I went to hear Ron Trent DJ at Strange Brew on Friday night.
When I started getting into techno in the mid-90s, my next door neighbour Derek who already had a decent vinyl collection (including some very classic records courtesy of his older brother) told me about this legendary record called “Altered States” by Ron Trent, made when he was only 14! Mind boggling stuff.
I hadn’t kept up with his output since then though. I have a big gap in my music education in terms of House Music which I plan to rectify.
Probably because the people (like Derek and Alan Dobbyn) who got me into techno in the first place were not at all into house music (except for, very specifically, deep house (original 90s deep house) like Steve Rachmad). Anything with a vocal would do nothing for them. I remember Alan once excitedly claiming that some DJ we were going to see “plays EVERY kind of music! Techno, hard techno, electro AND deep house!”. Those were the 4, nothing else. haha 😆
Anyway I went to Ron Trent not knowing what to expect. It was in the bigger front room of Strange Brew thankfully, so there was more space to dance. And dance I did! It was a warm night, a thick room… some lazers and a smoke machine. Great sound system. The music was housey but there were so many tracks that had instrumental solos, the first one which really lit up the room was a violin track!
This track really grabbed my attention. Huge house beat and this violin playing an improvised solo that goes on and on, but it didn’t sound like a jazz player… it’s just coming from somewhere else musically which I couldn’t put my finger on. After figuring out the track is Jovonn “Hesperia Soul” featuring Pat Mangan, it started making sense… I hadn’t heard the names before but looked them up. Pat Mangan is a fiddler, he grew up in NYC and is based there but has a lot of Irish connections, played in Riverdance, AND he’s a DJ too! What!
Jovonn also grew up in NYC and started out as a hip hop DJ in the 80s before getting into house music and establishing himself as a producer (he’s released more than 500 records!).
I don’t know how they hooked up but I love to imagine them bumping into each other somewhere in NYC and deciding to work on a track together, and making “Hesperia Soul” one day for fun one day in 2018, then me hearing Ron Trent play it in 2025.
Then there were many other tracks with horns, trumpets, saxophones and trombones, it was so musical! Also I really dug Ron Trent’s style of DJing, he did a LOT of cutting out the bass, EQing stuff, just constantly keeping the room guessing and moving, lots of surprises and twists and turns. Really made me think about the possibility of having too much relentless 4/4 kick drum in a techno set…
THEN he played a track with an absolute belter of a guitar solo! I was like wtf is this, this is amazing. Whipped out a quick Shazaam (really like having this resource) and it’s a track by Ron Trent himself called Street Wave featuring none other than… Lars Bartkuhn! Waaah! To watch my recent interview with Lars click here.
I left around 2am, drenched in sweat. I was feeling super inspired. I’m gonna make some house music with solos over it. It is very me.
thanks, bye ZOiD
PS New bundle offer on my two courses: