Headcleaner is a monthly DJ night hosted at The Summit Music Hall, located at 2210 Summit St. Credit: Courtesy of Nick Quest
A long-running dance music showcase will continue Saturday at The Summit Music Hall, bringing the sounds of Chicago’s underground club scene to Columbus.
The Summit Music Hall — located at 2210 Summit St. — will host Chicago-based artist Jana Rush, along with local DJs Sinceer and Melani Pagani, at 9 p.m. for the latest edition of Headcleaner, a monthly event at the music hall that highlights underground dance music in the Midwest.
Saturday’s show was organized by Corey Trimmer, a local DJ who co-founded Headcleaner in 2017. Trimmer said he wanted to bring Rush to Columbus because he enjoys her monthly radio show dedicated to footwork music — a style of abstract, uptempo dance music that originated in Chicago during the 1990s and early 2000s, characterized by sparse, syncopated percussion, heavy bass and cut-up samples — on NTS, an internet radio station.
“It’s a short distance from Columbus to Chicago, so it seemed like a good booking to take the risk to try and bring her here,” Trimmer said. “We’ve been talking about having faster [beats per minute] music, so this was our chance. I love her sound. She’s awesome.”
Rush said Saturday’s Headcleaner show marks the first time she has ever played in Columbus.
“I’m excited to play,” Rush said. “I think people can expect to have a great time, to hear some cold music and some good bass frequencies.”
Rush said apart from music, she has a degree in chemical engineering — a career path she said has heavily influenced the approach she takes to music and mixes.
“When I go make a track, or when I think about music, I find myself sometimes thinking about sound waves,” Rush said. “I’m thinking about a picture of what headroom is and how it matters. You gotta be good with the frequencies — if your mids are off or your highs are too high and the bass ain’t hitting where it’s supposed to hit, it’s a problem.”
Rush said this detail-oriented approach to her sound design and construction helps her control the energy and momentum of her live performances.
“You don’t have to go out here and try to be too scientific about it because I guess some people can get confused,” Rush said. “But you do have to have some care for the details. You know, it’s not just about picking the right tracks.”
Rush said her love of dance music was influenced by listening to the radio from a young age. She said she started DJing when she was 10 years old, after a bad audition at WKKC — the radio station at Kennedy-King College in Chicago — convinced station employees to let her come in on weekends to practice and improve her skills.
“I’d just go there every Saturday, and after the DJ got done with the morning show, I was going in and playing around on the turntables,” Rush said. “People would show me things here and there with the pitch control and everything on the 1200s — this was back when we had records and everything — but that was how I got started.”
Drew Sinceer, another DJ set to perform Saturday under stage name “Sinceer,” said he became friends with Rush from being in similar circles in the Chicago electronic music scenes. He said he looks forward to performing with Rush, whose contributions to footwork and ghetto house — a precursor to footwork with rattling low-end and raunchy lyrics — are embedded within the rich history of electronic music in Chicago.
“[Rush] was definitely one of the pioneers, one of the youngest producers producing ghetto house on this label Dance Mania back in the 1990s,” Sinceer said. “As the ghetto house sound has evolved from house to juke to footwork, [Rush] has been there every step of the way.”
Pagani, a resident DJ at AWOL — a gay bar in Columbus’ Olde Towne East neighborhood where she hosts a monthly dance party titled Fever — said she is looking forward to performing Saturday.
Pagani said going to a warehouse rave with DJs from Dance Mania — the seminal Chicago-based label often referred to as “ghetto house’s Motown,” which put out Rush’s first release when she was just 15 years old — was a formative experience in her youth.
“I still remember those experiences of seeing Dance Mania DJs when I was a sophomore in high school,” Pagani said. “I just thought it was so cool. I love the vastness of the bass, and how fun and not taking itself seriously the music is. I loved how it just made everybody dance.”
Pagani, who has performed at Headcleaner in the past, said she sees the event as a spiritual successor to the underground raves she’d frequent in the Midwest during the late ‘90s.
“The Midwest electronic music scene was really influenced by Chicago, and a lot of those DJs came through and played at the raves here in Columbus,” Pagani said. “Being a kid and going to those warehouse shows really had a profound impact on me.”
Trimmer said the idea behind Headcleaner was not only to keep the legacy of these underground parties alive in a nightclub atmosphere, but also to make the environment more open for a younger generation that is new to these dance music scenes.
“When I was young and in the rave scene, I didn’t always feel cool enough to be part of the crowd,” Trimmer said. “It’s nice to be able to throw an event and to be in a position where we’re not gatekeeping whatsoever, where people can hit us up asking to learn how to DJ and we can provide them resources or give them advice.”
With Headcleaner, Trimmer said he wanted to create an event where people can explore and express themselves freely.
“We wanted to create a space where people can come and just be themselves,” Trimmer said. “They can be free to dance without worrying, and just have an escape from the chaos that is everyday life.”
More information about the event can be found on the Resident Advisor event listing. Tickets for the event can be purchased via the Eventbrite website for $10 before 11 p.m. Saturday, and $15 afterward.
