Limelight documentary - on the subject that DJ Mag USA urges you to watch to get a better idea.
Never one to sit and merely observe, Abe quickly got behind the decks at Limelight and was promoting parties there, and at the other three clubs that Gatien owned. His main night at Limelight was called Rancho Relaxo and had a wildly original sound which fused live music with DJing for the dancefloor. “We just brought a mixer and I’d call guys who made electronic music and asked them to bring their equipment, hook it up, and just see what happened. Sometimes it was techno and sometimes it was more on the ambient side. Sometimes I don’t know what it was!” Guests like Jimmy Tenor or Patrick Pulsinger would sometimes show up to play, but were never scheduled within Abe’s nebulous, freeform party aesthetic. “Our idea was, ‘let’s all hook up our equipment together and see how cool this can be.’ It was almost all live. I would DJ, then bring them in… then when they were running out of gas, I’d DJ until they were ready to go again! It was all very important, but not important at all.”
On other evenings, Abe would do more traditional bookings, “Limelight was the place I did the most bookings out of the four clubs. I brought a lot of techno people I knew at the time from Europe, and even some of the Chicago guys like DJ Funk and Mike Dearborn.” Although Abe retains a respectable sense of modesty about this time, he is credited by a lot of key figures in New York City as one of the main guys to bring European underground techno over. “People were a bit confused at first. Not confused in a bad way. Like Pan Sonic - they played on the main floor at Limelight. At peak time! The sound system was perfect for the way they worked bass. For the first fifteen minutes everyone was wondering what was going on, but by the end they were freaking out. That was a big risk to bring them in, but it worked!”
Abe started releasing music and DJing overseas during his time promoting at the city’s superclubs. It wasn’t easy to find a label at first, but an imprint of Peter Gatien’s small Vortex label (hilariously called Death) was happy to put out his productions starting in 1993. Recording mostly under the name Kirlian, Abe had a steady stream of releases on a host of labels including the legendary Disko B from Munich and Finland’s pioneering Sähkö Recordings. Playing around Europe and being exposed to the different scenes there was pivotal in affecting his DJing and production styles.
Every wave eventually crashes and around this time New York’s party bubble was about to burst as Guiliani swept in to clean up the city, dusting off draconian Cabaret Laws that required a license to dance to effectively shut down all nightlife. This didn’t affect Abe because he’d already gotten out and grown up. The promoter lifestyle was beginning to wear thin on him and, having just gotten married, a job offering a reliable paycheck finishing furniture on Wall Street lured him away from the whole scene for a few years. It was never going to be a permanent break. “A few years later I was in an elevator one day and realized that I needed to do something else because I was bored! I asked my wife if I could make music for one more year, she said ‘yes’ and I saved up some money and went into business for myself to make some tracks and set up my record label, Abe Duque Records.”
New Beginning
ADR was different than anything Abe had done previously, “I wanted to have a new beginning and just get my music out for the sake of getting it out over making money. I didn’t promote it, I didn’t tell anyone about it and I didn’t even label it. I just etched what it was into the vinyl and got it out there. That’s it!” He had also reinvented himself as an artist, “I was using
the name Kirlian for all of my productions at the time. After Wall Street, I figured if I only had a year to reboot then I knew I needed to use my own name. The sound was still me, but I put a directive into my head of focusing on the dancefloor instead of being all over the place. Ambient, electro, house… I thought I could do it all! If you do that then no one knows where to put it in the record store. As soon as I started to focus on the dancefloor, it got really easy to put a finger on me.”
The label was already doing well when ‘What Happened’ came along. A collaboration between Abe Duque and Detroit’s Blake Baxter, ‘What Happened’ was a commentary on the death of nightlife as well as a clever vent of the duo’s frustrations with what had happened with the scene. It was a huge hit and Abe’s productions have gone from strength to strength since.
His upcoming LP is sourced from a series of singles that he released a couple of years ago in the tradition ADR way, “No promo, etchings on the vinyl with no label, no digital tracks, etc. I just wanted to get it out there to see what happened. Then when that was all done, I reevaluated the tracks and changed a few things on them. There are three newer tracks that weren’t on the singles and everything else has at least been remixed, while some tracks have completely changed.” The result is 11 tracks that cover all bases in house and techno, completed by Abe’s wry humor, wrapped up in a cohesive, sonically brilliant and enjoyable package. Highlights include the midnight marauding acid of ‘With His Music’, the off key, head fucking of ‘Diabeto’ and the suitably soaring epic that is ‘I Am New York’.
Broken Heart
Although Abe still hasn’t returned to nightlife since his Limelight days, he enjoys teaching at Dubspot and has recently become a dad, which might keep his touring schedule grounded for the near future. He views a lot of the recent resurgence of electronic music in a way that someone who’s been in the business long enough (and now prefers to exist outside of it) would. “Let’s see how long it lasts! I’ve seen this again, and again, and again. New York has broken my heart so many times by this point.” He is quick to admit that the rise in EDM has helped the underground a bit, but still finds the whole phenomenon baffling and very much outside his sphere.
“I’m finding it to all be a jungle and I’m just Tarzan trying to get my music through it and to the people! Sure these new cats have come up, but I’m not going to cry about it, I’m just going to figure out what I’m going to do next. You can’t knock any hustle! It was bound to happen, and it is a hustle… but it’s curious, to say the least. I think the hype will ultimately die, but the underground will still be there.”
Although Abe’s rules are a bit tongue in cheek, we think that there’s a lot of truth in what he’s saying. Only someone with his wealth of experience (good and bad) could have come up with an album as rich as his forthcoming LP, and we are continuously impressed with his knowledge and how humble he is about it all. Never one to be caught up in cycles or scenes, and very much focused on his family and his students, his approach to the future is rooted in reality. “Let’s see what happens in terms of going forward. It could be that something materializes very soon, or not. As soon as the right idea comes to my head, I’ll move quickly with it.” We don’t doubt it.
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