Rob Salmon
Rob Salmon's career has been a long flight path between Auckland, New York and Sydney, and wherever he has landed he has brought the same restless curiosity about where club music can go next. A DJ since the late '80s, he is known for sets that push at the edges of contemporary club music rather than staying in one lane.
Originally from Dunedin and raised in West Auckland, he grew up in the city's early hip-hop and house scenes. At sixteen he was running under-age Sunday parties at the Box, and in 1990 the club's owner took him on as a trainee DJ. Within six months he was a resident. It was an apprenticeship in the old style: learning the craft in the booth, from the ground up, in a scene small enough that everyone knew everyone. In 1991 he won the Auckland heat of the DMC championships and placed third in the final.
Hip-hop was part of the story too. He was a third of the trio Leaders of Style, later Urban Disturbance, with schoolmates Zane Lowe and Ollie Green, named Most Promising Group at the 1994 New Zealand Music Awards.
His production story took shape in New York. With engineer Rob Rives of Wave Music he made records for Deep Dish's Yoshitoshi label, starting with "Running Towards A Dream" in 2001, a record that travelled far beyond New York's clubs. More followed on the New York house staple Chez Music, Hamburg's Save Room, Barcelona's My Cup Of Tea, United Music in France and Liberate, and in 2003 Virgin commissioned his remix of the Human League's "Love Action."
He has played nights at Centro-Fly and PS1 in New York, Space in Miami, Bar Rumba in London, the Big Day Out in Auckland and Chinese Laundry in Sydney. Back home in the mid-2000s he hosted a prime-time show on George FM, and between 2003 and 2009 he was based first in Auckland and then in Sydney. New Zealand's Alexander Turnbull Library has chosen his work for preservation in the country's National Digital Heritage Archive, a rare honour for a club DJ. Today he is based in Philadelphia.
His music is deep but forward-leaning, with dubby textures, hypnotic grooves and a sense of journey that reflects a life spent moving between continents. He is the sort of DJ who builds a set like a story, and the sort of producer who likes to leave space for the listener.
On Red Melon he teamed up with Dick Johnson, better known as Magik J, for Transit in 2004. It is warm, travel-minded tech house with airport and pilot-radio chops over dubby stabs, a fitting theme for two producers whose lives have been spent in departure lounges.
It is a record that sums up Rob Salmon neatly: always in motion, always listening, and always looking for the next place the groove can take him. Two decades on, Transit still sounds like the start of a journey rather than the end of one.
