I
f you’ve never heard his name, or think you’ve never heard his tracks, at one point or another you’ll have touched his work. He founded Plus 8 records with long-time friend and fellow techno godfather Richie Hawtin, along with his own label, Definitive Recordings. He’s played festivals
like Global Gathering, hosts his own parties in Ibiza at the famed Bora Bora, and helped push electronic music into the new Millennium by championing Final Scratch, the first software/hardware combination to allow the physical manipulation of digital music via turntables. He’s even a founder of Beatport. Most recently though, John Acquaviva has released the video for ‘Good Music,’ a track he made with Alex D’Elia and Nihil Young, and which features the gritty vocals of Dan Diamond. A hefty deconstructionist main room minimal groove, it has become a calling card for Definitive Recordings, embodying an ethos this Canadian holds close to his heart for the label. “It’s our theme song,” John explains when we catch up to tap his ever-pulsing musical brain. “It’s not about being commercial, it’s just about good music.”
The 012
djmag.com
After being around as long as Acquaviva you’re bound to have opinions on the state of the music industry, and when you’ve been as successful as he has, they definitely count for something. When it comes to an honest overview on American dance music’s current state of health though, he believes that it’s about balance. “It’s always good and bad,” John explains, speaking about the EDM boom. “There are two sides to the coin. If you’re just a pure capitalist, when something’s trendy or popular, you can cash in in different ways, and certainly reach more people — or at least have the opportunity to reach more people. People jump in and say ‘Wow, EDM! We’re going to do an EDM influenced album’. It happened with disco, and it happens whenever dance music catches a bit of a wave, so everyone is going to try and do a dance mix. And then you get some real pop culture interpretations of what our music and our scene should be. The other side of that coin is if you’re a purist, you want to go the other way. So as a purist, a purist will say, ‘We’re not going to get too cheesy, too happy’.”
Business of Pleasure
John Acquaviva has been a hugely important figure in the growth of electronic music over the past 25 years. A techno original alongside teenage pal Richie Hawtin, he’s been a crucial part of the stylistic, technological and business-like growth of the scene since the late ‘80s — and he’s certainly not letting up now. DJ Mag USA meets him...
Words: CHANDLER SHORTLIDGE Pics: NICOLE VENGAS
Business-Like John is quick to point out that purists tend to simply stay away from the places that cater to the trendy and cheesy parts of the scene — Vegas and Miami, for example. He has very little, if any, ill will towards the ever growing pop-EDM scene, noting that “at times like this, you get more attention, the whole world is watching, we can make more money.” Though this may make him sound like a businessman first and musician second, he likes to think it’s both. “But it’s all relative. I like doing a bit of everything. Some artists probably think I’m way too business-like and some business guys think I’m probably too artist-like, so it all depends on which circle I’m in.” It’s this ability to see both sides of the picture — to see that if looked at a certain way, what can be good for business can also be good for music — that’s helped John become so successful, and was his process when helping to launch Beatport. “We felt the Internet should be more for music, because at the time it wasn’t,” he says. “Rich and I, just over ten years ago really felt like the world should be truly techno — technological — and we got involved in bringing laptops into the DJ booth. So Beatport was us coming together with a number of other people with the intent that content should be readily available for electronic music, because it wasn’t being serviced. It was very difficult for DJs, let alone fans, to find music. “It was very expensive to order a record and wait for months,” he continues. “So the Internet finally was able to let music move forward into the technological age that it’s now experiencing in the last few years. I still sit on the board [of Beatport] with Matt Adell and
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