Building a DJ rep on the back of remixes isn't a new career strategy. But Dragan Roganovic has had a particularly prosperous go at it.
Born in Serbia, raised in Australia, and now based in California, the electro-house head known as Dirty South has been banging around the scene since the mid-'00s. And Roganovic has rewired work by loads of artists, including the Doors, Diddy, Miike Snow, Evermore, and Depeche Mode. His greatest coup, though, was scoring a 2010 Grammy nomination alongside Axwell for Best Remixed Recording (Non-Classical) for the Temper Trap's "Sweet Disposition."
Recently, Dirty has hinted he'll devote more time to making originals versus remixes — a decision likely connected to the creation of his own label, Phazing Records. The company is named after "Phazing," a Dirty South original that cribs from Harry Nilsson's cover of "Everybody's Talkin'" to make a wonderfully tripped-out number with some space-gazing lyrics: "Walking at the speed of light/Phazing a million miles away/We are not going home/We're phazing a million miles away."
In keeping with the theme, Roganovic stopped at Mansion in March as part of the "Starphazing Nights" tour. When he visits this Saturday, it'll be part of the venue's seventh-anniversary bash.
