Tracking Treasure Down
Gabriel & Dresden—Dance Music’s Original
Digital Boys—Continue to Go for the Gold

Published in the July 2006 issue of DJ Times Magazine
Volume 19 - Number 7
By Emily Tan

New York City—Well before they met at Winter Music Conference and became one of dance-music’s top DJ/production teams, Josh Gabriel and Dave Dresden were already pursuing digital directions.

Gabriel’s musical education was the more formal of the two. Enlightened as a youth by Walter Carlos’ seminal Moog-fest Switched-On Bach, Gabriel became fascinated with electronic music and eventually studied it at Holland’s Institute of Sonology. He later earned a degree in composition from California Institute of the Arts and founded Mixman Technologies, so when plug-in culture became the norm, he was ready.

Dresden, meanwhile, was an all-CD jock in Connecticut at a time when the vast majority of club DJs scoffed at such things. Learning to spin on early Technics single decks, then Denons and ultimately Pioneers, Dresden played all over his home state and select parties in NYC. He also did some A&R work for Promo Only—he chose tunes for the sub service’s monthly CD compilations—and, perhaps less crucially, contributed nearly a decade’s worth of reviews and features for DJ Times.

Now the Cali-based duo stands at the summit. Their remixes are sought after by major global jocks like Tiësto and Paul Oakenfold. Their instant-classic productions like “As the Rush Comes” and latest single, “Tracking Treasure Down,” display strong songwriting chops and the ability to successfully collaborate with artists like Jes and Molly Bancroft. And their all-digital DJ sets—a mixture of Ableton Live and Pioneer CDJ-1000s—have wowed international clubland.
G&D’s rise-to-fortune story has been told in DJ Times before—it was exactly two years ago that the pair graced the cover of our second-annual Digital DJ issue. Nonetheless, we figured: Who better than Gabriel & Dresden to discuss the state of digital DJing as it relates to their work and the industry as a whole? So, as their eponymous artist album (on their Organized Nature imprint) hit the racks, we caught up with Josh, Dave and their manager Guy Ornadel at Caribbean Spice, DJ Times’ favorite Jamaican restaurant in Manhattan. Here’s how it went.

DJ Times: Why record your debut album as a continuous mix?
Josh Gabriel: Gabriel & Dresden is about the journey we take people on when we DJ. We wanted our album to represent that feeling. When we were deciding how to do it, there was the mix-CD approach with drums at the beginning and end and beatmixed together, but we didn’t want it to be confused with a mix-CD. We decided to make it more Pink Floyd-ish, with an ambient beginning and end. It creates a unique feeling that’s both artist album and DJ-ish.

DJ Times: Josh, you and Dave sang on this album.
Gabriel: Yeah, and the main vocalists were Molly Bancroft and Jan Burton, with back-up vocals from my wife, Kristy.

DJ Times: What was your creative process like in the studio, and how does Dave’s DJing in the studio inform the end result of your recordings?
Gabriel: First of all, each of the vocalists came individually to the studio for three or four days at a time. We worked on ideas from scratch, both co-writing lyrics and music with them. Molly and Jan are writers on the songs. We needed to do that because we wanted the songs to feel honest.
Dave Dresden: We wanted to represent ourselves with words that were ours. A lot of our songs are copy-and-paste things.
Gabriel: For “Tracking Treasure Down,” I’d scribbled a song that was never recorded. One of the lyrics was, “At the same time/tracking treasure down,” and Dave was like, “That’s the chorus!”
Dresden: I started singing, “Tracking treasure down…” to music that Molly had in her Korg Electribe…
Gabriel: Then we started writing more words and melodies around that, together.
Dresden: Meanwhile, I happened to DJ a couple of beats that I liked at that time. I’d loop a beat, and this beat would just totally make the music. It gave it a shape and that felt really good. That gave me a flavor. Essentially, we put together a rough version and then created the version that’s on the album. It’s more like a remix in the process, in that we used all the parts that we wrote the version of the song from. When you’re working with a singer who doesn’t live in your town, you have a limited amount of time to work with them, so you create a lot of parts so you have something to work with. That has to do with our extensive knowledge of remixing. But, it’s not the only way we write songs. For the vocal tracks, we finished those after the singers were gone.

DJ Times: Explain Dave’s role in the creation of this album vs. Josh’s role.
Gabriel: I’d say that I am definitely the engineer and the producer and technical end, creating sounds, making the mix, doing work with Logic Pro and all that stuff. I play a lot of instruments—bass guitar, guitars, keyboards—I’m really good with texture, melodies and harmonies. The area that I’m not good at is what Dave’s strength is: making sure it’s really ready for the dancefloor, and Dave has a keen sense of what people will react to in a popular sense. Dave’s the “hook man.” If I play two melodies, he’ll know which one is better. He knows what’s “hit-song-worthy.” That’s invaluable. Without Dave, we’d never get it right. I can drive things and know that where we’re driving is the right place.
Dresden: I understand the emotional feeling of music from having been a DJ for so many years and knowing not only how crowds react, but why they remember music, why it touches them. It’s almost a sixth sense with me.
Gabriel: I have a sixth sense, too, but I don’t trust myself [laughs]. Dave always knows which songs are gonna be big before they’re big.
Dresden: When I first started, I used to hype Josh on everything we worked on. It wasn’t a session until I got excited and hyper about it. That’s part of the process, too. You have to love it ’til the end of the process. I’ve heard “Tracking Treasure Down” more times than I’ve ever heard any song. We’ve gone through the writing process of that track, through the production, mixing, A&R, the DJing process, and I still love that song!
Gabriel: Dave doesn’t analyze things. He’s not confused by thinking in that way. He feels things. When he hears things, he experiences it and that’s how he feels. I’m always the guy who likes the obscure track on the album.
Dresden: Josh has taught me a few things about appreciation. He’s helped me hone in on what makes me good. I used to be able to accept if a mixdown was horrible, or a song had a bad line in it. Now, I can’t. He explains what bad production is.
Gabriel: I think because Dave wasn’t part of the music-making process, he didn’t understand what was being communicated in good production. Most people can’t accept watching a poorly produced movie because they have a lot of experience with visuals. Most people can’t recognize what makes music good or bad because they don’t know the music-making process. Good production communicates something.



DJ Times: There’s a lot of proper song construction on this album. Are you moving away from dancefloor-destroying trance tracks?
Gabriel: Not at all. We don’t really see any difference between this and anything else we’ve done.
Dresden: If you listened to the songs from the extended version, you’d see they’re more dance.
Gabriel: We feel, as with anything, your tastes develop and change over time. We were really inspired by indie rock, electro and minimal techno things that were happening.
Dresden: We were really moved when we heard The Postal Service album. It was like, somebody did it right. It felt as important as Depeche Mode.

DJ Times: What inspired this album?
Dresden: Touring, seeing the world from the perspective of somebody who’s always dreamt of seeing the world as a DJ or musician. Life, and the singers definitely were an integral part of this album.
Gabriel: We play all those songs in clubs. Our hope is that this album can transcend dance music. We feel like we’re a band that uses all the things we’ve been influenced by over the years. We’re just as inspired by Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, minimal techno, acid house…all those things go into what makes us, us.
Dresden: For us, it’s always been about the song. Even our remixes, we were very mindful and respectful of the song. We made sure the song felt like a song because as a DJ coming-up, I always got frustrated when the radio version was better than the dance mix. Dubs are cool and they’re great, but if it’s a vocal track, it should feel like a song. It’s a rule that I now live by as a producer. Maybe I’ll grow out of it.

DJ Times: Why did you feel the need to re-record Kansas’ “Dust In The Wind”?
Gabriel: As part of our artist album, we wanted to do a cover because we like listening to covers of bands. A great way to understand people is to understand their interpretation of someone else’s music. We liked the original song. We could’ve written the lyrics ourselves. That song is timeless. The fact that it was originally sung by a male with an acoustic guitar, and we recorded it with a female as a dance track. We wanted it to sound nothing like the original. It just seemed like a great contrast.

DJ Times: Josh, did you record this album completely in your home studio?
Gabriel: All in my home studio.

DJ Times: What gear and software did you use to record this album?
Gabriel: Mainly Logic Pro, some Ableton Live, everything run through a Mac G5.

DJ Times: Did you use any analog gear on this album?
Gabriel: We have a MiniMoog Voyager, an electric bass, electric and acoustic guitars, a tuned log drum. [Editor’s Note: Please see equipment list.]

DJ Times: What’s the single most important component of your studio?
Gabriel: The Moog, for this album.
Dresden: We bought it in the middle of the process and it ended up being an integral part of the songs.
Gabriel: We knew if we bought something that was hardware, it would change our sound. It wasn’t something we were looking for. We were drawn like flies to the blue lights [laughs]. We were messing around like kids in a candy store. We liked every sound we were hearing, and we were having fun. If we’re not having fun in the studio, we’re not making good music. That was a great investment.
Dresden: We wanted to infuse the room and change the set up of the room.

DJ Times: Are there sounds created with analog gear–such as the Moog Voyager and Roland TR-909—that you feel cannot be accurately re-created using plug-ins?
Dresden: We didn’t have a 909, but Scarlett Etienne had one and we used hers for “Eleven,” which she co-wrote with us.
Gabriel: Different tools lead you to different places. The sounds you’re gonna make in 15 minutes with the Moog are not the same sounds you’re gonna make with plug-ins. In the keyboard sounds, it’s actually me playing the MiniMoog synthesizer in real-time and the audio’s being recorded. Because it’s not MIDI data, it’s not quantized, so you hear the mistakes, and those mistakes are organic. The tools always change the output. If you use analog gear, you’re gonna have something different from plug-ins. Not one is better than the other; they’re just different.
Dresden: Josh has always made a point to say that what you lose from the analog experience, you gain from other things, like control. People were very uppity about DJs who spun CDs. I’ve been spinning CDs since I started DJing in 1989. People used to tell me that I wasn’t a DJ, but I never liked vinyl because I never played vinyl. New York City had accepted CDs by the late-’90s, but when I moved to L.A. in 2000 to work for Groove Radio, L.A. didn’t have CDs in most of the clubs. I went from being a well-respected DJ in New York to being a nobody spinning CDs in L.A. I couldn’t get a gig. I remember when Josh first said he was gonna use Ableton Live to DJ with, I balked and said, “That’s not DJing!” Josh explained to me that it’s not about what you’re using, it’s about what you’re doing. It’s about the output. I like the fact that the CDJ-1000 has a looping feature; I have an attachment to that CD player.

DJ Times: What comprises your live DJ set-up, at the moment?
Gabriel: We have a Mac G4 laptop running Ableton Live, an M-Audio FireWire 410 audio interface connected into the club mixer with cables. Now that we’ve been doing this for a while, we have ideas of how we want to change our set-up. One of the things we wanted to do was add some type of controller to be able to control the effects and remote parameters. The problem in the DJ booth is space and also finding the right controller. I recently found…there’s a place in Holland called STEIM, they make software called junXion and it allows you to connect a USB video game controller to your computer and translate that into MIDI data for Ableton Live. So, you can hook up to six USB controllers. Imagine being able to do filter-sweeps with six joysticks! We’re trying to make effects more intuitive.
Dresden: We’re not people who are misty-eyed for vinyl. I don’t think we look like we’re reading our emails by DJing with a laptop. I think the acceptance of any other medium besides vinyl has almost gone 180-degrees.
Gabriel: People have accepted the fact that vinyl is not the format of choice anymore. Vinyl was the standard for so long people never questioned it. Now that it’s not standard, people’s ideas are changing.
Dresden: Downloading has lessened the value of music. Over time, DJs realized the CDJ-1000 as a superior piece of equipment, very well thought-out for a DJ’s performance. DJs just got addicted to that and the convenience of MP3s and getting music so easily.
Gabriel: We’ll have changed over to the new joysticks by July. It’ll allow us to add a new layer of controllability. With that, comes new ways of DJing.
Dresden: It’ll further blur the lines between bands and DJs. Even if it’s not music that you made, you are really affecting it.

DJ Times: How do you think a controller like these joysticks will affect the future of DJs?
Gabriel: Ten years ago, you’d go to the record store and that’s how you got music. Now, I’m the guy spending extra time in the studio. Dave’s the guy at home for hours and hours online IM-ing with producers and getting new music for our sets directly from producers. Music gets created and sent much quicker now. Sites like Beatport, where you can buy stuff from indie labels, really help. Dave loves a cappellas. We were in Washington, D.C., the other day and he was trading a cappellas with someone. He’d bought a John Tejada song from Beatport. It was a great track, but it didn’t fit into our sets. Ableton Live has enabled guys like Dave, who don’t have 20 years of production experience, to take parts from a James Holden track. That’s part of being a digital DJ—he can go to Beatport, slap together a bootleg in a day and we’re DJing it that weekend.
Dresden: We were on a plane to Australia, and we’d wanted to play something distinctly Australian. I took an Infusion track and mixed it with our track, “Arcadia,” and now that’s the only version that we play out! It’s like how hip hop gave people who weren’t musicians a voice. I’m not a musician; I’m a DJ who has a good ear, but I didn’t go to music school. I don’t know all the things that Josh knows, the technical jargon. But programs like Ableton Live give you the ability to realize a dream that you might not have realized, and that’s going to change music. The fact that Mac computers come with GarageBand is huge. It’s like, “Logic Lite.” It’s laid-out very simply so that a person with very little knowledge of music can do what’s in his mind.

DJ Times: What kind of new DJ product would you like to see created?
Gabriel: One is a three-dimensional projection screen above the audience that would allow them to visualize the music as we’re playing it. We visualize music in a certain way, and that doesn’t translate usually in a club. Imagine the difference between radio and MTV when it first came out. It didn’t make sense to have music alone, anymore. I personally think DJing would be more fun to not be in the DJ booth. I’d love to have the joysticks on the dancefloor.
Dresden: I only doubted for a second when he chose Ableton Live; I feel like I’m a better DJ because of Live. Just the way the program works, everything’s put on a grid, everything’s quantized. We usually don’t have headphones on, so we can talk about the segue and do it as it’s happening. It makes music-making so much more fun.
Gabriel: Dave had an idea to play a song from The Streets’ Original Pirate Material, so he started playing that over the song I was playing. I reacted and started taking the high frequencies away so you could hear the voice, ’til it went down to a rumble. Then I kept taking the frequencies up again.
Dresden: We were playing Paul Oakenfold’s “Southern Sun” and we put an a cappella right into the interlude. I didn’t know exactly where it was gonna go. When Josh grabbed the filter, it worked. You could feel the energy of the room building as Josh built the energy back up, and then I looped that.
Gabriel: That’s why we’re like a band. We’ve developed this DJing style over time, like a drummer and guitarist know each other. But, sometimes we yell at each other, and train wrecks on the computer are the absolute worst.

DJ Times: How so?
Dresden: Dumb shit like bad EQing and not knowing a song, or if the vocal comes back too soon, bad things can happen.

DJ Times: What are the pros and cons of DJing with Ableton Live?
Gabriel: Pros: You’ve got more focus on the music and the intricacies of what you’re doing and where you’re taking people. There’s new ways to control sound, so you have lots of effects and plug-ins. You can have beats from one song with vocals from another, with music from yet another song. It’s unmatched control of creativity. Cons: Bringing a laptop into a club can be cumbersome. You get in the way of the DJ before you. Set-up is a pain because you’re a kink in the neck of the club’s system.
Dresden: What I love about Ableton Live is that it wasn’t made for DJs. What’s great is that what’s been accepted by dance music are things that were never intended to be used the way we’re using them. It’s like punk rock. What I don’t like with Ableton Live is that you can’t see both waveforms at the same time. You don’t have a bird’s-eye view of your music. I do like the fact that dance music always thrives on things that weren’t intended for it—like the tree that grows out of cement.

DJ Times: How do you see the future of digital DJing?
Gabriel: The joystick is a special order from some gaming controller website. We’re not gonna modify it; it’ll just be straight out of the box. If that doesn’t work, we’ll find another thing.
Dresden: We’re getting more into DJing with two laptops, but we carry CDs as a back-up. We’re thinking of new ways to do what we’re doing, because DJing needs to get fresh again. It’s becoming a little bit routine. When we DJ, we sing all the songs. We really passionately like these songs.