When I graduated college, I had a fairly successful weekly club gig and was buying more studio equipment and writing my own music. I realized I didn't want to work.
I've always been a big advocate of making shows affordable because a lot of these bottle-service clubs and events are geared toward really expensive experiences. Club music is for everyone, and it drives me crazy that people are getting priced out.
People know my lyrics; they know the stuff I've written, and it's all about life, love, happiness, and these big euphoric moments. It would always bug me when I'd go to a club, and they're playing some chick on a stripper pole on the monitor behind me. I'm like, 'So that's not what I do - that's the other guy.'
When you go see a good DJ, you'll know it, man - you'll know it in your bones. Between the guy who's phoning it in and the guy who's obsessively working it to give you the best show of his life.
I DJ'd for years. I DJ'd in high school, and I think my parents thought it was a passing thing. And then when I was in my second year of college, I was like, 'Yeah, you guys don't need to send me money anymore. My DJ gigs are good enough. I'm selling music; I think I'm gonna have a record deal. I can pay my tuition.'
I studied communications, only because I could get my own show on the campus radio station. I never thought of it as a career. Music was always a really passionate hobby - it was like collecting DVDs or stamps.
I think how Chicago plays a role in my life - it had such a role in my youth and the decisions that I made as a kid and formulated who I am as an artist early on.
People don't listen to terrestrial radio. They don't find their music that way. They don't get their news that way. They go to blogs. They go through Sirius/XM. They go through all these different places.
I'm not the best singer in the world, but the albums have always been personal. They're stories about me and what I'm going through.
Once I wrote 'Atmosphere,' I thought, 'This is my story; it's me and my life and what I've gone through to get to where I am.' I'm not the best singer, but still. All of my albums are personal, but putting myself out there and singing is one more thing that makes me vulnerable - one more thing that people can fire shots at.
A lot of people see electronic music as a flavor of the week, but it can be more than that - has to be more than that.
If you listen to a Deadmau5 record or a Skrillex record, I really enjoy that stuff because, as aggressive sounding as the Skrillex records are, they're still musical, and that's why they have such a broad appeal.
Blending tracks and weaving and manipulating prerecorded music to create this mood, some people do it much better than others.
I travel a lot. I spend close to 300 days a year on the road.
For me, 'Atmosphere' was more about looking inwards and reaching out to people close to me. To emphasize the fact that I'm singing on the first single, this album is really more about me and songs that I've written instead of collaborating with people.
Mix CDs are interesting. I'm known more for my artist albums and less for my mix CDs.
Music evokes a lot of different emotions and triggers different senses.
I think there is some truth to the fact that yeah, okay, cool, obviously the more mainstream kind of easier-to-grasp-onto dance music has become popular, but that holds true with almost any genre. It wasn't like the Sex Pistols hit the radio. It was poppier versions of that is what hit. It's never, like, the true core stuff.
I love a great melody and wonderful lyrics that speak from the heart, and my music has that and speaks about it; but there's just something that was really raw and energetic about the early House music. It's hard to describe. It's like you had to go to these parties where the stuff was being played on these huge sound systems to really feel it.
I've always had a passion for music, but I never saw me as a musician for a living. I never thought that I could make a living. It never dawned on me.
