There’s a strong duality throughout Trent’s work: it’s futuristic and somehow ancient, cosmic while also aquatic. His productions give a real sense of space, though that feeling of being fully engulfed is always present. But ‘What Do the Stars Say To You’ departs clearly from everything that’s come before. The album calls to mind the celestial-inflections of Lee Ritenour, the funk of early Level 42 and the wonky experimentation of a young Kate Bush. It is, Trent explains, an audiophile’s album, and designed for listening in different locations. “You could be listening in a condo, overlooking the city or looking at the stars.”
But more than that, it’s about destiny, identifying the right path for the listener. “Where’s the place you want to be? What’s the place you’ve chosen to be? We just came out of one of the most trying times we’ve seen in our history — outside of AIDS. A lot of us thought about being in other places or had a greater appreciation for places that we used to take for granted: looking out your window, seeing the city move, the sunset. These moments are very powerful.”
As are Trent DJ mixes. His most recent Boiler Room set for Ash Lauryn’s Underground & Black last year in New York is a seminal lesson in tension and release. “If you know what you’re doing, if you know how to anchor yourself in the energy of the room and the sonics are right, you can really connect on a spiritual level — that’s when the third ear comes in,” he tells us. “It’s about timing, energy, mood. It’s dramatic, it’s very theatrical. You can tell when there’s a DJ that’s playing with intention, let’s put it like that.”
Opening with his remix of musclecars’ ‘Shelter’ — a voyage in itself — Trent shows his Chicago roots, lollipop headphone in tow, working the mixer isolators to full effect, sculpting out sounds, adding colour, promising and then denying release. Halfway through the hour, he cuts out the bass and mids, leaving the crowd with a hiss of a sound. It is one of the most animated Boiler Room crowds we’ve seen and Trent ends, fittingly, with Wood, Brass & Steel’s ‘Funkanova’, a Knuckles and Hardy favourite.
Trent streamed another Boiler Room set from his home studio during the pandemic, opening this time with the bewitching ‘Countdown’ by Lee Ritenour. “‘Countdown’ is a sentimental record — I used to listen to it with my father,” he tells us. “We liked that record a lot — it was one of those tunes where you felt like you were flying. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it. Certain records put you in a spiritual place and can make you feel real joy, or introspective. There was a high concentration of that type of music in the early ’80s, for sure.”
