Drop the Lime blends vintage sounds, modern club beats

He does so by tracing dance music’s genealogy back to its analog ancestry.

Nobody really dances to rock ‘n’ roll anymore, but the riot of branches that form the upper reaches of club music’s crowded family tree can all be traced back to a shared trunk.

Drop the Lime (aka Luca Venezia) knows this.

And now the DJ/producer/label head is connecting the far flung dots between Eddie Cochran and Paul Oakenfold, two artists whose works seem separated by oceans, though Venezia would probably argue that they’re not separated at all.

“If you think about it, rockabilly and jump blues and old soul was the beginning of dance music,” Venezia says. “Those artists were performing to kids who were going out at night and rebelling against their parents, dancing and partying, getting messed up and having fun the same way that people are doing it today to club music.”

Venezia makes this connection explicit by incorporating rockabilly flourishes in with his DJ sets and productions, which span all kinds of electronica subgenres: house, trance, dubstep and electro, to name a few.

“I used to be against combining the two, and then it just happened naturally over time,” Venezia says. “I would start mixing rockabilly in the middle of a set and then beat matching it to go into a house tune or an electro tune, then just started producing it, combining the two. On paper, it seems weird. But it seems to work when you do it.”

What makes it work is not just the records Venezia plays, but in the way that he plays them.

During his DJ sets, he sings as well as spins, and he’s putting together a stage show that features swing dancing and backup singers.

It’s a natural progression for a guy like Venezia, a New York City denizen who began playing guitar at the age of 7 while growing up in a household where his mother had Elvis Presley and Gene Vincent albums in constant rotation.

“I immediately fell in love with show business and wanting to be onstage and to be a performer at a young age,” Venezia says. “So then I was in bands, and I got into the whole psychobilly scene and punk stuff and hardcore. Then I went to a rave and I was like, ‘What! I’m going to become a DJ!’ I put the guitar down.”

He’s picked the guitar up again in recent years, and you can hear it in his work: Though it’s hard to succinctly encapsulate Venezia’s shifting tastes, his productions are grounded in more tightly honed song structures than some of his peers.

Venezia’s often associated with the electro ranks, and while in Vegas this week, he’ll be performing at Clash at Rain, a night dedicated to that scene.

But his sets are seldom so narrowly defined.

“I’ve always jumped genres,” Venezia says. “But everything revolves around a nice, hard hitting bass. It’s a little dirty.”

Kind of like the best rock ‘n’ roll, right?

It’s been said time and time again in recent years that DJs are the new rock stars.

This cuts both ways.

What was once at least mildly subversive has become increasingly mainstream, for better or worse, and arguments could be made in either case.

“The culture in general in America has evolved musically. Pop music is mixed with club music,” Venezia says. “Underground music has gotten more attention now and becoming more like pop. It’s really become popular in the States.”

And Venezia is using that popularity to expose the roots of rock ‘n’ roll.

But, like the vintage sounds he occasionally mines, his purpose is ultimately a simple one.

“I am still a DJ,” he says. “And a DJ is there is to make people dance and have a good time.”

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.