Making Those Booties Shake

In a world of rock superpowers, Jason Bentley is a diplomat of dance music.

In the last five years, Bentley has risen from underground clubs and the dusty consoles of college radio to become a golden boy of bootie-shaking sounds. With a jazzman’s radio voice, the 25-year-old transmits tunes that are urbane and sophisticated. Whether’s it’s Goldie’s mystic break-beats or a downbeat Ruby remix, Bentley, a boy-next-door-type with an affinity for Adidas, celebrates dance music for the cerebral.

His radio show, “Metropolis,” is the centerpiece of KCRW-FM’s (89.9) lauded weeknight lineup. His new “Afterhours” show Saturday nights on KROQ-FM (106.7) is forging a new format of techno-meets-rock. His new world dance record label, Quango, is already getting kudos from critics. And he enjoys celebrity status when he invades clubs with his turntable techniques.

“I’m a progressive thinker rather than a revolutionary thinker,” he says over a cup of java at a Beverly Hills coffee shop. “I’m trying to work within the system to make advances for what I believe in musically.”

That outlook earns Bentley taste-maker status--on a national level.

“If we have something we’re really excited about, Jason’s the first person we’ll give a tape to,” says Neil Harris, director of artists and repertoire (A&R;) for London Records in New York. “He was playing Portishead six months before it came out.”

In radio, Bentley’s formula for progression mixes hard-edged dance (e.g. Chemical Brothers) with guitar-based sounds (e.g. Garbage), so as not to alienate those with a rock aesthetic.

“With KROQ,” he says, “I’m trying to hit on a format, something that’s basically a connection of the progressive pop sounds coming out of Europe and the beat-driven stuff.”

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Whether by coincidence or contrivance, his overall philosophy seems to be popular. Bentley’s on-air sound--European acts such as Bjork, Tricky and Underworld--has slowly emerged in America.

At KCRW, Bentley is credited with attracting one of the youngest audiences in public radio. (Nearly 40% of KCRW listeners are 34 or younger.) And two-thirds of fund drive donations during his show come from new contributors.

“Everyone else is moaning about the graying of the audience,” says KCRW general manager Ruth Seymour. “And he’s attracting a new group of people to the station.”

Some in the underground have accused Bentley of selling out electronic sound by watering it down with its nemesis--guitar rock. To that he says, “I’m not interested in being an obscure underground hero who had much smaller acceptance.”

Others say he’s an Elvis of the airwaves--a white boy capitalizing on urban dance culture. “He can break it down for white kids,” says one dance music expert. But Bentley says he’s paid his dues as a club deejay--playing gigs to this day. “Deejay culture is deep and sincere,” he says, “and you must be respected.”

The thin, blond Bentley started as a student deejay at Loyola Marymount University’s KXLU-FM (89.9) in 1990 and soon became an editor at L.A.’s Urb magazine--America’s preeminent guide to dance music culture. He eventually dropped out of college for Urb, then dropped out of Urb to spend more time on radio, soon landing at KCRW. Then he got a day job as A&R; director at the independent dance label Planet Earth Recordings. The label went under in 1994.

During that period, “I wanted to present a youth angst in dance music that was the equivalent to the youth angst in punk rock,” Bentley says.

After Planet Earth folded, fellow KCRW deejay Bruno Guez came to Bentley with a partnership proposal to start a new record label that would focus on world dance music.

With the help of third partner George Ghiz, a music agent who manages the group the Rembrandts, the three worked out a business plan, pitched it to Island Records chief Chris Blackwell and had their own record company inside the Island family by last July.

The trio puts out two records a month--largely licensed compilations culled from Bentley’s and Guez’s Eurocentric record-buying binges.

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That brings up the possibility that Bentley could use his radio shows to promote his label. But he points out that he doesn’t play Quango cuts, instead showcasing the original songs from Europe and crediting their original labels. “Quango is really an unspoken word,” he says.

Quango scored critical hits with “World Voices,” produced by Tom Schnabel (of KCRW’s “Cafe L.A.”), “The Mighty Bop,” a collection of French rap, and the U.S. debut of Bomb the Bass’ “Clear.”

Even though Bentley now works out of a black-and-chrome office in Beverly Hills, you’ll still find him at record shops battling elbow-to-elbow with fellow deejays for rare 12-inch vinyl shipped fresh from Europe via UPS.

“I keep my head in a deejay state of mind,” he says, “excited about music, going through the record bins at stores--the same things I’ve been doing for years.”

* “Metropolis” airs weeknights on KCRW-FM (89.9) from 8-10 p.m. “Afterhours With Jason Bentley” airs on KROQ-FM (106.7) from midnight till 4 a.m. Sundays. His playlist and top picks are often posted on KCRW’s World Wide Web page, https://www.kcrw.org.