Forming a DJ team is like forming Voltron. It has all sorts of perks. You’ve got extra people to hype your gigs, extra people to stand up to stingy promoters at the end of the night, an extra fanbase from your partners’ friends and friends of friends, plus you can split off and bill yourselves at multiple spots in a night and you’ve got someone to cover for you if you need to take an emergency poop (the poop gods are not kind to performers) or hook up with someone (sometimes, if it doesn’t happen RIGHT NOW, it’s not gonna happen. I’ve seen far too many cocks blocked and, erm, clams jammed because someone needed to wait til the end of the night to make sure they got paid out before they could go home).

Of course, there’s also some drawbacks.  With bands, there’s always a shared catalogue of work to fuse a group together when relations are rocky, and I’m guesing this is the same with DJs who produce tracks and mixes together as well, but overall the DJ teams relationship seems pretty fickle (to me, your humble outside observer). When forming a team,  you have to make sure to keep from losing your identity within the group dynamic, even as you’re trying to build your name together. When the galaxy is in trouble, you want Voltron, not Voltron’s left leg, even though Voltron’s left leg is still a badass cyber panda.* You want to be Thomas Bangalter, not “that one guy from Daft Punk” or “that one guy from MSTRKRFT” or whatever. Connected to this is, if you aren’t famous (individually or as a team), you’re still spinning the same amount of time as a solo DJ, and you’re probably splitting that same dough right down the middle. But only a fool gets into this game for the money so let’s not even worry about that.

I digress, Starfoxxx is the assemblage of Delacutti, Goldar, and David Beltran (who sometimes spins as Friendship, or with someone else as Team Friendship). They’ve been bouncing around the city as solo DJs and, for the last year or so, as all sort of  permutations of the three of them and releasing mixtapes through the Friends with Benefits collective.

There are a couple juke mixes from Delacutti and Friendship, but to my surprise, the standout is Goldar’s winter House mix. The reason it’s a surprise is that, while I always love juke, I hate most of the house music I hear. Don’t get me wrong, I was born and raised in Chicago and I cut my teeth on house, but the kind of house I grew up with was ghetto and aggressive, and the house music I hear today is soft, cheesy, and way too adult contempo.

Goldar’s mix thumps in a way that his sets don’t when he’s playing hipster parties. Less electro, less bloghouse and less hits.  It’s also a great deal less schizophrenic than the mix he put out last summer, which jumped around so quick I had trouble listening to it.

There’s another benefit I didn’t list earlier. Collaboration. I think there’s a good balance between the three dudes in Starfoxx, and I’m interested in seeing how they play off each other. Delacutti’s always seemed to take a workingman’s approach to the art of DJing, where Friendship seems like he’s always having a good time, and looking to throw a lot of silly shit into the mix as far as sounds and visuals, and if this was the 60s and Starfoxxx was a British invasion group, Goldar would’ve been the rock star. He’s the most likely to show up at your party with a crew of taggers and goony dudes, and an armful of Suicide Girls. He came onto the scene with a lot of buzz and a lot of steam, but he wasn’t as nearly as good as he is now. So yeah: PERSONAL GROWTH. Something we’re all striving for, attainable through interactions with talented peers and situations where you move outside of your natural comfort zone, just as valuable as avoiding cockblocks. You heard it here first.

Check out parties we’ve done with  Starfoxxx here (and click the tags at the bottom of the page for parties with any of the individual dudes)
Check out their mixes at Friends With Benefits‘ website

*If you’re a late 80s baby, substitute Captain Planet for all Voltron references. Who wants Kwame and his lame power over “heart” when they could have a mulleted blue superhero. If you’re a 90s baby, use the Power Rangers and tht giant dinosaur they turned into.