BLAZE OF GLORY!
After a life-changing epiphany at Nevada’s Burning Man festival, dance music icon Carl Cox
is back with a bang, with an incredible new two-CD mix for Global Underground, ‘Black
Rock Desert’, sonically documenting his sand-swept experiences. DJmag discovers how
the isolated desert festival has become his new creative muse…
Words: JIM BUTLER Pics: KRISTIAN GEHRADTE
iven his illustrious career, now into its fourth decade lest we forget, Getting there proved to be something of a logistical nightmare. In September, Cox is
G
you’d be forgiven for assuming that Carl Cox was long past the point of still based in Ibiza, so he had to catch a fl ight from the Balearics to Gatwick, via
mind-boggling, eye-opening, life-changing revelations. Well, you’d be Madrid. From Gatwick he fl ew to Las Vegas, where he then caught a small plane to
wrong. In 2008, after innumerable requests, the Godfather of British Reno. There he hired an RV to get to Black Rock. Having left Ibiza on Tuesday, having
techno fi nally played the notorious Burning Man festival in America. played Space, he fi nally got to the festival on Thursday evening.
For Cox, it was nothing short of an epiphany. Even now, a year and a half on from his “I had to arrange a driver, I had to arrange a car, food, I had to arrange everything that
momentous trip, the awe with which he describes his fi rst visit to Black Rock, Nevada, allowed me to undertake this journey. It probably cost me £25,000. Just to go.
is still readily apparent. Nothing else –— that’s with fl ights, drivers, the truck, food and everything.” And this
“It blew my mind,” Cox, now 47 and still literally larger-than-life, concedes was just for the love of it. Opulent Temple might be one of the most successful stages at
enthusiastically. “Being on the Playa was, without doubt, the best thing I’ve done in the festival, but it is not a big money-paying gig.
my life. Purely based on what it gave me, and why I did it.” “I’m not even going there to get paid in any way, shape or form,” he says. “I’m doing it
to support something that comes from the right place, which is the heart. We love
Coming from one of dance music’s pure legends, this is heady praise indeed. He was at what we do and there’s a reason why we do it. No-one has paid to see me play. I’m
the vanguard of the acid house revolution of the late ’80s, he DJed at some of rave’s there purely because someone has asked me if I would like to do it. ‘Yes I would!’, so
biggest, best and most important clubs and nights (Hacienda, Shelley’s, Heaven, The here’s an embodiment of my music and here’s a snapshot of what I think is realistically
Eclipse, Sunrise, Shoom) and he’s managed to straddle the underground and the where I am right now.
mainstream with ease — let’s face it, Carl Cox is arguably the only thing anyone “So it’s not Carl Cox playing at Madison Square Garden, or playing in Egypt at the top of
interested in repetitive beats can agree upon; he is dance music’s equivalent of The the Pyramids. I am at Burning Man at the same level as everyone else. What I have,
Beatles. And he’s still fi ghting the good fi ght. Now an elder statesman, he maintains a from my artistic point of view, is the way I play music and make people happy. For me,
watchful eye over a sprawling scene, he, as much as anyone, helped give birth to. And that’s perfect. It’s the perfect way to feel about me and my music and the perfect way
yet, he believes his two appearances at Burning Man (he returned last year) to be up to explain a part of my life and why I did this in the fi rst place.”
there with everything else he’s achieved.
“I feel that I’ve found a necessity in my life,” he says. “It allows me to be who I want to Instinct
be, and it allows me to share my music with everyone else. I am in Burning Man now His instincts were correct: parting with the cash for the RV was a wise
— I’m gonna go again next year and I’m gonna go again the year after that. The things move. The rangers that greeted his arrival told him as much, noting
that I experienced there, the things that I saw, the people I met, how I felt about it that he was about to do Burning Man in style. But what impressed
when I left, it gave me another purpose to live.” him more than that was the initiation ceremony he had to perform
Of course, for us Brits, Black Rock Desert is not just around the corner, it’s not like to gain entrance onto the Playa. Firstly, he had to kiss the
getting to Glastonbury. So as tempting as spending a week in an American desert in ground, then roll around in the dust. He then, as he tells it, got
September sounds, many of us are never going to experience this alternative, anarchic his ‘arse spanked’, before he was allowed to ring the bell,
universe. Not in the fl esh anyway, because Carl has compiled an incredible two-CD mix, whilst shouting Burning Man, and he was allowed in. His
‘Black Rock Desert’, sonically documenting his experiences in the Nevada desert. And reaction to this?
not only that, this album is a genuine dance music historical artefact. Unbelievably, “Wicked! Let’s go and enjoy ourselves!”
it’s Cox’s fi rst compilation for Global Underground. Over the years, he had been asked a
number of times to compile a set for the label, but he’d always refused. He knew that Having fi nally got there, his gob was well and truly
any album for Global Underground had to be unique, so he demurred. Constructing a smacked when he witnessed the spectacle unfolding
mix based on his experiences in Ibiza, say, would have been, he argues, too easy — before him. Because it was pitch-black when he arrived,
“people know the story” — so he bided his time. all he could see was the moon, the stars and a
“If Carl Cox was going to do a Global Underground album eventually, there was only multitude of moving lights. Because there are no
going to be one,” he explains, referring to himself in the third person, as is his streetlights in this artifi cial city, everyone sports
considerable wont. “It had to be somewhere with signifi cance. We wanted something some form of illumination at night, whether they be
that really meant something to me in my lifetime and something that documented an walking, running or travelling by bike.
event that a lot of people still don’t know anything about.” Hence Burning Man. “I immediately thought, ‘I have just landed on an
alien planet. I have no clue where I am right now.
Destiny All I know is that I’m here and it’s awesome’,” he
The fi rst person to tell Carl about Burning Man was his old acid house sparring partner recalls. “I couldn’t go to sleep. I was like, ‘Right,
Paul Oakenfold. By Cox’s reckoning, that was 15 years ago. For the last 10 years the let’s go out’. It was phenomenal, the things I
guys behind the Opulent Temple stage at the festival had been in contact with Carl saw that night. The Opulent Temple was on. I
about performing there. Unfortunately the time had never been right. He was always think Lee Burridge was playing and he was
working. Finally, it got to the point where he had to go. rocking the house. But we walked about and
“I said to myself I am going to take the time off to experience something that I believe saw some amazing things. The music and the
I’ve never experienced before. When I spoke to my manager about it she had no clue, energy… and I stayed all the way up. We got
but she knew that there was some fi re in my belly, so she was like, ‘off you go’.” there about seven at night and we stayed up
024
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DJ482.carl cox_feature.indd 24 18/1/10 15:41:55
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