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Standard issue
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With nine DJ CDs to his credit in the past three years (three of them released in 2003 alone) and a new one coming this week, New York City’s Louie Devito is either the busiest, most in-demand club DJ ever or a bit played out. At Avalon on Saturday night, he seemed both. A short, stocky, 40ish guy with a receding hairline and a deadpan expression, he played a set full of finesse moves but not much drive and a sound of his own but not much passion about how (or when) to use it. Which is too bad, because the sound he favors — space-disco synthesizer riffs icy in tone and stringy in texture — sends a classic club-music message. Expansive, spacy cool has since the classic years (the 1970s) been a disco way of voicing adventure, a magic-carpet ride of very fast beats per minute. Devito’s version is no exception, except that his ice rides come with a darkish edge, a sort of gothic sheen on a trip that usually has no dark side. His remix of Greek singer Despina Vandi’s "Gia," from his NYC Undergrounds Party 6 (Dee Vee Music), transforms her exotic vocals into a super-crazed Enigma. At Avalon, the triumphant Devito was hard to find. It took him almost an hour to settle on a groove, as he varied his selections back and forth from icy disco to hard-house beats. He started just fine, playing a hard-house remix of Kelis’s flirty, huge FM-radio hit "Milkshake," and a diva-style, heart-pounding set seemed ready to follow. But none did. Instead, he programmed hardly any vocals, preferring a melody-less, almost acid-house set of beats and electronic effects. About halfway through his two-hour performance, he moved into a hard-house, Carl Cox–ish groove and stayed there, pumping the music up and allowing the dancers to get down on it. Even then, there were few vocals, an odd omission given that it’s his Dance Divas 2 CD that’s scheduled for release this week. Devito’s overlay mixes blended, smoothly, with no razzmatazz or double-backs. He did few quick cuts, the true leap-of-faith mix move in DJing. To distort the music and make it hum, or cry, or go quiet, or huff and puff, he mostly used the fade knobs at his soundboard. Most of his distortion moves were standard issue; they rarely came in synch with the rhythm and so didn’t pump it up. On CD, Devito’s moves don’t miss the mark so obviously, perhaps because the songs he uses are mostly familiar, and selected in part for radio play. At Avalon, he traded point of view for changeability. The dancers responded in kind, roaming the side rooms as often as stomping on the main dance floor. It was one of the least-hip, least-black, least-Latino audiences I have ever seen at a house-music DJ show, and poorly dressed to boot, a room barely half full of very young clubgoers uncertain of what to do. Perhaps that’s why Devito programmed so few diva songs, avoiding even his own Despina Vandi mix. It was not a night for screaming songstresses and those who love them.
BY MICHAEL FREEDBERG
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