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NUMARK
AXIS 9 PREMIUM CD PLAYER Reviewer: Baz Distributor: Electric Factory |
I recently saw the film ’24 hour party people’ and like the star and narrator of the film, was struck by that especially weird moment when the crowd suddenly started worshipping the people who put records on, rather than the creators of the music. Being old enough to remember when the DJ was just the nerd who couldn’t dance and/or get a date, it has been odd to watch the rise of DJ culture, to the point where the credulous seem to invest them with mythic powers.
Having DJ’d my own production output for a long time now I think it’s important to keep it in perspective. A DJ is no more or less than a person who puts discs on in an order that is meant to get people dancing. In order to achieve this you need the ability to pick good tunes, and things to play ‘em on. When it comes to the latter the Axis 9 is a pretty useful tool. Forget about that obsolete format vinyl. Whilst there’s no getting around some of the tactile advantages of such ancient technology, the fact is only a tiny proportion of music ever gets pressed. If you want to use those obscure tunes from a DAT you got your hands on from some hot new producer – stuff that’s going to give you the edge on every DJ in town – then you’re going to have to use a CD burn. Deal with it. This unit will get you over vinyl nostalgia very quickly.
The Axis 9 isn’t a unit that you can really expect to master straight off. In fact if you walk into a club and are greeted by it for the first time, you could find yourself struggling. I believe it’s been designed primarily for someone who would bring in their own gear, or is a resident. Someone who can spend time getting to know all its tricks. It is a lot more than just a CD player combining a kind of sampling function in the form of a loop player, with all manner of effects. The first thing you notice about it is that there is a mini turntable on the front. This can be used for incredibly accurate scratching effects, cueing and so forth. If you’ve ever doubted just how realistic this can sound now, you owe it to yourself to give it a go. I defy pretty much anyone to tell me that’s not vinyl being played!
Press play and you can get an effect they call ‘stutter’ which is kind of a looping buildup – you hear it all the time in the clubs. Or of course you can just start the music. Cueing is easy and you can get enormous precision, because this unit doesn’t just work in minutes and seconds, but also ‘frames’ of which there are 75 per second. If you like you can set the beginning and end point of loops – very much like sampling on the fly – and you can use that for those big buildups. It’s especially useful with vocals. You also get pitch and tempo control in a very easy to use manner. Probably one of the real standout features is the range of effects which include pan, echo, chop, isolate and several others. You hear some of these sorts of things in clubs when people muck around with the EQ and panning and the like, but this gives you quite unparalleled power to delve into such areas within the one unit. The temptation would be to over use such effects which have more impact when unleashed sparingly.
There are some nice touches with the Axis 9. I liked the little light above the CD tray – very club friendly. I also liked the ergonomic sensibilities such as they slight recess at the front below the ‘turntable’, and the overall feel of the unit which conveys a sense of durability. I would like to see some kind of more obvious ‘reset’ function which would ditch all the adjustable settings such as ‘stutter’ , effects, BPM etc. and put the unit back into a mode where what you put in is what you hear. If I had five minutes to figure it all out in a club with the previous DJ’s last track hammering away, I would be worried. If on the other hand it was my regular unit I’m sure I would start getting pretty cunning with my buildups, the occasional lo fi panning onslaught, and truly demonic cueing accuracy. It would come into its own when you had to keep a packed floor rocking all night – you’d have more than enough tricks to make the wannabes wonder how on earth you’re doing it.
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