Deejay Raph mixed in-between acts at last Saturday’s Extravaganza, making everyone – from the dance-music neophyte to the electro Gene Kelly – get up and bump to the beat of the bass. In between one of his many sets that night, Deejay Raph set aside a few minutes to talk to the Nexus about his thoughts and insights on the ongoing shitshow known as Extravaganza. The press area was whereever you made it, so with that in mind, we set up camp out as far away as possible from the booming sound of Rebelution and its cheering fans and began to talk shop. Without further ado, je te présente… DJ Raph, l’interview exclusive from Extravaganza ’09.

Alright, I’m here with DJ Raph again, but this time, we’re at Extravaganza ’09, knee-deep in and backstage of the production. The music is blaring in the background and hopefully, Harder Stadium is going to start looking a bit swollen. You just finished your second set; how’s it been going, man?
Deejay Raph: It’s been going alright. At first, I had some problems with the monitors and it was really loud onstage, so my ears were killed. There weren’t that many people in the beginning so I was trying to get them pumped up a little bit but it’s getting better now, more people are starting to show up. I’m trying to get them pumped up as we go, and they’ll start to dance more as soon as I hit them with the Electro.

wesome. So now that you’re here, are all the jitters gone or are you still pretty nervous?
Honestly, I was nervous last night. I came to check out the stage this morning, and as soon as I saw what it was and how it was, I was fine. I was more excited and pumped up than anything y’know, I wanted to be here.

How has Extravaganza been? Has it and is it what you expected so far?
Definitely what I expected. There are a lot of people, the sound system is amazing, as I expected. Yeah, a lot of people are coming and it’s still early, the main performance isn’t for another five hours. It’s looking good so far.

Have you gotten to meet any of the artists who have already been onstage?
I did not meet Boombox Orchestra, because there are a lot of them actually. But I met Willie Northpole, a very very funny guy. Him and his DJ, they’re nice guys.

We heard your hour set in the beginning, and we’ve heard two intermediate sets. So are you planning on progressively getting harder? Because last time we spoke you said you wanted to start out with a House feeling and progressively move into the harder stuff, into Electro.
See, after I looked at the schedule and saw how long each of my sets were going to be, I saw that it was going to be difficult to do my progressive set. So I did my hard songs in my first set, I started very Electro-House and just went right into some hard stuff. I think one of my last songs is going to be very very Tribal Tech Minimal. I’m going to see the crowd’s reaction and see how they like it.

Any prophetic last words?
Uh, we definitely need more Electro artists at Extravaganza, because I think this genre is picking up and I’m trying to start a trend. I want to start the new trend of electronic music in Santa Barbara, L.A, and in California. We’re a bit behind other parts of the world when it comes to electronic music. But I want to be part of it, it’s happening right now, and I want to be part of this new trend.

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