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How Michael Donaldson left global DJing behind to reconnect with music (and life)
campus station — and later, Rollins College’s WPRK 91.5 FM. After graduating from UCF in 1991, Donaldson was well on his way to becoming a fixture in Orlando’s emergent indiealternative music scene. He had been in several punk bands during his teen years, so it was no surprise when Donaldson began playing guitar in local dream-pop band Tick Tick Tock. (For the curious, search for “Animation Festival” on Bandcamp — a Butthole Surfers-esque group he was in during the late ’80s.) Finally, cementing his now-established auteur sensibility, he also opened retail shop Bad Mood Records in 1992. Donaldson was an avid home-recordist during those early years, four-tracking his Juno 106 synth, drum machine and guitar to produce bedroom-pop symphonies. But after seeing Meat Beat Manifesto perform, he bought a sampler and began creating his own dance tracks — in debt to both the smooth grooves of house music and noisy hip-hop like Public Enemy. With the addition of the textural and conceptual influence of ambient pioneer Brian Eno, he was ready to drop and roll as Q-Burns Abstract Message (Q-BAM). While Donaldson certainly wasn’t the first indie rocker to trade his guitar for a sampler — or turntables — he felt it was a natural extension of his DIY punk days. “In the early ’90s, I really enjoyed underground dance music in that it was being self-distributed. [It was] bringing everyone together … that had so much appeal to me. My whole point of DJing was to be a part of what happened in the room with the crowd,” remembers Donaldson. He released his first single as Q-BAM — the breakbeat noir of “141 Revenge Street” — in 1995, and began spinning records focused on moving the dance floor. Within two years, Donaldson inked a deal with Astralwerks, the iconic electronic label. He eventually released three albums for the label over the next five years — early-singles compilation Oeuvre (1998), full-length debut Feng Shui (1998) and final offering Invisible Airline (2001). Tours as the opening DJ for Gus Gus, Chemical Brothers and longtime heroes Meat Beat Manifesto quickly ensued. As did the onset of his seemingly nonstop DJ gigs — both nationally and globally. At his early-2000s peak, Donaldson was booking 100 dates annually, traveling from San Francisco to Siberia. In fact, one of his favorite countries to travel to was Russia, where he DJed more than a dozen times. In parallel to his seamless beat-making for Astralwerks — Donaldson is a true multitasker — he also formed Eighth Dimension Records in the mid-’90s with serial entrepreneur Gerard Mitchell. Soon, this music collective and licensing label — which included local artists Beef Wellington, DJ BMF, Dynagroove and Pimp Daddy Nash — began releasing records. At the same time, Donaldson was also remixing other artists such as Faith No More, Fila Brazillia, Mazi & Colette, Rabbit in the Moon, Us3 and Violent Femmes. Selfreliant and self-distributed, indeed.
BY DANIEL FULLER
THE ENDLESS NOW
Michael Donaldson wonders what note comes next | Photo by Matt Keller Lehman
Q-BURNS’ ABSTRACT JOURNEY “I
kinda fell out of love with it. I was enjoying what was happening less and less,” says former globetrotting DJ and producer extraordinaire Michael Donaldson. “I got into DJing initially because it seemed like an extension of what I was really into as a punk rock kid … I was really into the idea of the band being the facilitator for the show; they weren’t necessarily the stars.” While the latest generation of EDM fans are likely sick of hearing tales about the rise and fall of Orlando’s underground dance music scene during the 1990s, they were indeed heady times. From humble acid house origins during the late ’80s with Kimball Collins spinning at AAHZ to the opening of Club Firestone in 1992 and Chemical 36
Brothers performing their first U.S. show at the Edge a year later, Orlando’s rave scene made national waves. In fact, Rolling Stone magazine at the time dubbed Orlando the “Seattle of electronica” in a lengthy feature about our little underground in the Aug. 21, 1997, issue. However, the City Beautiful’s time in the musical spotlight was fleeting — the eventual passage of the City of Orlando’s “rave ban” a local ordinance that forced nightclubs to close by 3 a.m., was the inevitable beginning of the end. Though a transplant, Michael Donaldson was here for all of it — initially moving from Monroe, Louisiana, to Orlando in 1989 to enroll in the University of Central Florida’s then-new film program, though he opted for a radio-television degree instead. He was soon DJing for WUCF 89.9 FM — UCF’s
ORLANDO WEEKLY ● MAY 11-17, 2022 ● orlandoweekly.com
We’re sitting comfortably in the screened-in Florida room of Donaldson’s home — shared with wife Caroline St. Clair — which offers a gorgeous, near-panoramic view of Lake Holden and the downtown Orlando skyline. The sun is shining with a light breeze. Several cats mill about. Snacks are offered and eaten. Our discussion turns back to his retirement from the decks. “Another reason I got out of DJing is it started drying up when the crash happened in 2008. I remember looking at my calendar and I had no gig commitments anywhere … in the far future, near future. And that was the first time since ’96,” Donaldson says. And just like that, the seemingly endless gigs dried up overnight for Donaldson and hundreds of other DJs making a living by jetting across the globe to play records for
