Audio Culture: Booker, Frank Booker
My profile of Chris Cox aka Frank Booker is live on Audio Culture - The Noisy Library of New Zealand Music now.
Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.
For over two and a half decades, Chris Cox, aka Frank Booker, has kept dancefloors moving across New Zealand and Australia and even as far afield as New York, London and Japan.
After falling in love with acid-jazz, jazz funk and progressive soul as a teenager in Christchurch, Cox taught himself to DJ and expanded his palette to include soul, house, and hip-hop while playing gigs opening for his friends who were playing in the band Solaa at the time. From there, he discovered student radio via the local station, RDU 98.5, spent a stint as a resident DJ at Base Nightclub & Bar, and had some fledgling adventures as a promoter.
After a well-received DJ set at the legendary musical festival The Gathering, Cox relocated to Auckland. In the big city, he became involved in the scenes surrounding the Khuja Lounge and Calibre venues, where he became fascinated with the emerging sound of West London Broken Beat. Along the way, he found love, taught himself the basics of hardware music production, and teamed up with his high-school friend Isaac Aesili in the future jazz-meets-house-meets-broken-beat group Thisinformation.
In the early 2000s, Cox played his first DJ gigs overseas and was invited to attend the Red Bull Music Academy in São Paulo. In 2004, he relocated to London, where he helped the Japanese-New Zealand jazz-electronica pianist and producer Mark de Clive-Lowe run a regular club night called Freesoul Sessions before returning home in 2006.
Back in Auckland, Cox started spending time with jazz saxophonist and producer Nathan Haines, who invited him to co-produce his seventh album, Right Now. Not long after, Cox started co-hosting a weekly Monday night show on George FM with Hit It & Quit It with the American electronic music producer, DJ and musician Matthew Chicoine, aka Recloose. Hit It & Quit It quickly expanded into a club night called Hit It & Quit It Revue, which gave Cox the freedom to explore his growing interest in disco-funk, boogie and uptempo R&B.
From there, Cox jumped into releasing his own slow-building original deep house and boogie productions and disco DJ edits as Frank Booker. Soon enough, he was releasing records on boutique labels around the world and touring overseas on a regular basis as a DJ. Around the same time, he found another calling in musical education, leading to stints working with MAINZ, Serato, Auckland Council, and SAE New Zealand.
In 2019, Cox returned to event promotion while working with London/Auckland-based producer, DJ, and promoter collective Flamingo Pier. Since the start of 2024, he’s been helping with the music at the Ponsonby Record bar Nami, running a new event promotion/record label project called Music First with his business partner Sam Harman, aka DJ Samuel Harmony, and fitting in long DJ sets wherever he can.
This two-part feature takes a deeper look at Cox’s story: a tale that involves following your instincts, the power of strong role models, the magic of nightlife, and so much more.
Close to 30 years into his journey playing music to dancefloors, Cox remains inspired, enthusiastic and encouraging. Although he draws deeply from decades of research and study into the rich histories of Black music and DJ culture, Cox’s focus is still very much on the present moment and what lies on the horizon. “I’ve got this idea in my head that the greatest party might be the next one,” he explained. “For me, the real question is always this: what can we do to keep things fun and constantly moving forward.”
Read Chris Cox Part One: early days
Read Chris Cox Part Two: London Calling
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:
Nooriyah: finding nowhere everywhere: DJ, audio producer and founder of the Middle Of Nowhere event series, Nooriyah has gained widespread global acclaim in recent years. A musical archivist, her rousing, multi-genre sets reveal how the rich history of SWANA music has shaped Western tastes. With an approach to the dancefloor that centres community, and now in the process of making her own music for the first time, this future star is poised to enhance our collective appreciation of these sounds, and to heal some of the rifts that divide how we hear the world around us. Tazmé Pillay learns her story for DJ Mag.
The centaur of attention: horsegiirL is captivating clubland: First emerging in 2022, horsegiirL has become a dance music phenomenon, building a vivid fantasy world for her obsessive fans to indulge in and feeding their limitless appetite for breakneck sounds. Ahead of the release of her new EP 'v.i.p (very important pony)', she speaks to Nathan Evans for Mixmag about escapism, post-genre pollination, and what humans can learn from the animal kingdom.
Remembering David Lynch: Flying Lotus, Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti's engineer, Hudson Mohawke and more reflect on the visionary filmmaker's indelible impact on electronic music. For Resident Advisor, Michael Lawson.
Where to Start With Tempa, The Label That Invented Dubstep: It’s hard to overstate just how important the British label Tempa has been in the rise of bass-forward UK club music. Originally c0-founded by Neil Jolliffe and Sarah Lockhart in 2000, the label was a key part of an insurgent movement pushing a darker strand of UK garage. That genre—shorthanded UKG—had taken over the charts in Britain, becoming a bit too glossy and poppy in the process. But there was a new sound bubbling up from the underground, one that was harder and stripped down to the essentials. Producers like El-B, Ghost, and J Da Flex were experimenting with a grittier sound that began making its way through the pirate aerials across London. The vibe was less “champagne bubbles,” more “hoodies up, heads down.” For Bandcamp, Henry Ivy.
EXTRA:
Audio Culture has republished my story on Christoph El Truento’s dub albums. If you missed it, you can read it here.
FIN.