When Waco resident Luis Gonzalez goes clubbing in Dallas or San Antonio, he often arrives on the scene with his musical instruments: a laptop computer, a keyboard synthesizer and headphones.

That’s not only his musical library for the evening, but the place where he creates his electronic compositions and, when acting as club DJ, where he orchestrates the interaction between dancers and music.

Gonzalez, 22, has been crafting his own electronic music since he was 13 and Saturday night may be his biggest moment: opening for popular Dutch electronic DJ Marco V at the Dallas club The Lizard Lounge.

A laptop, keyboards and headphones are Waco electronic DJ/composer Luis Gonzalez’s basic tools used to get a club dancing.
Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald

It’s Gonzalez’s second time to run the boards at the Lizard Lounge — he’ll be opening with other club DJs Jayson Gold and J Who — and as fan of Marco V’s, he’s pumped for the occasion. “I’ve been listening to Marco V for six, seven years now,” he said.

But just like any live band opening for a bigger act, the Waco DJ is mindful not to hog the spotlight from the evening’s headliner.

“You don’t want to have people so tired from your set that there’s no energy left for the next guy,” he explained.

Gonzalez, born in Monterrey, Mexico, but raised in the States, got hooked into making electronic music as a teenager. His parents bought him a computer at age 12 and a friend shortly thereafter gave him a CD of electronic tracks. The latter introduced him to music, the former gave him a way to explore it, both creating his own and listening to others’ work.

Online, he found some of the genre’s top composers — Paul Oakenfold, Tiestro, Armin Van Buuren and others — and worked his way into trance music, a niche of the electronic genre.

Trance, he explained, has a high BPM (beats per minute), elevated energy and prominent synthesizer lines, with emotional levels often building through several songs. Drum-and-bass, a subgenre popular in many dance clubs, also has a high BPM, but with a more pronounced beat.

House is slower, 120-130 BPM, with a thudding dance beat and highlighted percussion. Gonzalez isn’t a fan of dubstep, a style that is hot right now with its slow, heavy bass beat and looping drum patterns, sprinkled with sound and vocal samples.

At first, Gonzalez was content to create and mix his music at home.

“I didn’t have the guts to do it live. I couldn’t get the beat matchup down,” he recalled.

That reluctance gradually faded after he bought some turntables and mixing boards and started testing his DJ skills in public. Starting at house parties and the occasional gig at Treff’s Bar & Grill, Gonzalez soon found Waco’s dance music venues limited, particularly for electronic dance music.

As a result, Gonzalez found himself DJing at clubs in San Antonio, McAllen and Dallas on weekends during his school years at A.J. Moore Academy, from which he graduated in 2006.

Going live in the club scene presented new challenges for the electronic composer, such as seamlessly blending tracks with different beats to keep the dancing going, maintaining one’s focus on the beat despite interruptions from dancers and clubgoers, navigating acoustics and sound systems that differ from club to club.

The experience has hooked Gonzalez. Currently studying audio engineering at McLennan Community College and working as a driver for AutoZone, he’s aiming at work as a producer of electronic dance music, even if the best places for his favorite style are even farther than the Lizard Lounge.

“This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” he said. “Honestly, I’d like to play overseas: London has a huge trance following.”

choover@wacotrib.com

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