“It looks like there’s nothing going on here, but there is”
An Interview with Ben Tucker, Event Producer (PRK//REC) and DJ (U4IA)
By: Jade Darr
Most billboards in Vegas read as if they’re trying to convince passerby cars that they are, indeed, in Vegas. The eerily handsome faces of divorce and injury lawyers stare angrily next to aggressive capitalized text. Sex toy shops and strip joints showcase bodies and faces in unearthly, entrancing lighting. And then there are the DJ billboards: big names, generic faces, and tye-dye colors meant to emulate a rave’s druggy euphoria. Among these massive advertisements meant to hypnotize drivers into attending a show, it is exceedingly easy to forget that music — and the act of both creating it and curating it — is an art form. In a city where art is intensely commercialized — where things as wondrous as the Bellagio fountains and art installations are inseparable from the tourist hotel they’re attached to — it can be difficult to parse the divide between the personal and the public.
The huge names and expensive tickets are a far cry from the local Vegas DJ scene. The marketing materials are homegrown and bursting with personality, created by individual local artists and then splattered across social media by event producers, DJs, and audience members who just want to see the scene thrive. It’s a scene where parties are thrown in both bedrooms and local clubs. It’s a scene where DJ controllers are given semi-permanent homes on common room tables so that any partygoer with songs on a USB drive can grab a chance to play. Go to one party DJ’d by local artists and you’re likely to see a few familiar faces at the next one.
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One of these familiar faces is Ben Tucker, a Las Vegas native who now DJs (as U4IA) and produces musical events (as PRK//REC) around town. He’s hard to miss — a tall man with long, curly hair whose face is constantly alternating between focused attention and the sort of sincere, winning smile that disarms most people who come across it. When Ben came over to be interviewed for this article, he offered to bring me Hawaiian food, then sat down and jumped right into business as soon as he arrived. He’s the sort of person you’d want at the center of an arts community — one with both goodwill for those around him and the drive to turn that goodwill into concrete events and opportunities for growth.
I first saw Ben while wandering around Oddfellows during one of their rave nights. I had never been to a rave before that night. The main venue is a large black room decorated liberally with television screens, each one flashing through synchronized scenes from iconic television shows and films. On the floor were dozens of young people in striking outfits laughing amongst their circles of friends, sipping their drinks and bouncing softly to the rhythm of dark techno music. Scattered among the crowd were solo headboppers there for social listening only, as well as a few hardcore dancers that were getting the sort of workout that Dance Dance Revolution is meant to provide. It took me a while to wander through a door next to the main stage where the DJ was mixing, and once I did I entered the world of Ben’s music.
This backroom was home to an entirely different musical experience. This was a colorful darkness of soft neon greens and pinks, and the music was charged to a higher tempo and aggressive melodic intensity. Over the table stood Ben next to another DJ lost in a B2B set, AKA a back-to-back set where DJ’s take turns queueing tracks and transitioning between their partner’s choices. The speed and intensity of the music had completely taken control of the few dozen people in the room, forming a friendly mosh pit of sorts from which bellowed random yells and chants. Whatever Ben was doing was clearly working. And it was working on me too.
This magical rave effect is the cornerstone of Ben’s vision for the Las Vegas DJ community. During our interview — which takes place in a quiet, well-lit kitchen that could not be farther from the rave environment — he constantly circles back to trusting artists to do their own thing. Sometimes, venues just don’t have the infrastructure, or goals, to put faith in an artist who wants to bring something different and exciting to the table.
“If you're working with a venue that is known for a specific sound, then you're not going to have as much freedom to experiment, and they're not going to be as open to letting you play whatever you want,” says Ben. “But when you do that — restrict a DJ's freedom — you lose a lot of the audience that is there for the music in the first place. You also lose the more spiritual, deeper experience of the audience not knowing what they're going to hear. You lose the different kinds of music that aren't being played everywhere. There's no ambient music or anything like that in Vegas.”
It's not exactly surprising that most venues stick to safe DJs and playlists that will keep attendees happy and dancing. I’ve rarely come across a venue that plays outside of the safest, most crowd-friendly genres — Top 40 hits, pop throwbacks from previous decades, trap music, and EDM. For DJ’s like U4IA who play styles rarely heard on the radio, this makes it pretty difficult to land gigs in commercial venues. Bridging the gap between one’s own tastes and the general crowd is at the core of what a good DJ does, but it certainly requires a sense of compromise that can limit a DJ’s total range of expression.
Ben’s own taste in music is pretty wide. Sure, he plays a lot of uptempo rave music during his sets, and he’s well-versed in most subgenres in electronic music. Yet he also loves a lot of music that isn’t seen as DJ-friendly, because, like most music lovers, his journey began during childhood — and his mom wasn’t just listening to techno.
“I feel like I've always been really into music,” Ben says. “My mom got me into music really early. Singing in the car with my mom was the one point that was always taking me back to music. Now I'm really into pop music and singer-songwriter stuff, as well as rave stuff that my mom obviously did not get me into.”
For most of my friends, the story is the same. Our parents and guardians introduced us to their music, which we fell in love with. Then we soon became hungry, raiding libraries, CD retailers, and eventually digital marketplaces to find new music to love. It’s easy to let something as emotional and immediate as music become a massive part of your identity. As it turns out, all that musical research and curation does have a purpose — if you become a DJ.
“I've always been super into digging and that's why DJing comes so naturally to me now,” says Ben. “I've always been refining my taste that way, and that's 90% of DJing. Knowing exactly what you like, exactly what you don't like, and making it easier to find what you like that way. That's what I do now — go through tons and tons of tracks and finding something new every time.”
All this digging used to take place in dusty crates of records in a local store. Now it usually involves a DJ sifting through thousands of tracks on one streaming service or another. However, the purpose hasn’t changed much. The main goal of DJ’s is to find music that others will love, whether they’re on the dancefloor, at a wedding, or at a house party. This can be a matter of simply playing the hits or maneuvering crowd requests. However, it’s often a bit more personal and difficult. After all, if you’re just going to play Top 40 music, why should you be hired when someone can simply shuffle a playlist instead? The simple answer is that you have to bring something new to the table, and for DJ’s, that something new comes in the form of hidden gems that can be woven into a set in a way that makes even unfamiliar audiences excited about the music. And the key to finding those tracks is by digging in the right places.
“Soundcloud for everything,” replies Ben when I ask where he finds his music. “Soundcloud has all the best music and all the worst music. It makes it really easy to find what you like and what you don't like when what you're finding is either by super amazing, undiscovered artists or other people who are still working through the basics. Anyone can post anything without putting too much money or effort into it possibly.”
Of course, underground music still has a very real potential for commercial success. It’s just a matter of talent getting the right moment to shine, and often, both DJ’s and their sets provide the proper platform for artists who deserve to take off.
“Just this week, an artist who hadn't posted anything before started having her stuff posted by other, more established artists on Instagram,” says Ben. “Now this random noise artist is having her own shows and being booked out of nowhere. It's that kind of space — there's so much potential and it's so accessible to everyone.”
It’s easy enough to understand how musical havens on the internet function. There are a plethora of sites and services, like Bandcamp and Soundcloud, that musicians can use to spread their work without emptying their savings accounts. Such services allow artists to post their work for free, and they also provide premium accounts with added features for pretty reasonable amounts (think under $20).
In person, it’s far more complicated. Artists often have to manage themselves, communicating closely with venues to ensure that a great gig happens in the first place. As I’ve heard from several DJ’s in Vegas, many artists have a lot of experience with DJing and producing, but not with communicating with venues and business partners. That means fewer great shows, and less good music, for everyone.
Local culture can also provide its own roadblocks. Each city has its own identity, and each venue has its own quirks and management style. Vegas as a city, says Ben, is in a strange spot compared to some other cities simply because members of the scene have a different approach to marketing.
“Vegas isn't super digital compared to other places,” he says. “In L.A. and up north, there's a lot of media out there about their events. I actually like that about Vegas — it's more about the live event over the marketing and media. But then it looks like nothing is going on here. Even though there is — it's a lot of smaller parties.”
That doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Less advertisement means more focus on the events that do gain traction, and it also grants the scene a relatively low-key vibe that makes it easier for new artists to get a foot in the door.
“There are a lot of up-and-coming people in our underground,” says Ben. “Our underground sort of died for a while - around 2018, 2019. I think it came back a little bit with downtown commercial stuff. But the underground didn't really come back again until recently — but it's super exciting now.”
When he says recently, he means it. Venues like Oddfellows, where I saw Ben’s first set, are beginning to trust DJ’s to play more niche styles of music — genres like industrial techno, hyperpop, and happy hardcore. The nights where they have given the floor to these artists are wildly successful; dancers are packed from wall to wall, wandering in and out of each area with smiles on their faces, and they’re either hanging with old friends or hitting it off with new ones. Trust may build over time, but great music can easily accelerate that process and open up doors to new possibilities. Oddfellows isn’t the only venue to catch on to this.
“There's a group at Player 1 Las Vegas that does weekly house, techno and bass shows,” says Ben. “They stand out as something that's trying to push boundaries and are clear, business-wise, with communication. That's why I'm doing this – because I didn't see anything like that for so long. I want to help artists that need a platform but aren't event producers themselves, so they can work better with venues. Most people are either an artist or part of a venue; there aren't people that are super focused on just the event production side and helping artists. A lot of the event producers I've seen are just focused on the event, whereas the event is secondary to me. Really the primary reason for me doing this is just to give the artists the most open platform to perform. I think that's why I'm doing this — because I haven't seen enough effective communication between artists and venues.”
Naturally, this circles right back around to trusting individual artists and their ability to create amazing experiences for those around them.
“Literally everything is just trusting the artists,” says Ben. “I've seen them at work and I've seen what they've done produced, and I know they can go a step further and a step further the next time. Every time I've seen my friends perform, they're always a step further and blowing my mind. When you let an artist explore and be themselves and perform, it's magical. That's all I want for people — is to see them in their flow state.”
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So what makes a DJ set great anyway? David Whitehead of Roland, a leader in the electronic music industry, says it simply: “A good DJ set is like a story.” An ideal DJ set has a distinct, entrancing flow that can imbue a space with enough energy and emotion to keep an audience dancing way longer than expected, and a transcendent DJ set uses tonal shifts to create suspense and movement over the course of its runtime. Just like a fantastic movie, a great DJ set should have moments that the audience remembers. Great musical moments then help create new moments and memories for listeners by pushing them to engage more with their environment and the people around them.
When I tried to create my first DJ set, I wanted to take my audience on a whirlwind ride through all the exciting things I’d discovered in music. I wanted to weave heartwarming, silly TV intros with floor-shaking industrial techno music, then take a sharp left turn into soothing, groovy Japanese house music. I wanted to make each second exciting in its own way, whether that excitement came from artistry or mischief. The only reason I found the freedom to create the set I ultimately made was because I was given an opportunity to DJ for friends I deeply trusted at a venue that felt like home.
It is clear that Vegas has a path forward to make even larger venues places where innovation and experimentation could flourish, places where local artists could turn their dials up to eleven and be rewarded for it. Thankfully, there are people like Ben who are determined to make such a path both appealing and viable for everyone from event organizers to DJs to dancers. All there is left to do is turn up the volume and convince Vegas to dance to the beat of its wildly talented artists.
Ben made a mini mix for Devoid’s first issue, you can listen to it here.
"This is my audio research series file 1 of 10. This minimix series, I was challenging myself with more atypical structures and extreme manipulations. These are sounds that refract and play with the light."
Timestamps:
Edward - Check Check 0:00 - 4:44
Glacci - Coral Daze 0:46 - 4:24
Ruairi DX - Sturzflug 4:24 - 6:42
Ducky - Winter Song 5:33 - 11:16
Böa - Duvet (Acoustic ver) 8:08 - 15:20
Böa - Duvet (ScummV rmx, Virtual Self-edit)
Porter Robinson - Fellow Feeling 17:07 - 22:47
