Drop the Lime

New York’s Drop the Lime (Luca Venezia) moves too fast for categorization. Once a champion of breakcore, he moved on to hosting New York’s first grime night, Bangers & Mash. Whatever he’s into, it involves heavy bass lines. Lime jazzes up his DJ sets with his own live vocals, resampling and digital-control techniques. He’s a dope remixer—with a slew of new tracks for Moby, M83, Swedish pop singer Robyn and Tricky on the way. He even has a sense of humor; just check YouTube to see him dancing in a field on the video for “E Lock.” We called him to check in before his Liar’s Club show this week.

Time Out Chicago: Your style changes a lot. Is it tough for people to keep up with you?
Drop the Lime: I find that it’s just natural for me to constantly change and evolve and give music its own life. I’ve always been really interested, since I was seven, in all kinds of music, from old doo-wop and ’50s rock to punk to electronic—that really influences me now as a producer to jump around. I think a lot of people want to label something; “Oh, that’s house music,” or “That’s drum and bass”—because it’s easy. I’d rather be seen as Drop the Lime.

TOC: What kind of styles are you playing with lately? I’ve heard a real up-tempo Baltimore vibe.
Drop the Lime: Definitely, I’ve been deejaying a lot of Baltimore music, and a lot of stuff from the U.K. called “bassline” and “niche,” which is basically like old garage and two-step. There’s a whole movement coming out north from England. It’s really hard, heavy bass lines, but real wobbly bass lines like dubstep with a lot of sub. But the beat’s 4/4, like a house beat at 140bpm. It has the same attitude that I’m always attracted to with music—a punk kind of attitude with a lot of energy. The way B-more is, they don’t really care, they’re chopping stuff up, anything. You have a SpongeBob SquarePants tune, but they’re chopping it up and making it this club banger. Artists like Dexplicit and DJ Q are people doing that as well.

TOC: You play with rave sonics. Did you grow up in that scene?
Drop the Lime: Yeah, definitely. That’s really the reason why I started making electronic music. I was always in bands and at about 16 years old I went to my first rave in New York. And I was just like, Fuck. I need to be a DJ, this is amazing. I’d never heard bass like that before…The sounds seemed so mysterious. I got this feeling of hunger where I needed to make those sounds and play it on a massive sound system and see all these kids dancing. All this flashed before my eyes.

TOC: Does that mean the rave is back?
Drop the Lime: This past year was cool because you had the new-rave thing. Us old ravers were like, “What the fuck? These people don’t even go to raves. What they’re playing now is like rock music.” But that reopened up the door to be able to play all these old hardcore tunes. Piano stabs were back. It relaunched electronic music in America.

Drop the Lime plays I Heart Smash & Crunch Friday 22 at Liar’s Club.