BLOG 04/01/2019
The Jan Diaries — DJ Dilemmas That Eat Too Much Time
The first Jan Diaries entry of 2019 is Jan Kinčl at his most practical: three debates that DJ circles keep re-litigating and, in his view, keep wasting time on. Written in early January, it reads like a manifesto disguised as a list — and it settles each argument with a story from his own booth.
What the piece covers
Dilemma one, vinyl versus digital, he declares closed: a matter of personal preference, not of quality. Kinčl started when vinyl was the only option and still prefers its sound, but happily uses CD players for their loops and cue points, and points out that Pioneer’s converters sound excellent. The war story that settles it: he and Matija Duić once rescued a set by physically holding the turntables up in the air, because bass vibrations from the table kept throwing the needle. What alone matters, he writes, is that the music coming out of the speakers hits people the right way. Dilemma two is prepared versus spontaneous sets. Playing a pre-arranged sequence means ignoring the actual room — how many people came, their mood, their age, how much music they know. Preparation should mean knowing your records deeply, not scripting their order.
Dilemma three is the churn of new music. Kinčl pushes back against DJs who bring an entirely new bag every weekend: people bond with music through repetition, and a DJ bonds with records the same way — you learn more from one album played ten times than from ten albums played once. Theo Parrish is his example of deep familiarity turning into infectious conviction on the floor; his own is Remember When by Kelli Hand, which he had not dropped from rotation in two or three years.
The part that stayed
The line that outlives the column sits at the core of the second dilemma: “DJ-ing nije monolog već dijalog, a teško je uspješno voditi dijalog ako imaš unaprijed pripremljene rečenice” — DJing is a dialogue, not a monologue, and it is hard to hold a dialogue with pre-prepared sentences. It doubles as the shortest description of how Kinčl plays.
Read the full piece
The full column, in Croatian, is on Red Bull Croatia. Eight minutes.
The Jan Diaries | Nekoliko DJ dilema na koje se troši previše vremena → redbull.com