JZ: Did you know from a young age that you wanted to be a DJ? AJ: I was already doing it when I was 13 or 14 but I didn’t figure out that I really wanted to do it until I was 17. Then I decided to go for it.
as possible. At one point, I watched an entire psychology class online. Again, that’s what we try to do with LDH. It’s not just about music but we also teach you about the mental side of things. We want to help our artists where we can. JZ: What inspires you to create music?
JZ: What did you listen to when you were growing up? The Prodigy, and lot of trip hop because it was very popular at the time. I used to be a dancer so I listened to a lot of hip-hop as well. JZ: What have you learned since you started working that made your success possible? AJ: The most important thing to do when learning anything is to also learn how to apply it to yourself. It’s all about application to self. You can read books about how life works but if you don’t apply it to yourself, you will still be in the same position. JZ: Do you deal with fear? AJ: Not anymore. But that’s because I actually started studying philosophy and psychology and neuroscience to understand how life works. That gave me a lot more insight and made me feel a lot more comfortable and also led me to the decision to always do what I want to do at whatever time.
RARELY WILL SOMEONE ACTUALLY STUDY HIMSELF AND THAT’S WHAT MADE THE CHANGE FORE ME. It’s funny how people fear fear or anxiety or stress, but no one ever takes the time to actually get to the bottom of where it’s coming from. Rarely will someone actually study himself and that’s what made the change for me. If I really wanted to know something or had to work with something I started going as deep
Anything. It’s a fun thing, to sit down and create. We use different sounds and we use different synthesizers, we play some melodies and when we feel something feels good or sounds good, we start adding to that. It’s like Lego. When you’re a kid and you’re playing with Lego you think, today I will build a house, today I will build a car or today I’m just going to build some random stuff and watch it take shape as I’m building. When you know how music production programs work, you can do exactly the same, only with music. JZ: It seems like there is a very technical approach to make to music. AJ: I’ve been doing it for so long, at one point you can’t escape the techniques of what becomes popular and what doesn’t. Look at the Billboard charts, for 10 years in a row, it’s always the same kind of music that’s in the top 10. There is one song every 2 or 3 years that everyone wants to know and everything else is just the same. You can’t really escape that when you’re producing pop music. JZ: So what makes it exciting? AJ: The most fun is still when you accidentally come across a melody or chord progression or come up with a crazy mash up or mix live. That’s the most fun. In life in general, you have the most fun when something stumbles across your path when you least expected it. JZ: What approach are you taking with your music? AJ: Press Play was a mix of stuff I produced for my live sets and collaborations with all the new Wall artists. Same with When You’re Gone with Ester Dean. That song wasn’t made to become a chart hit, it was just made to become a fun club song that takes people to a certain place on the live stage. It wasn’t built for Spotify or Radio. But it’s fun that people started to play it and stuff so big shout out. It’s fun for me when something comes up that gets to change the landscape like when Take Over Control came out or Give Me Everything. Those kind of songs sort of change what is possible on the radio.
L E FA I R MA G A Z I NE | 5 5
