with breaks.” But, I really play a lot of different styles, all over the place. I guess what you could say is that I’m a confused DJ [laughs]. Kind of techno, and I like house, breaks, and I like melodic stuff. I’m all over the show.

DJ Times: Did your graphics design job help your music production at all, like when you’re mapping sound waves?
Zabiela: It helped really in a way that you wouldn’t expect. I actually designed club flyers, so I’d meet the promoters of the clubs and I’d be giving them my [mix] tapes! Eventually, I was starting to put my own name on the fliers that I was designing for these guys. Locally in Southampton, it really helped me to get out playing and getting in the clubs. It helped me in a really indirect way.

DJ Times: You embrace technology to the fullest. For DJs just coming up now, would you recommend that they learn digital DJing?
Zabiela: Yes. The reason is that there’s so much competition in DJing at the moment that I think you’ve really got to be doing something different and unique. I think just mixing one record into the next is—I don’t want to say anyone can do it—but everyone does that already. I think, it’s not just digital, but…just be different in some way. I think that’s really, really important. Production is important, too. But unfortunately, you can have a hit record and still be a really bad DJ! So, [production] will only take you so far, but yes, it’s a good way of getting your foot in the door.

DJ Times: Are you using the Internet a lot to exchange music with other producers and DJs around the world?
Zabiela: Yes, from the aspect that, a guy can make a track, someone that I’ve never even met. He can send me an email and say, “I made this track, here’s the link.” I’ll click on it, I can be in my hotel room in New York and think, “Wow, this is a great record.” Burn it onto a CD and play it out that night. So, from that aspect, [the Internet] is absolutely awesome. In fact, without it, I’d probably be screwed. I’d spend my entire life going around record shopping. Even getting records online or going to the record shops in the hotels, like Juno Records in the UK is an online record shop. I’m sure a lot of people use it here [in the U.S.], as well. You buy the records, you can listen to them online, A-side, B-side, all of the different mixes. I can buy it online right now, and when I get home, it’s waiting on my doorstep. But, I don’t agree with illegally stealing people’s music. At the end of the day, if that’s going to happen, we’ll have no talented producers; they’ll have to go work in Burger King, or whatever.

DJ Times: You’re having visuals recorded to sync with all of the audio tracks you play out?
Zabiela: Yeah, and I’m even doing some of them myself. Say you’re playing for three hours—that’s a lot of tracks. For every track, you need to have visuals. That’s a lot of work, and that’s another reason I don’t want to do visuals every week. It’s like, two gigs a month with the DVJ-X1 would be enough, because then, I wouldn’t be repeating myself. I’ll always be fresh. Actually, before I came away on this tour, I left a load of tracks that I need visuals for. I also use iMovie to make my own basic visuals. If you’ve got an Apple Mac, it’s a piece of software for people to make videos, like holiday videos or whatever. It’s simple, but it works. And you can put text on the screen, so if you’ve got lyrics, you can do that. It’s cool, I can do that on the plane, and I’ve got a DVD-burner in my laptop. So, I just import the track, make some simple visuals, make the DVD, and play it that night!

DJ Times: Do you feel that today’s DJs have a responsibility to think about the visual aspect of their live performance?
Zabiela: Well, when they first told me about it, I thought, that’s a lot of work. But it really isn’t. Not once you get into the right state of mind about it. It’s just another dimension, another experience for people who go to the club. It’s sort of my thing, you know?

DJ Times: Other advice to aspiring DJs and producers?
Zabiela: Well, there are a few things you can do. I know some up-and-coming DJs who have made themselves a website, put their own streaming promotional links and gone to the dance music message boards, and said, “Hey guys, I’ve done this mix. What do you think of it?” It gets the mix out to a wide range of people. My friend did this, and now he’s got his own radio show on Proton, which is an Internet radio station. So, the Internet has really helped. Also, if you’ve got a copy of Reason 2, you can make tracks on your computer. You don’t even need a keyboard or rack effects, because it’s all in the box. I’ve done the last two remixes in Reason. I think it’s alright as long as you don’t use the same sounds in the sound banks. Try and do something different with it, and it’s fine. I have used analog gear, though, like the [Access] Virus.

DJ Times: It’s as if your youth gives you some kind of advantage. You’re born into this age of technology, instead of being resistant to it, as some artists are.
Zabiela: Luddites! [Laughs] No, like I said, it doesn’t really matter. It’s not what you’re using; at the end of the day, it’s what comes out of the speakers.