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Article - Deiselboy

Dieselboy
By: Jocelyn Dickey

Published in Rinse Magazine, November/December 2002

Born in Tarpon Springs, Florida with formative years spent in Rye, Colorado (a sleepy town with a population no bigger than 3,000) and Oil City, Pennsylvania, Dieselboy’s life has been anything but typical.

Now residing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dieselboy (a.k.a. Damian Higgins) is one of America’s best-known drum and bass figures. With a hectic DJing schedule, proof positive of his current popularity and respect, Higgins is also one of the hardest DJs to reach. But, luckily for Rinse, he was able to take some time out of his schedule to tell a little of his story.

From his recent critically acclaimed mixed CD “Project Human;” to his involvement with America’s premiere drum and bass tour, Planet of The Drums; to his newly established label, Human; Dieselboy is involved is involved in the local and international dnb scene on many levels. In the story that follows he describes how he progressed, musically, into the artist he is today.

Origins

Like many, Higgins was raised by his mom in a single parent household. “She is a very strong woman, and really instilled in me discipline, self-reliance and motivation,” he explains.

That said one can see that Dieselboy’s current and past success has been no accident. It has come through hard work, discipline and dedication.

While attending junior high school in Rye, Higgins was first exposed to DJ culture via his cousin who starting to attend clubs and check out the scene. “He was always showing me mixtapes, 12” remix records and breakdancing moves,” he explains.

Some of Higgins’ early experiences with music included playing snare drum in the school band from grades 4 to 8, and joining a small breakdance crew in junior high. “We called ourselves the Bronx Crew, which is laughable because we lived in such a small town and had never even been to New York,” he explains. “Chalk that one up to watching ‘Beat Street’ and ‘Breakin’ too many times.”

Dieselboy was also influenced musically by his father, a singer who had a top 10 record out while Higgins was still in elementary school. “I never attributed his career with generating my personal interest in music, but, looking back, I think that it’s definitely had an effect,” he says. “I was always aware of the ‘music industry’ and my father’s bookings and whatnot.”

When Higgins began developing his own ear for music, he was influenced by sounds presented to him by his sister and cousin. At the time, they introduced him to artists like Chaka Khan, Prince, Madonna and various breakdance/electro tracks. In high school, his sister was somewhat into “the whole Depeche Mode/New Order thing” for a bit. Higgins says he ended up falling in love with synth pop from there.

“I was buying a lot of Depeche Mode wannabe bands – Red Flag, Anything Box etc. – as well as lots of clubby RnB stuff like Guy, Bobby Brown, Heavy D, Redhead Kingpin, Wrecks n Effect etc.” Dieselboy says, recounting early musical choices. “The dance music bug was starting to bite me.”

From there, his musical preferences took a turn towards the harder end of the spectrum after witnessing Nitzer Ebb open for Depeche Mode during their Violator tour. Higgins was drawn to the sounds of dance industrial bands like Nine Inch Nails, Front 242, Frontline Assembly, Skinny Puppy, Manufacture and early Wax Trax during his early college days.

Techno, breakbeat, jungle …
In 1991 while completing his sophomore college year, he heard techno for the first time.

“Near the end of the summer going into my sophomore year of college, I had broken my foot skateboarding. Right after school started, I went to this Front 242 concert on crutches and was standing in the back far, far away from the mosh pit, trying to look over people’s heads to see the band. It sucked!

“While I was standing there a guy who worked at a local alternative music store walked up to me. He whispered in my ear, ‘Check out T99 – Anasthasia, you’ve never heard anything like it before.’ This was my gateway into techno music and ended up being a cornerstone to my career as a DJ,” Higgins says, explaining what lead to his first encounter with techno.

“After the Front 242 show, I went to the local dance music store called Collectors 12″ and hunted down that T99 tune. The guy was right, I had never heard anything like it before - my mind was officially blown, and thus began my addiction to techno and dance music.”

In a story familiar to any DJ or serious music connoisseur, Higgins describes spending all his available cash on compilation CDs and eventually 12”s. After initially shopping at Collectors 12”, Higgins later became a regular at Turbo Zen Records and eventually Philadelphia’s well-known 611 Records.

In another familiar story (further proof of the power of community radio to represent vibrant, underground, non-commercial music), Higgins says he was also influenced by a show on Carnegie Mellon University’s radio station, WRCT. The show was hosted by a duo calling itself the “Techno Terrorists.”

Higgins eventually became part of the show, and through this involvement he learned the basics of mixing and DJing.

Unlike some heads who were exposed to jungle or drum and bass a little bit later, Higgins witnessed its evolution form early techno. “When I started listening to techno back in 1991 there were only two real genres - techno and house,” he says.

“As things began to change and splinter off into different sub genres I stuck with the music that eventually took shape as drum and bass. It happened so slowly and over such a long period of time that I never even really noticed the change. Week after week the beats slowly got faster and more complex. We called the music breakbeat for the longest time (in the UK they called it hardcore and eventually darkside). I don’t even remember when, but at some point someone called it drum and bass and jungle. To me it was just another description … another name to call breakbeat.”

Always into new and current music, Higgins says the concept and sound of jungle appealed to him because it sounds ahead of its time.

Reflecting a DIY attitude that seemed to predominate in the early days of the scene, Dieselboy says he started DJing only a few months after discovering techno music. He did this mainly because he wanted to hear the music he was buying played out at local parties and raves. In 1992, he made his first foray into the world of promoting, organizing three of his own events.

Producing
1993 saw Dieselboy produce his first track, using tracking software on a friend’s Amiga computer. “It was just an experiment, a curiosity in writing my own music,” he says, explaining that nothing ever became of this tune.

Already bitten by the production bug, in 1995 he traveled with a friend to the UK to go record shopping. During this trip Higgins met up with Mark Caro (a.k.a. Technical Itch) and the duo collaborated on a tune together. It was released as The Scythe on Caro’s Tech Itch records.

“Years later I returned to the UK and we collaborated on more music together,” recalls Higgins, listing off the names of a few of the duo’s tunes including: Atlantic State, The Descent, and Render.

But due to a hectic DJing schedule, Dieselboy’s move towards production has been a slow and gradual process.

At this point in his career, Higgins was living in Pittsburgh, where, he says, the scene was medium sized, healthy and open minded. “At early shows you could go out and hear jungle, house, hardcore and techno all in one night,” he explains. “Because of this atmosphere, I was able to actually make a little headway in my career as a breakbeat / darkside / jungle DJ. In other cities, it might have been quite a bit harder.”

DJing
Support for the fledgling DJ came first from Pittsburgh’s local community. After he started distributing mixtapes online through mailing lists like SF-raves, NE-raves and MW-raves, it started to become widespread.

“I released two mixtapes in 1995 entitled ‘Witness the Strength’ and ‘Supreme ‘95′. I attribute much of my success now to the bookings I got on the back of those two tapes,” he says.

“Around this time I made an attempt to get hooked up on some promo mailing lists from the UK. I sent out a bunch of letters to different labels with my phone number and email address asking to get records sent to me. It just so happened that Dan Donnelly, the head of Suburban Bass Records in the UK, had just gotten an email address sorted out. He received my letter in the mail and decided to try out his email by writing to me. This turned into daily emails and phone calls and eventually an offer to do a mixed CD for the American market.”

This CD, called “Drum and Bass Selection USA”, was Higgins’ first major release. It was put out on Suburban Bass USA, a sub-label of Moonshine Music at the time, and helped Dieselboy start becoming a household name across America.

Since then, he has been involved a variety of other projects related to drum and bass including his latest mixed CD, “Project Human.” He has even started his own record label called Human.

Promoting
On the promotion end of things, for the past five years he has been part of Platinum. It is a 21+ weekly event in his current hometown of Philly, which has brought in countless national and international guests and helped enriched the local drum and bass culture.

He is also part of a DJ collective called Planet of the Drums, alongside AK1200, Dara and MC J-Messinian. “As a whole we have made it our mission to fully push drum and bass stateside, and to help be a voice for our scene,” Higgins explains, describing how over the years the jungle community in America has gotten a fairly consistent diss at shows in terms of billing, sound systems, etc.

Before the tour was organized Higgins says AK1200, Dara and himself were each other’s biggest competition, in a sense. “We were always vying for some of the same gigs and trying to one up each other with new music,” he explains. “I thought it would be a cool idea to possibly do a tour with those guys and give people a chance to see all three of us at the same show on the same night.”

The collective has toured together over the past three years spreading the gospel, showing how drum and bass is meant to sound when it is played out on a proper set up and becoming friends in the process. The first year the crew did the tour with Dub 2 as their MC, and hit about 13 cities. Last year they added MC J-Messininan. Although they have talked about collaborating together on future projects including a Planet of the Drums mixed CD trilogy, so far busy schedules have prevented them from coming to fruition.

Achievements
“My proudest moments as a producer have been the track Invid, which I worked on with Technical Itch, as well as the remixes that I was part of for the ‘Project Human’ CD (as myself with Kaos as well as part of my production kru - Weapon),” he says. “Invid received a lot of positive feedback from the electronic music community and actually appeared in the top 5 billboard dance chart.”

Higgins is also proud of the remix he did with Kaos of Styles of Beyond for the “Project Human” CD. He explains that it was satisfying on a creative level and in terms of the level of detail in the production and programming. Currently, Higgins is at work on a radio edit of this tune using live guitars and drums.

“The Weapon remix of Tech Itch’s Reborn was probably the biggest dancefloor tune I have ever had a part in, says Dieselboy. “People like AK1200, Dara and Dom and Roland said it was their ‘tune of the year’ and I personally have seen this track devastate dancefloors.”

In spite of recent achievements, Higgins is already hard at work on projects for the upcoming year, once again demonstrating his strong sense of motivation. He is currently in the process of working out a deal to release the new Bad Company CD in the USA, hinting that part of this package might include a few bonus remixes of older bad company tunes done by himself, Hive, Kaos and Karl K.

Also look for a remix of a tune on Hatiras’ upcoming album, and the “Project Human” vinyl release coming out as two double packs on Moving Shadow in the UK in early 2003. It will feature a bonus VIP of Styles of Beyond’s Subculture by Sinthetix.

If his incessant touring schedule will permit, he would like to re-unite with Caro in the Studio. Hopefully we will see another Tech Itch versus Dieselboy 12” at some point in early 2003. At this point only time will tell if one of America’s busiest DJs can squeeze it in.

Articles | 10.03.2007 4:47 |