DJ Messiah defies musical classification

05/14/04 THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW (7)

Isamu Jordan  /  Staff writer

DJ Messiah's seven essential albums: "Vol. 6," Café Del Mar "On Tour," Adam Freeland "Essential Mix," Gabriel and Drisden "Dig Your Own Hole," Chemical Brothers "Dirt Chamber," Prodigy "Dark Side of the Moon," Pink Floyd "II," Led Zeppelin

Jason Purdie, aka DJ Messiah, hates the term rave music.

It's far too restricting for a musical genre with such universal appeal, he said.

Since classification is a necessary evil to describe music, Purdie prefers "electronic music," or better yet, "future music."

"Electronic music is used in commercials and on movie soundtracks, yet it is labeled rave music and associated with drugs when it's at more places than rave parties," Purdie said while sipping a Corona at The Twilight Room, 112 S. Monroe St., last weekend. "Raves give the music a bad name and classifying it doesn't give it a chance to grow and change."

Purdie, who runs Element Tribe Networks entertainment company, holds the prime spot at the free "Can Spokane?" voter registration concert on Saturday night at The Detour, 175 S. Monroe St.

Other names on the bill include singer/songwriter Matt Kelly, piano balladeers The Side Project, ultra-eclectics The Awesome Miami, and Rebel Alliance deejays Cinch and T-Spoon wind things up into the late night. It's an all-ages event and has a beer garden with ID. All you need to get in is your voter registration card or register to vote at the event. Sponsored by the Spokane County Young Democrats, the goal is to get 1,000 people registered to vote by November. Everyone is welcome, regardless of age or political affiliation.

"This is a chance to challenge people to think on their own and make their own decisions," said Purdie, 22.

Purdie will fuse his usual mix of drum and bass, new school breakbeats and hip-hop records with political speeches from the likes of President Bush and spoken-word poet Saul Williams.

"Music is a language, and I'm fluent in all forms," Purdie said. "Sometimes we speak soft; if we feel like getting rowdy, we'll get rowdy, if I feel like chillin', the whole crowd will chill with me."

It will be similar to the set he spins at The Twilight Room. Purdie jumps into downbeat early in the night for an older crowd that's looking to chill and have a drink after work. Then he progresses into what inevitably becomes an all-out sonic assault by the night's end. Starting next week, Purdie takes over as the house deejay at The Twilight Room on Thursday nights. Until now he's been drawing crowds bi-monthly at The Twilight Room.

"One night this guy walked in and he was like, ‘Is everyone on ecstasy in here? They're playing techno music and everyone is happy,' " Purdie scoffed. "It's the concept that you can go out and have fun and not get messed up. We're trying to create stimulation without intoxicants. Music, art, poetry: Get drunk on that instead of getting liquored up and collecting phone numbers."

 

by Leah Sottie, Ann M. Colford and Mike Corrigan

DJ Messiah agrees with Pink. Yes, that Pink. The pop star who dyes her hair pink and wear shirts that say 'pink' and who sings about kicking butt and getting into all kinds of Pink-ish trouble.

But she also sung something that struck a chord with Messiah: God is a deejay. To listeners, it's something we can't understand. But in Messiah's mind, it's a statement that he says is true.

"You have full control over a crowd of people. It's like holding clay in your hands and molding it the way you want to," Messiah, aka Jason Purdy, says. "You can make everyone chill out, you can send them a message, or you can choose to just rock their faces off."

It's funny to hear this from someone who is neatly sporting a wrinkleless Bank of America polo shirt -- one that is neatly tucked into a pair of pressed khakis. (Messiah is chatting with me on his lunch hour.) But Purdy doesn't seem to want to talk much about his corporate day-job. It's clear that being a deejay, rocking crowds and watching the Spokane electronic scene develop is where his passion lies. The bank shirt is just his Clark Kent daytime disguise.

Because in watching him at his weekly Thursday night gig at the Twilight Room, Messiah seems to truly act on that superhero-like power he has over his loyal listeners. Behind the turntables, he's like Superman. Standing in the corner of the dimly lit blue room, he cocks his enormous headphones onto his left shoulder, bouncing to the beat and casting sly glances at the crowd -- perhaps trying to gauge a reaction to his performance or simply to watch the one woman dancing to his performance. Bottles clank, the cash register processes another order, the Eighth Element's oxygen tanks whir in the corner and the bathroom door slams open and closed. But the whole time, Messiah keeps the beat going -- switching off with DJ O.S.H, the other resident deejay, between break beats and house music.

As he plays, a friend snaps pictures of his performance. Messiah stops, gives the camera a middle finger, laughs and continues fiddling among switches and knobs, vinyl and headphones. The lone dancer takes a break, and continues back to the undesignated dance area with one more friend. They dance, more join, Messiah continues. By 11:30 the place is packed, and the Twilight Room owners and brothers Ramsin and Ramon Amirkhas pump their fists to the beat from their spots behind the bar.

For Purdy, becoming DJ Messiah began when he was in high school, slowly transitioning from watching a friend's brother mess around with turntables to building his own vinyl collection and equipment base, to starting his own deejay company, Element Tribe Networks.

"I started playing house parties and a couple club spots in southern Idaho, Utah, Montana and Washington."

Since coming to Spokane, the weekly electronic night is something Purdy has been waiting to see. After he and DJ O.S.H. finally found a permanent home for their sounds at the Twilight Room, which opened in late 2003, the pint-sized bar has seen more and more electronica fans each week.

The weekly music spot is something that Purdy says can be instrumental in improving Spokane's nightlife, and providing a more diverse music scene. Thursdays at the Twilight are for everyone, he says -- not just techno fans. And, for the record, it's not a rave.

"I hate that word because it's got a bad name and a bad interpretation," Purdy says. "At the Twilight Room, we're just getting like-minded people together."

The Amirkhas brothers, having worked at Havana's Nightclub until it closed last year, are fans of the electronic sound and are hoping to mobilize local electronic music composers into creating a larger scene.

Ramon Amirkhas, who is a deejay himself, will host a seminar for those interested in making more electronic music this Sunday at 7 pm. He's held seminars like this in the past -- poorly attended ones -- but thinks more people will turn out for this weekend's event.

"There are a lot more bedroom deejays now," he says. "This is for everybody who is interested."

Amirkhas will have all of his equipment, including a sampler, at the event, and encourages local composers to bring their demo tapes to the networking and informational seminar.

Messiah and O.S.H. will be there, as well as other Spokane-area deejays, hoping to get the scene going and showing techno fans just how great it is to be a God at the turntables.