Calderone Gets Down To The Basics

DJ Victor Calderone‘s most recent visit to Washington, this past July at Velvet Nation, turned out to be a “weird” night for him. “I was feeling this energy from the dance floor where it was a kind of…a tug of war going on,” he says. There
were two sides in the battle, Calderone surmised: the dance floor congregants nearest the DJ booth seemed eager to hear the tribal
beats of his signature dance style, while those under the giant disco ball nearer the stage were hoping for more of the vocal-oriented
house that gained him fame.

Make no mistake: He still likes, and plays, vocals. He didn’t replace Junior Vasquez as Madonna’s chosen remixer by not appreciating
the importance of vocal production in pop music. And he’s currently hard at work producing a traditional pop album for a new singer/songwriter.

“If there’s a good vocal out there, I’ll play it,” he says. “But I’m totally chopping the cookie-cutter big-room diva anthems. For me that
style has not evolved anywhere and it’s just become repetitive and predictable.”

Amazing is one word to describe Calderone’s success, which became widespread through his first commercially released remix – Madonna’s “Frozen.” He actually met Madonna back when she was just breaking into the mainstream in the mid-1980s, when she was also
dating his friend, DJ John “Jellybean” Benitez. “She was just a clubkid at the time,” as was he, at 17-years-old. Some fifteen years later, she tapped him as the lead remixer for “Frozen.” He’s remixed 12 of Madonna’s singles since.

“I need to take a break from the Madonna stuff, I think I”ve done enough,” he says. “I don’t want to be just attached to her, or I don’t want
it to seem as if I’m just riding her success.”

Madonna is the one who recommended him to Sting, who was so impressed with Calderone’s wildly imaginative reworking of his “Desert Rose” that he re-recorded the vocals just for that remix. He also enlisted
Calderone to co-produce the original version and create a remix for the first track, “Send Your Love,” from his newly released album.
Overall, Calderone is creating far fewer remixes for anyone these days — though it can be hard to say no, he admits.

His remix of Madonna’s “What it Feels Like for a Girl” is his favorite, a billowy bubble of down-tempo electronica, or chillout music – a style, surprisingly, that inspires Calderone most these days.

Source: Doug Rule, Metro Weekly

Thanks to SlyGuy