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PHIL K [PHILK.DJ, AUSTRALIA] Friday Aug 05
Friday August 05
PHIL K
Superstar, jet setting, DMA-winning, and well-loved Melbourne DJ Phil K has been lead to question just what he wants from his career. And while he may not be able to answer that at the moment he knows one thing – he’s happiest in his hometown.
Having just returned from a one-month trip around the world, which consisted of 15 gigs and 23 flights, Phil K is getting back to normality, well as much as one can when you’re a DJ with music in your blood. “I’ve just got to stay at home, read the newspaper, watch a bit of television, try and stay off the computer and try and block out drum loops and music out of my mind for a few days and that’s the hardest thing to do,” he says.
With so much time spent with headphones over ears Phil has a restriction on how many times he can listen to a tune before it loses it’s impact on him. “I find if I listen to the stuff that I play out two or three times then I’m sick of it and I don’t want to hear it again and no one else will get to hear it, I’d rather save it and then I’ll be getting really excited at the same time as the crowd, and it adds to my enjoyment.”
Beginning his DJing career at small parties and functions Phil dreamed of taking his music to Melbourne clubs, and upon arriving there up-sized his dream to clubs on an international scale. He admits in the past to thinking “the grass is always greener” but has now found himself questioning his own motivation as a DJ. “If you’re always doing stuff in Melbourne you are guilty of thinking I’d rather be somewhere else and there’s better gigs somewhere else. And then you get to it and you do it and you realise you weren’t really missing much. The perfect example was Saturday night, my first gig in Melbourne for over a month, I started playing and I saw people getting into it and smiling and I started getting into it because these are my peers and the people I hang around with. And just seeing them have a good time takes a bit of weight off your shoulders, you just do what you feel and you play what you feel and all the machines are set up the way you want because you went there during the day to do your sound check because you didn’t have to fly in at midnight. I just hit the levels I wanna hit, and feel how I wanna feel when I’m DJing and not be under pressure of having to perform to another countries standards, another countries taste.”
And Phil knows Melbourne feels just as happy to have him back after a smiling punter called him a dude and told him deliriously, “Melbourne’s missed you. I was like ‘I’ve missed Melbourne’ and it’s just so funny because you go thousands of miles to do all these gigs and you don’t get the satisfaction that you get from jumping in your car and going 5 minutes down the street to go do a gig, you’re chasing this satisfaction around the world hoping to find it in some gutter in New York and it’s not there and if you just turn the corner in your own town and it’s there, so it kind of makes me question what do I want to do? Do I want to be an international pop-star DJ chasing this elusive vibe that I’m looking for or do I want to hang around here and have that vibe all the time? It’s a tough question to have to ask yourself, and doing 20 hour flights you have to ask yourself that.”
It seems I have caught Phil in one of those uncertain moments in life which can only be solved in due time, or else by drawing up a pros and cons list and chewing on a pencil for half an hour. One thing Phil is certain of though is exactly what he wants to achieve in his sets and what he wants the crowd to experience through his music. “Playing a set where I can take everything in from melodic breakbeat to techno, to experimental breakbeat, to industrial music, to flamenco guitars, to Missy Elliot in one set and have it work, that is what is satisfying to me,” he says. “Because I’m not having to pander to anything, I’m playing to my taste and my taste is so wide open that anything can work, and anything that I wanna hear I play. And I go to these clubs and they’re playing progressive house and that’s great that they’re into it but I’m into more than just that, and if you deviate off that angle people are just looking at you like ‘what are you doing, don’t you know what we want?’ So at the end of the day it’s got to do with what I can give as somebody who is a presenter of music.”
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Respect Fridays @ Aqua
1011 N Astor St
Milwaukee, USA
10pm - 2am
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saw him at fabric in june and on several other ocassions and he brings it proper.
