In the last few years Australians have witnessed probably more international DJ tours than international rock tours, except that the former are less well advertised and run on a fraction of the budget. We have had recent tours from the hip hop "turntabilists" such as Q-Bert, his Invisible Scratch Picklz teammate DJ Disk, and studio turntabilist DJ Shadow composing completely new tracks from fragments of records manipulated with immense skill and precision; and we have had tours from the other style of DJ such as Jeff Mills, Sven Vath and Carl Cox whose skill and precision are utilized for different ends. Turntabilism makes for short sets limited to twenty or thirty minutes during which time the crowd predominantly watches in amazement. The culture of turntabilism which exists within hip hop has interesting parallels to the cult of the heavy metal guitarist and the classical musician - the overriding importance of skill, technique, practice, and virtuosity - like the ten minute guitar solo, turntabilism creates the hundred and one different scratch techniques and the "scratch solo". Whatever one’s opinion of the artistic merits of turntabilism and its techniques of sonic bricolage, it is certain that turntabilism has turned this sort of DJ and its place in hip hop into one that closely parallels rock’s obsession with "stardom". This contrasts with the rise of DJ skills in techno where, despite all the "3 deck wizardry", the skills and tricks, the criteria for ranking DJs has rested upon their ability to "rock a dancefloor".

 Carl Cox is probably still remembered best in Australia for his slamming hardcore UK rave (breakbeat) sounds circa 1991 and 92. But unlike here, raves have been long dead in the UK (or at least given a different name) with dance music moving firmly back into the clubs which has had a two-fold effect, firstly of re-establishing a commercially viable, major-label friendly and financially lucrative vocal-house music scene, and as a response, an entrenched electronic underground. "When I first came over in ’91 the whole emphasis was on rave because that was what was happening in the UK . . . . two years after that the rave sound in the UK seemed to go round in circles and I felt I had to go back to basics and re-invent myself. The commercial money-side of the scene in Australia has seemed to have followed Britain with tours from Paul Oakenfold, Sasha, Jeremy Healey, John Digweed, but I have always come with the underground vibe and brought music that I would like people in Australia to be hearing . . . Over the last two years I’ve been playing a lot of music from Detroit and Chicago and other music I consider cutting edge like Dave Clarke and The Surgeon. The first time you hear those tracks and you aren’t expecting it you are blown away by them, and there’s no doubt about it that this is the stuff that is pushing the whole underground dance music movement." Wedged between these two artificial scenes and an anathema to both, Carl Cox has struggled to take the music of the underground scenes into the mainstream clubs and hence to the mass audiences in an attempt both to rid the world of the hideous popstar-techno of Scooter, 2 (un?)Limited and Capella, and, more importantly, to make underground music production viable. To this end he not only DJs around the world introducing new people to what he considers the freshest sounds, but he also runs, with his wife Rachel, his own label, Ultimatum.

 Ultimatum is about diversity of sound. "There shouldn’t be any boundaries in music, and I don’t think that this is understood enough. For example at Cream (the biggest UK house club), they have the front room which gets all the media attention where they have Roger Sanchez, David Morales playing all the big garagey vocal tunes that eventually get accepted in the mainstream and hit the charts, but in the backroom you have myself, Andy Weatherall and David Holmes playing all sorts of stuff. In a way it is the backroom that gives Cream the credibility, whilst the front room generates all the media attention and draws the bigger and bigger crowds . . . . but it is the underground artists that need exposure . . . . since 1986 dance music has gone through so many different genres and you have to really be into the music itself to understand and appreciate this need for constant change, otherwise you end up being known as a 130 bpm vocal house DJ and selling yourself short".

 Like the reggae producers of Jamaica, it is often the people with the least access to music technology that end up making the best use of it. Jamaican studio producers such as Lee Perry, the Mad Professor, and The Scientist not only used the primitive studios of Jamaica in the 1970s to maximum effect tweaking every knob and filter to fashion the sound of dub that has been so immensely influential in dance music ever since, but they also first showed that the studio itself could be turned into an instrument of its own. Carl continues, "I went to Croatia and went into this record shop and heard some Croatian techno tracks and was blown away because despite not having the big studios and expensive gear these tracks were wild. And because they only have one synthesizer module instead of ten they use every little sound on it and make it work for them instead of people like myself who only use a fraction of it."

 "In some ways being on the road as a DJ is easier because you haven’t got the gear to drag around with you and with a rock band you play maybe an hour or an hour and a half then leave, whereas being a DJ I drink amongst the crowd then go on for three hour . . . . I have the chance to move through hip hop beats, inspirational tracks, banging house tracks, everything, and I walk away feeling like I have really done something. Apart from just showing, in the professional sense, that there are no boundaries on the styles or length of time a DJ can play for . . . . I think it is important that when I play people realise that it is them who have put me where I am, and that I still love the music and get inspired by the tracks people are making."

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