Author: Eric Jensen, Managing Editor
Thomas Carroll fought an epic battle on Saturday night. Armed with his trademark golden helmet, a homemade light machine and an eclectic music repertoire, his mission was to introduce his electro set into the most dangerous, volatile environment for musical expression: an Oxy dance. A treacherous pit of carnal sin, dense with inebriated young adults acting on their basest sexual instincts and howling requests for the song about the apple bottom jeans, organized dance events at Occidental could make any DJ shake in his boots.
But Carroll isn’t just any DJ. The senior art major spins under the alias DJ Dreamweavrz and understands the nature of the beast.
“When people are dancing, they don’t want to focus on themselves. They like to have someone else to focus on,” he said. While that someone could be an obnoxiously drunk student, Carroll offers several fresh alternatives to ease the pressure of public self-expression.
One weapon is his arsenal is his light set-up, the Dream Machine, a box with eight switches and eight outlets for different kinds of lights that he can control while he spins. He cites Dan Deacon, a future shock DJ from Baltimore, as inspiration for the set-up. “My dad helped me build it over the summer,” Carroll said. “It’s especially good for house parties.”
For Carroll, the light show is one of the most important focus-shifting tools to get people to dance. He knows lighting can make or break his set. “A lot of people tend to leave the living room lights on during a party and it just kills it,” he said.
Getting people to dance takes more than just good lighting, however. Since Carroll started experimenting with the equipment at KOXY in his sophomore year, he’s been developing a holistic sensibility for the music he spins. He’s a firm believer in incorporating showmanship into his sets. Clad in his gold spray-painted football helmet, bobbing and dipping with his beats, he sets an example for the crowd to follow.
Carroll’s high-school love affair with Daft Punk has influenced his dynamic performances. The Parisian house duo is known for playing its live shows wearing robot masks, never revealing their human form. In the words of Daft DJ Thomas Bangalter, “It became exciting from the audiences’ point of view. It’s the idea of being an average guy with some kind of superpower.” Carroll recalls the two Daft Punk shows he attended recently, each in different parts of California. It’s clear that as far as visual presentation goes, he’s a student of their school of thought.
But musically, Carroll sets his own standards. “A lot of DJs stick to some sort of genre, and my sets have a foundation in electro and house, but I use a lot of Top 40 stuff as an entrance point for people who might not be as familiar with house,” he said.
His energetic remix of T-Pain’s “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’),” which he showcased in the quad during lunch last Friday, reveals his knack for blending genres. His diverse taste in music enriches this skill. He cites interests in everything from the blossoming Australian rock and house scenes to blog house, a genre developed through internet music sharing.
Even with his battalion of crowd-pleasing tactics, the very fact that his set is house and electro-based puts Carroll under imminent scrutiny. The last time an Oxy dance featured a house DJ was when Philosophy Professor Kory Schaff (a.k.a. DJ Darkbeat) spun first semester and he encountered a lot of hecklers demanding rap and hip-hop. But Carroll was optimistic. “If I’d tried this last year at this time, I’m not sure how it would’ve gone, but with [the DJ duo] Justice exploding, people are more open to house music,” he said.
Carroll also points out that the mainstream music scene is shifting towards a more electronic sound, as seen in songs like Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music,” which samples Michael Jackson’s 1983 single “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin,'” and Britney Spears’s “Piece of Me.”
With the stage set for his Winter Formal debut, Carroll felt more excited than scared. “I was flattered to be asked to DJ for Winter Formal,” he said. “I’m a little nervous, but I feel prepared. I may play more Top 40 than I usually do for the student body as a mass.” He had the right attitude, and his demonstration in the quad spoke for itself. It almost didn’t matter what happened on Saturday. Carroll was going to have a good time either way.
And he did indeed. A hefty crowd showed up for the dance, and the consensus on the music, if the dancing on the scaffoldings was any indication, was positive. “He played a lot of electronic,” Shannon Kincaide (sophomore) said. “But no one seemed to care that there wasn’t as much hip-hop.”
It seems as though, little by little, people are opening their minds and ears to house music.
Besides his passion for DJing, Carroll is a multi-faceted visual artist. As a part of his Senior Comps project, called Los Angeles Sprays Itself, he travels around LA on his bike, taking pictures of street art and sketching responses to it.
“Street art is about finding a voice for yourself,” he said.
He praises the city’s vibrant subculture and cannot emphasize enough the importance of getting off campus and appreciating the character of LA. Carroll displays his own brand of character on his blog Eat Yr Fridge (eatyrfridge.blogspot.com), on which he posts pictures of his ever-changing refrigerator.
“Our fridge was really ugly, and as tenants my roommate and I are responsible for it,” Carroll said. The two take turns painting the fridge with different patterns and themes on almost a weekly basis, transforming it into a one-eyed purple monster one week, and mustached man the next. “Blogs work well when they showcase the evolution of things,” Carroll said.
From painted fridges to homemade light shows, Thomas Carroll adds a dose of originality to everything he does.
When asked whether he wishes to convey a message with his art, he thought for a minute and replied, “I feel that I have something new to offer, to some degree, to take things in a new direction. Mostly, it’s just a lot of fun.”
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