climax when everything and everyone flows together, a moment when time
seems erased.
(Miezitis, in Fikentscher 2000:41)Variously signified by dancers throwing their hands in the air, blowing whistles,
shouting or, in the case of drum ‘n’ bass, calling for a ‘rewind’,^12 peak moments
unite the dance floor often through the release of tension built up during the mix
and the fulfilment of expectations delivered by an almost prescient programming on
behalf of the DJ. Whether such moments are triggered by the introduction of new
rhythms, feints or breaks in rhythmic structure, an acceleration of tempo (Rouget
1980), or simply by mixing from one ‘hot’ record to another, the result is often a
trance-like euphoria that, ultimately, defines a DJ’s set and the dancers’ experience as
‘successful’. Much of that success rests on the DJ recognizing that every set is a
narrative with ritualistic consequences received and reflected in dance. With the
traditional Western predilection for a beginning, middle and end (Grimes 2000:
107), that narrative is often likened (by DJs and dancers using metaphors that are
clearly spatial) to a journey. As a joint endeavour, the DJ or, as Fikentscher calls him
or her, the ‘soundscape architect’ (2000:8), skilfully draws from a blueprint of
performance techniques to resituate the dance floor as a place transported (ideally)
from ‘here’ to ‘there’, a task more complex than simply beginning and ending a set
with a series of interspersed peak moments. Rather, as van Gennep has noted in
cases ‘where the transition possesses an autonomy of its own as a secondary system
inserted within a ceremonial whole’ (1960:185), the passage process in a DJ’s set is
primarily encoded in every mix between records.
Often taken from published accounts of historical, religious or cultural events,
van Gennep’s understanding of the transitional process is based largely on
observable phenomena. While music announces those spatial boundaries—
particularly on the dance floor, where to ‘dance is to inscribe music in space’
(Rouget 1980:121)—identifying the stages as they unfold in a DJ’s performance
relies on an intricate observation of mixing techniques and an ear trained in the
complexities of the specific musical forms. Given these, it is possible to isolate stages
in a mix corresponding to van Gennep’s tripartite model. First, separation is
essentially that point where the DJ indicates structural and temporal change through
a type of narrative foreshadowing. By EQing the bass out of the forthcoming
record, brief vocal, instrumental and secondary rhythmic segments (such as a high-hat
or snare) of the forthcoming record can be inserted into the mix so as not to clash
with the 4/4 rhythm of the main record. While this does not interrupt the temporal
or structural flow of the main record, it does hint at the next movement. Second,
transition is the ambiguous phase during which, for those trained in underground
dance music’s performance idiom, it is apparent that two tracks are being played
simultaneously Depending on the DJ, this phase can last between one and five
minutes, usually involving a delicate manipulation of the EQ in which the 4/4 pulse
of one or both records is removed from the mix in order to synchronize ‘the
structural past and the structural future’ (V. Turner 1990:11) of two rhythmically
176 MORGAN GERARD