Going places: DJ Max Graham, the globetrotting mix master
DJ Max Graham's biggest hit started life as a joke bootleg. And he's been distancing himself from it ever since
Max Graham cannot sit still. In his sets the Canadian DJ, perhaps best known for 2010 trance smashes and , and for his fairly unrepresentative 2005 remix of English prog-rock band Yes' classic , pretty much runs the gamut of electronic styles, from trance to progressive house to techno to electro, but with an emphasis on emotional, uplifting, melodic, often vocal-driven sounds.
Similarly, the music he's produced has hopped across the genres, and has ranged from deliberately highly accessible to the far darker and more challenging, while always remaining dancefloor-friendly.
Graham, who plays Hong Kong on November 29, thinks the roots of this vigorous eclecticism might lie in his peripatetic upbringing. Born in the UK, he moved as a child to Spain, then as a teenager to New York, then Los Angeles, then Ottawa, and then in his 20s to Vancouver and then Montreal.
"I've been influenced by such a wide variety of things, and I got used to culture shock at an early age," the 43-year-old says. "It's fairly easy for me to leave one comfort zone and go somewhere else. It's a safe assumption that's why I've been all over the place musically, which sometimes has worked against me, because I'm hard to classify."
Graham got his first job as a DJ in Ottawa in the late '80s when he applied for a job as a barman, the bar's scheduled DJ didn't turn up and he stepped in. For a few years his style mixed hip hop with mainstream pop music, a formula that was working out very nicely when, in 1994, some friends dragged him along to a rave, and had he moment of epiphany regarding the role of the DJ.
"That changed everything for me. I realised that there was an art form behind it, and that there were people who appreciated that art form."
He gave up his job playing pop records, bought a load of dance-music vinyl, and effectively started again from scratch. The same friends started their own club night in Ottawa in 1996, he started playing his beloved progressive house there, and throughout the rest the decade Graham was an underground phenomenon in that city alone.
That all changed in 2001 with the release of the Transport 4 mix, which generated all sorts of interest, including the backing of big-name DJs, notably trance luminary Paul Oakenfold. It sparked a world tour and his sudden appearance at no 23 on 's coveted Top 100 DJs list.
By this time, Graham was also turning his attention to producing music of his own; 2001's progressive anthem was his first big breakthrough. As with his DJ sets, his own music has largely been trance-focused, but has also ventured into deeper, darker and more techno-influenced territory, particularly on 2013 smash ; while electro has reared its head on tracks such as 2005's . His first and to date only album, , didn't arrive until 2010.
"I took 2008 and 2009 off, because I realised what I was producing wasn't the same as what I was playing in my sets," he says. "It was what I thought people wanted to hear, rather than what I wanted to make. Then I came back in 2010 with these trancey, vocal sounds. is interesting because it's kind of anti-that; I just set out to make something totally dark and totally different."
The seeds of his temporary disillusionment with music, he says, were sown by his biggest-selling record, . Far more commercial than his usual style, it was only put together as a semi-jokey bootleg, but got picked up by numerous other DJs and was eventually released by Ministry of Sound, peaking at no 9 on the UK singles chart. Ministry wanted something equally commercial for the follow-up and tried to hook Graham up with pop-music writers; the DJ demurred, and the relationship came to a swift end.
"I didn't intend that song to be a representation of where I'm at," he says. "It led to a degree of confusion. I had clubs asking me if I was going to be playing '80s mash-ups all night. I followed it up with a lot of records that changed that impression."
His mixes have also been doing the same job. As befits a DJ who came to prominence with a mix album, he has released five in his renowned Cycles series since 2008, but he also uploads a weekly Cycles Radio mix to his website. As well as giving him an unprecedented opportunity to interact with fans, Graham says the show means fewer people turn up to see him with misapprehensions about his music.
"It provides a weekly snapshot of where I'm at; there's no excuse for not knowing what I play. It's helped so much: the fans can follow my evolution, and it gives me a lot of market research."
Graham formed his own label, Re*Brand Records, in 2004, and in 2008 joined forces with Amsterdam-based Armada Music, part-owned by superstar DJ Armin van Buuren; it has released his own album, singles, remixes and the Cycles mixes, as well as music by other artists including long-term collaborator Protoculture.
Graham is Amsterdam-based these days, too, having moved there in February 2012. It makes it much easier to DJ in Europe.
"But the main reason was that I'd lived in Montreal for 15 years, in the same neighbourhood, going to the same cafes — and I just needed a change."
It appears he never intends to stop moving on.