For four decades and counting, Carl Cox has commanded the decks at Ibiza residencies, headlined music festivals, and curated classics at underground raves. The veteran British DJ has developed a pre-show regime over the years: He eats nutrient-rich salads or fish-based dishes, drinks more water than alcohol, and occasionally clears the room for a moment of stillness. As he steps out of his air-conditioned trailer and into the broiling warehouse, teeming with sardined fans, he’s reminded why he keeps coming back. He cues up his first record, and his nerves wash away.
“You see a lot of DJs are sitting there and stressing out, not even looking at the crowd, and trying to do the perfect mix,” Cox says in a Zoom call from his home near Melbourne, Australia. “You know they’re stressed, and I’m like, ‘I’m going in. Check this record out. Bang!’ I love it. I genuinely love it. Put me in that arena, and that’s my office.”
Before Cox became a techno deity, he spent his nights on the dance floor. During frigid winter months in London, he braved club lines as a teenager to get a taste. Once inside, he crawled to the center of sweaty crowds, taking in every kick drum, every synth, every bass line. Now, a few months away from his 63rd birthday, Cox is a tastemaker with an authoritative ear who makes audiences groove.
Cox has been a mainstay at the Miami-based Ultra Music Festival for nearly 25 years. He first performed at the festival’s Twilo Tent in 2001, and has performed there more than a dozen times since. In 2005, he launched the Carl Cox & Friends stage, highlighting underground electronic talent, and six years later he moved his show to the MegaStructure, an aircraft-hanger-shaped venue that welcomed acts like Steve Aoki and Afrojack.
“You never saw me at the main stage, not even once, because I put all my attention into creating something else at that festival — somewhere else to go to,” Cox says. “My own sound from Europe. It ended up as the MegaStructure, but at the beginning it was literally a tent. That was it. So with that, it grew organically into something which now is a staple diet of Ultra.”
Cox’s latest project on the festival grounds is titled Evolution, an experimental show where he’ll use software to manipulate sound live. The show, which comes to Ultra on March 29, will serve as the closing set of his “Carl Cox Invites” stage takeover and feature acts like Dubfire, Adam Beyer, and Richie Hawtin. “It could be the biggest fail of all time, or it favors the brave,” he adds.
Cox spoke to Rolling Stone about the early days of Ultra, his Evolution live show, and why he’d rather make music than retire.
You played Ultra Music Festival for the first time at the Twilo Tent in 2001. What was the music festival like back then?
There were always clubs by the beach, but not on the beach. So this was the first gathering, in some ways, for dance music, and having all of these artists come from all over the world to celebrate dance music. It was quite a pioneering thing for people in Miami.
All of this was happening within the WMC, the Winter Music Conference. Most of the events were all happening in the clubs, and then you had pool parties and you had rooftop parties.That was what was going on, more than anything. So you can imagine when you had something that was devoid of all of that. [Ultra] ended up in one place with a gathering of all the DJs that were playing from all over the world coming in. It was really exciting. It was something that Miami had never seen, really before.
How would you describe it now?
If you’re going to a Taylor Swift concert, you’ll know every single record that she’s made. You walk away, and you go, “We really enjoyed that, it’s nice.” With Ultra, you have no idea. If you went to Ultra and you experienced Skrillex… “What’s a Skrillex? What’s this dubstep sound? Why is my chest vibrating from this bass line?” You walk away [and say], “Oh, my God. Skrillex was amazing. This is phenomenal.” You got to go to the next one. It’s like an introductory festival for your first-timers.
This year you’re launching your live show Evolution on the festival grounds with a “Carl Cox Invites” stage takeover. What makes this show different?
So we’re not just playing techno music or house music or electronic music, we’re making it right in front of your very ears. That’s what’s really, really cool about it.
I could have come in and DJ’d and played my CDs and my USB and played all the big records and been happy, but I could do that standing on my head, as you can understand. For this, you need to be able to push things forward, take that chance, hang off a cliff by your fingernails — because a lot of stuff could actually go wrong quite quickly if we don’t set it up in such a way.
Last year you decided to prioritize other bookings and skip out on Ultra, which by the way got rained out.
I knew it. You don’t realize that I am God.
It was all your fault! But seriously, was there another reason why you skipped the festival?
I’ve been playing it nearly every year since it existed. I wanted to have a year off, personally, I just thought to myself, every time you buy a ticket for Ultra, you’re gonna see Carl Cox. It’s a given. He’s on the lineup there somewhere, and that’s it. So you go in, and Carl’s there and he does his thing, he does the horn, honnnk, everyone’s going mad, you have the smoke machine. I thought, take a year off, go outside the fishbowl and look in, and then see the difference of me not being there.
Carl Cox at Ultra Music Festival in 2007
Courtesy of Ultra Music Festival
If you were to break down your set into a three- or five-course meal, how would you describe it?
Here’s a rule book [throws up his arm] — out the window. I’ve got a whole abundance of music to play. Of course, sometimes I go right out the gate [with a] big, massive record. Everyone goes mad. But, if you’re up here, you’ve got to then come down from it. So the first hour is kind of finding your feet of where you are with the crowd, and then the next hour is, “I know where we are. I can go all the way down to a point where you really feel the music,” and then up to the last point, you start to play a few classics.
You have to put your heart on your sleeve. Play your music. Play from here. Don’t play from a playlist from Spotify or from SoundCloud. Don’t sit there in the hotel room and make a set and go, “Well, I’m going to play that” — because as far as I’m concerned, people feel that. They know that you’re creating a set list you just created when you played in Vegas, or when you just played the last EDC. So don’t do that. But they do it because it’s easy to do it. You ask the DJ to play one more record outside of their set, and they say no, because they never set themselves up to play a last record.
One of your favorite albums is Stevie Wonder’s Songs for the Key of Life, but you also draw inspiration from calypso music and other genres. I’m curious about other artists outside of the electronic music bubble that still inspire you.
It goes back to listening to jazz and funk music and soul and R&B. Things that I find in music that you’re not listening for, but it’s there. Unfortunately a couple of weeks ago, we lost Angie Stone, which was a very sad moment in our lives. The last record [I played at Ibiza’s] Space club — I was there for 16 years — was “Wish I Didn’t Miss You.”… That’s a great track, and I wanted people to really feel my soul.
What other artists have you seen recently?
I went to go see Kylie Minogue. She was amazing. I went to see Lady Gaga, phenomenal. I went to see Michael Bublé, fantastic. Their ways of understanding why people exist… I probably wouldn’t go to Taylor Swift unless you pay me a lot of money.
You have a vendetta against Miss Taylor!
If you pay me to go and see Taylor Swift, I’ll go. I understand, very prolific, and she’s lovely, and she does a lot of charity work. But for me, I’m very happy in my surroundings, very happy in my shoes, really happy [to have] the responsibility as a gatekeeper. It’s quite funny, actually, because I’ve just taken on a residency for 14 weeks in Ibiza as a 63-year-old person. It’s madness. What am I doing? I should be relaxing watching Netflix. But I’m not. I’m out there dedicated to the cause.
