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DJ Quest
Turntablists are to DJs what physicists are to scientists -- chock-full of brilliant ideas understood and fully appreciated mainly by their colleagues. Manipulating wax on souped-up record players, turntablists have a style and method of musical expression that rivals masters of more "traditional" instruments. Carlos Aguilar, better known as DJ Quest, is the epitome of this idiom. He's worked on the local DJ scene since 1987, mixing and dropping beats for dancing masses with DJ collectives like the Bulletproof Scratch Hamsters and the Space Travelers. Moving away from the dance floor and into the battle DJ circuit -- where DJs compete against one another for props -- Quest has the kind of skills that fellow turntablists respect: He won the pre-eminent Music Systems DJ competition in 1996, and has cleaned up at smaller face-offs.

Turntablists are beginning to gain more respect as pure musicians, but Quest is already going beyond that with his band Live Human, an experimental hip-hop ensemble that uses a contrabass (Andrew Kushin), drums (Albert Mathias), and a turntable (Quest) to twist hip hop on its ear. The group's spontaneous improv replaces standard sample-heavy hip hop with a human element. Traditionally, a DJ who plays with a hip-hop band mixes beats, adds samples, and scratches. But with Live Human, DJ Quest acts as a pure turntablist, relying solely on his scratches to fill out the collective sound of live instruments. In front of an audience, Live Human are impressive. Each musician seamlessly plays off the others, dusting preconceived notions of what hip hop and turntablists can do.

-- Robert Arriaga

DJ Quest spins at "Elementary" (held at Tempest, 431 Natoma at Fifth Street) Saturday, Oct. 18, at 10 p.m. Admission is $5; call 273-4678.