Global UnderGround: John Digweed V Danny Tenaglia

 

In the first of an occasional new series, we pit two of those perennial show offs, or Disc Jockeys as they are more commonly known, against each other in a DJ shoot out of global proportions. Hopefully we can discover who is actually worth listening to in the world of turntablism, mixing and dropping huge tunes. Here we present you with the first match up of round 1; Diggers versus Tenaglia…

 

DJ Shoot Out Round 1

 

There was a time when I wanted to collect all the Global Underground compilations. That was before I'd heard a few of them. But I couldn’t resist Digweed's Los Angeles and Tengalia's Athens disks when I saw them in a three for a fiver promotion. So in the first of this new series, we ask the question; which of these superstar international DJ types produced the best selection of tunes?

Being a DJ is the most over-rated occupation in the whole world. Essentially their task is to pick out records for us to listen to, but invariably they pick sixteen duffers and perhaps one better than average track. To make matters worse they 'mix' them all together into one gigantic abysmal continuous mess that engulfs the odd entertaining song which is now almost impossible to find. These guys take a real pride in their ability to seamlessly mix two songs together to the point of absolute smugness. I've got news for you boys; no-one cares!

With this in mind, I didn't have high hopes for our protagonists. Diggers once picked a couple of good songs for a Northern Exposure Compilation years ago, but on this showing he manages to pick just one decent song out of the twenty two (Kelli Ali-Love in Traffic). For a man whose job it is to pick good songs, that's a pitiful return at  just over 4%.

 

The problem is DJ's will do anything to avoid being referred to as 'cheesy'. To your average DJ, 'cheesy' is not the Vengaboys, but anything even slightly entertaining or interesting. Diggers packs his two CD set with the most dirgy soulless and vocal-less repetitive beats, that could only be out-dirged if PJ Harvey took up human beat-boxing and blasted out repetitive bleepy dirge at the same time as her indie rock dirge. To summarise: it's boring.

On the other hand, Tenaglia manages to pick no good songs and his set is equally boring but with a dirty, scuzzy New York kind of vibe. Basically, it's his job to pick good songs, but he can't find any. That's like a miner who can't find coal, a dentist who can't find your teeth or a dinner lady who can't lay her hands on some flapjack!

At the end of the day it's a hollow victory for Diggers and you can save yourself a lot of time and pain by Youtubing the Keli Ali track instead (or just click on it below). But he’s through to the next round, where who knows which international superstar show off he will meet?

Result: Digweed 1-0 Tengalia