You’re walking down Santa Fe on the first Friday art walk and are headed towards Dark Energy Studios at 866 W. 8th Ave. Suddenly the ground starts vibrating and your guts feel a little bit bouncy. You look around and are surrounded by people dancing and swaying to the sound coming out of the entity known as the Whomp Truck.
In the midst of the chaos, a collective of DJs can be found, with Just Ben at the helm.
He says that, “a large part of the influence comes from 'Art Cars' at Burning Man which frequently feature sound systems and DJ Booths. The rest of the idea came from the first Whomp Truck (Whomp Truck 1.0) which was a retired Ice Cream Truck I had purchased to help me move my sound equipment. A friend and I noticed one day while loading that if you place things just right, 2 subs and 2 tops filled up the back doors perfectly, and the Whomp Truck was born.”
Besides the giant pile of speakers protruding out the back and the DJ housed deep within the truck, the other best thing about the Whomp Truck is its name which came from someone in the Santa Fe crowd one night on the truck’s maiden voyage and the name stuck. The term “Whomp” in this case is the word noise for the sound that huge deep dubstep bass occasionally makes. Hence: Whomp Truck.
On the Art Gallery Deal: Just Ben says, “After our first outing on Santa Fe, we were hooked and determined to do it again. We came back out next month in the same location and a gallery owner came up and told us if we started up, he would call the police. So, we packed it up and cancelled it for that month. After talking with some friends, they put me in touch with Ryan at Dark Energy Studios who was very interested in the idea. We chatted and set it up.” And now there’s always a crowd, waiting for the awesome show.
Just Ben isn’t the only DJ/Producer who is part of the collective: Noah Deep, Alert, Coult 45, Ishe, Citrus, and Seedartha are all part of the gang, too. All of them are producers whose tracks you can purchase off of beatport.com and a few additional online sites.
If you don’t just want to wait for the Whomp Truck to hear the other DJ’s in the crew, “they have a very talented crew and all of our DJ's play out regularly and we all play original material in our sets.” They are part of the rotating front room at Sutra on Thursdays along with a main Drum and Bass room.
Whomp Truck is also going to make it to Apogaea next month for the Colorado Regional Burning Man festival.
On future plans for the Whomp Truck:
“Many! We plan on improving the sound, the DJ configuration, lighting and decor. Additionally we have been working with other groups on special events like afternoon park parties, Red Rocks lot parties and Skate Park invasions,“ Ben adds.
You can find more information on this awesome sound monstrosity at www.whomptruck.com. It’s pretty new and the Whomp Truck crew is still working on it, but like the truck, it provides at way to contact them.
This is a Denver Must See!
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Comments
...Whomp!
This is my favorite part about the art walk. I'm glad someone else noticed it!
I really appreciated the article, but I have a few suggestions on content improvement as well as proper citation.
1) In an internet-based publication such as Examiner.com, I think that it's appropriate and expected that you link to further content. e.g DJs to soundcloud pages.
2) Events such as "First Friday Art Walk" should be capitalized.
3) Photographs should be credited. If left uncredited, it can be assumed that they are your property as you are the one posting them. None the less, even if you are the photographer, you should be giving yourself credit.
4) Please caption the photos whenever possible. For example, if there is a single subject such as a DJ, your audience will benefit from knowing who he/she is. Most certainly the artist appreciate the exposure as well.
5) Please provide contact information when posting. This can benefit you in countless ways from obtaining future gigs to driving traffic to your personal site. If it was available, I wouldn't be posting this publi
To the author: So apparently Examiner.com has been fluctuating on and offline today. Every time that I clicked links to try and find out more about you, I only found dead pages.
The site is up now, and I've found your contact information. I've e-mailed you personally. Feel free to delete my critique.
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