Blowing Up The Spot: Fort Knox 5 Keep The Party Going All Night Long At The Roxy
When we last caught up with the Fort Knox 5 family, they had just put the finishing touches on their fantastic new label compilation, The New Gold Standard Vol. II. But no sooner than I’d polished off that story did I discover the boys were finally set to bring the party to LA with a monster pre-Halloween DJ set with fellow funksters, Kraak & Smaak and Ursula 1000 at The Roxy. I knew the Fort Knox DJ show was not to be missed, so I rounded up the Sinning In LA team to showcase the funkier side of Duke’s musical mind.
The Roxy really isn’t the standard venue for a DJ showcase such as this one, but none of the acts on the bill were your typical artists either. The Fort Knox 5 DJ set featured plenty of original tracks and killer remixes, but I had no idea that they had also drummed up exclusive edits of artists like The Who, The Beatles and even the Bee-Gees!
A lot of times people will be like, ‘Oh, you didn’t play that much Fort Knox 5 stuff,’ and actually most of this stuff is Fort Knox 5, it’s just edits that we’ve done!
Jon Horvath told this to me and along with fellow Fort Knox member, Steve Raskin, they make up the DJ duo portion of this four-person production team.
“The way we do DJ sets is always varied but it’s gonna be a lot of party stuff,” he explained. “Sometimes we play a lot of Fort Knox stuff depending on the crowd. If you have a more mellow crowd, we’ll play some of our remixes and what not but at this venue, we’re going to do a lot of our own edits and mash-ups. We make a lot of our own tunes for DJing and it can go anywhere from funky hip-hop mid-tempo stuff to banging electro and dubstep and boomin' breaks. We try and cover the gauntlet.”
And they did, as Sandy and Smash couldn’t stop dancing amongst the raucous audience all evening. When those special FK5 re-edits finally came out, the crowd went crazy over the re-imagining of “Revolution” by The Fab Four and of course “Teenage Wasteland,” by The Who.
Strong song selection isn’t the only thing that factors into the equation when the boys decide to do a bootleg. “Is it something that you would dance to anyway?” asked Steve. “There have been great dance songs that aren’t necessarily considered dance songs,” added Jon, but “Revolution”, he said, “is already a groovy song.”
A new addition to the Fort Knox experience are the visualizations they sync up to the music. So when “Revolution” hit, there was a tripped-out video featuring classic footage of The Beatles performing the song alongside other similarly-themed imagery. So whether the band test-drives new material, such as the ultra-funky, “The Sax Pusher,” or drops one of their choice remixes, like the dubstep version (and Smash favorite) of “Killa Soundboy”, it’s an extra element that has taken the show to the next level. These visuals are the perfect compliment to all the diverse sounds you’ll hear in any given production from this crew.
“We’re really trying to make a separation between the DJing and the live things,” Jon explained.
When you come to the live show, that’s when you hear Fort Knox, when you hear us DJ it’s basically us going in and trying to rock the party.
No two shows are ever the same as the duo are constantly taking time in the lab with Sid and Rob to experiment for the masses and report back their findings.
“Songs like ‘The Sax Pusher’ are songs that you’ll hear in the DJ set alongside some of the older stuff too, like “Dodge City Rockers,” Jon told me. “But then a lot of mash-ups and edits include things like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones alongside hip-hop and funk that we’ve just done ourselves to make some cool songs for our sets. Now with the introduction of the audio visual set, we’re trying to tune some of the music and the scenes together that represents the vibe that you’re hearing.”
With so many sounds and styles at their disposal, the future is indeed bright for this group. Their DJ sets pack all the energy and emotion that you’d get from the biggest shows we’ve seen, so we can only imagine what the future holds for the live show of this band.
“We’re persevering by sticking to and progressing with our music,” Jon explained. “We’re always adding new elements but still being consistent in that you are going to hear good music that’s not trend driven.”
This represents us moving forward and with The New Gold Standard Vol. II it’s like now you’re going to see what the future really holds.
It’s one that looks incredibly bright to us. We look forward to seeing them rock the Hollywood Bowl one day with good friends, Thievery Corporation. For now, kick back and check out this mix the guys put together, which Steve calls, ‘the best representation of our DJ show to date!’
Photos and Video by: Smash LeFunk
