SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) – DJ John Lomax visits KSLA’s studio to speak with ArkLaTex Artistry about the third installment of his Strange Music for Nice People.
On April 26, at 8 p.m., DJ Lomax the Grey and other DJs will perform an electronic music sound and visual experience, Strange Music for Nice People III (SMNP), at Bear’s, 1401 Fairfield Avenue.
DJs that will perform:
About Lomax the Grey
DJ Lomax the Grey originally comes from Charlotte, North Carolina, and came to Shreveport through the Air Force, where he served on the 20th bomb squadron. Lomax started his journey in the punk scene in Charlotte and eventually got into the electronic music scene. He has been into it ever since.
“I’ve always enjoyed the event promotion side, and I’ve always been involved in nightlife and entertainment. Working night nightclubs and being a part of that business. So, learning how to DJ was always critical in making sure I knew how to do that. How to hire DJs and manage DJs. And, I love it,” Lomax explains. “Playing the music I like really loud, and no one else can like, mess with it. I’m the one playing the music. That’s great for me. I love it.”
He is a multimedia artist and considers himself a creative technologist, as he always explores and learns new technologies to create his experiences like SMNP.
About the show
Lomax has been performing in the Shreveport nightclub scene since the early 90s. Recently, he has been crafting unique shows like the Strange Music for Nice People. As for playing with Cade Alex, Lomax explains that the two always get along.
“He is one of my favorite DJs in town,” Lomax says, referring to Cade Alex. “We click really well together. We like to play together, and it’s a fun time.”
Lomax considers these performances more of a curated experience than just a normal DJ set that performs what people want to hear.
“I think a lot of DJs tend to play what people WANT to hear, instead of what people NEED to hear,” says Lomax. “It’s gotten to the point where everything starts to sound the same.”
He crafts his playlist with knowledge of music and creates the visuals with different methods, and says he is always experimenting with how to make them in different ways.
“To me, the DJ thing is more of an underground thing. It’s our jobs to expose people to new sounds, and maybe you like it, maybe you don’t,” says Lomax.
“It’s like curating sound and music,” says Brittney Hazelton.
“Exactly, exactly. It’s like curation. That’s all it is. It’s just like you were curating an art show,” says Lomax.”You want a vibe, a visual language. And that’s what we do: we create an environment. Both with the visuals and the lasers, the sound. Its a curated evening for people who like to dance.”
Does he produce his own music?
“I dabble in music production. It’s a good way for me to cleanse my palette off of other projects. Or just to understand the latest sounds that are kinda coming out. By deducing it. It makes you a much better DJ once you get some music theory under your belt and start to really understand how music is put together. Especially hyper-genreized stuff like techno, or house. You have to understand how it’s built in order to deconstruct it,” explains Lomax.
“It’s one of those things. I’ve been doing it for a really long time, that I know I will never master it,” says Lomax, then explains that he has well over 10,000 hours working in music. “Yeah, no. I’ll never master it. I’m gonna try, and I don’t think it’s something that I will stop doing.”
Age and Electronic Music
“As far as the age thing, a lot of people associate the electronic music, dance culture, rave culture with young people. Understandably. It’s usually influential to the right now. A lot of young people enjoy it. But, there are people that have been into that music for 30-plus years now,” says Lomax. “It does make me feel good that the top DJs in the world are in their 50s and 60s.”
The Visuals and Gaming
“So, this show was all done with Unreal Engine, which is a game development engine that does real-time graphics. It’s been a real learning process. That is what I use a lot of this for. I kinda learn new techniques and explore new ways of making concert visuals. Different ways of kinda creating these visual enviroments,” explains Lomax.
Unreal Engine has a very open community that helps anyone learn how to use the program online and on YouTube.
“Gaming is unbelievable. It’s way larger than film, television, and movies put together. And, you know, the leaps that are being made in that community. In fidelity, and creativity, and storytelling. When a lot of popular media is being pulled from the stories that were told by games, you know, that says a lot.”
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