No laptops, pure instinct: How DJ Carl Cox kept the dancefloor honest for 45 years

The veteran DJ on 45 years of reading the room, rejecting programmed sets and keeping people guessing

Carl Cox performs a DJ set at Ultra Europe Music Festival in Split, Croatia. Reuters

DJ sets are now as much concerned with spectacle as performance. There are often countdowns, tightly synchronised visual backdrops and endless bursts from fire cannon in sync with each shuddering beat drop.

Veteran British spinner and producer Carl Cox has spent the best part of 45 years proving he doesn't need any of these extras.

That alone is a feat to see when the 63-year-old kicks off the Pacha Icons series of concerts on Friday.

Don't expect anything planned other than a fierce mindset to figuratively destroy the stage.

"I honestly have no clue when I go to any event what I'm gonna play," he tells The National. "I don't have a list and I don't think about the first record I will play until I am standing there and feeling the room. The only thing I do know is that I am going to play the best music you have ever heard.

"And that's not ego, by the way. That's experience. I have been doing this long enough now to trust that if the sound is right and the energy is there, I can take people somewhere they didn't expect to go."

That said, Cox knows good music also needs a proper room. Hence, he is pleased at how the UAE's club scene has developed since his debut show in the country, a "pool party" at Jumeirah Beach Hotel in 2004.

"I remember back then it was just hotel lounges and pop nights," he recalls. "You would have a DJ in the corner playing commercial tunes and people were more curious than anything. You could tell it was a scene that was trying to find its feet. Now you have real clubs, proper sound systems, and energy and crowds that understand the music. You can just tell that the scene here is built by people who love it, not just following what is big somewhere else."

DJ Carl Cox performs in Glasgow. Known for rejecting laptops and programmed playlists, Cox builds each show from scratch using vinyl, decks and drum machines. Getty Images

Cox views his performances as a means to preserve the remaining vestiges of what a true club experience should feel like – that element of surprise and discovery. In addition to that signature megawatt smile on stage, he is keenly scanning the audience, tracking who is moving and those nonplussed.

"There are the people who come with their arms folded and like 'OK, I've heard of this Carl Cox, but what does he actually do?'" he says. "I welcome that because it just gives me the licence to go 'bang, bang' and hit them with something they don't expect."

That duelling instinct, he notes, came from his time making his name in Britain's underground rave circuit in the late 1980s. Only at the time, for the burgeoning artist, the competition was as much with fellow DJs as the audience. That determination to stand out resulted in him adopting his trademark approach of performing with three turntables instead of two.

More than showmanship, the extra gear added new dimensions to his sets. "Everyone was playing two turntables and mixing records, and that was the art," he says. "You had one tune going, the next one cued, and you'd make that blend. That was the whole craft. I was obsessed with making it flow longer, keeping the groove alive, so I thought, why not add another deck?

"When I played with three, it really changed everything. I would run an a cappella, a bassline and a drum track all at once, as well as build the track, or strip it down live. Once I was doing it, I realised I'd already jumped ahead of the people I was trying to catch up with, because I viewed my performance as similar to playing an instrument while everyone else seemed to be just pressing play."

That drive pushed him from raves to global stages. His 1991 single I Want You (Forever) reached the UK Top 40, and in the mid-1990s, he was playing marathon eight and nine-hour sets across Europe, as well as on major stages from Glastonbury to Miami’s Ultra Music Festival.

Cox says he more or less still works that way. His Dubai set up will feature layers of vinyl, digital decks and drum machines. "There are no laptops, but hardware," he beams. "I want people to hear and see how the heartbeat of the music is made live."

That sense of purpose is also informed by gratitude. Cox notes how the pandemic upended a career built on the back of touring. "I worked all time to get to get to this point," he says. "Then there's nothing. After 40 years, my career fell off a cliff. I was like, 'wow, everything I've built, everything I've done. Gone.' You sit there and you're not flying, not packing bags, not hearing the crowd, and you think, what do I do now? For the first time in my life I had to stop and just be still."

Considering Cox's own difficulty handling the sudden quiet, he has empathy for the new young breed of superstar DJs, many in their teens or early 20s, whose sudden fame is not underpinned by real-world experience.

"I see these kids blow up at 17 with millions of followers overnight," he says. "They get fame before grounding. That's dangerous. You can have the followers, the lights, the likes, but if you don't have the experience behind it, it won't last. When it all goes quiet, that's when they struggle, because they've never had to build from nothing like we did."

Martin Garrix at Etihad Park, Abu Dhabi. He appeared alongside Carl Cox in the documentary What We Started, exploring two generations of DJs. Pawan Singh / The National

He recalls sharing that reflection with then-21-year-old Martin Garrix while filming the 2017 documentary What We Started.

"At that particular time, I was 40 years into my career and he was five years into his," he says. "When we were talking to the audience, I had to mention the fact that you've got 35 years to get anywhere close to where I am now. And he just went like this. 'Oh.' He couldn't think beyond where he was and couldn't imagine another 35 years."

More than reverence, what Cox has earned is the right to keep doing things his own way. "When you go to a Carl Cox event, you don't get the fashion or the big show," he says. "You get to see me smiling, playing my music on a great sound system. That's it."

Carl Cox performs as part of the Pacha Icons series at Five Luxe JBR, Dubai Show starts at 7pm; tickets from Dh150 ($40)