Tag Archives: DJNightstalker

Interview with DJ Nightstalker!

This interview was conducted by 3MiloE, in DJ Nightstalker’s trailer, at Insomniac Events’, Escape: Psycho Circus.

3MiloE:           Well, my name is Milo.

DJ Nightstalker:          Nice to meet you, Milo.

3MiloE:           I’m representing the Hard Data Magazine today.

DJ Nightstalker:                   Nice.

3MiloE:           And I just wanted to ask you some questions.

DJ Nightstalker :         Sure.

3MiloE:           So where are you from?

Nightstalker :              I grew up in Colorado, but came out to L.A. years and year ago, so it’s got to be like 20 years by now, yeah.

Milo:               20 years?

DJ Nightstalker :         Yeah, yeah.

3MiloE:           What was the music scene like?

DJ Nightstalker :         It was just starting at that time. It was sort of warehouse raves, backyard party. It was kind of emerging out of the party vibe, like backyard party, ditch party, underground, like you break into a warehouse, into legit parties, and stuff like that, too. So it was pretty cool.

3MiloE:           Awesome. So how did you come up with your D.J. name?

DJ Nightstalker :         D.J. name? I think I was probably like thinking of … It was the ’90s, German base, and general, and the hardcore was dark, and I was skinnier (laughs) at that time. So I probably looked a little more like Richard Ramirez . But it had a good vibe like L.A. style, where we were kind of creeping around at night, kind of like breaking in and playing music and renegade parties and stuff like that. Did a lot of desert renegade parties and other cool stuff.

3MiloE:           That’s awesome.

DJ Nightstalker :         Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was kind of weird, acid, mushroom kind of vibe, you know what I mean?

3MiloE:           Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I have the L.A. Underground scene, so I there’s a lot of that. Okay. What animal best personifies your music?

DJ Nightstalker :         Personifies the music? It would probably be well, some kind of mythic creature probably, like a phoenix or something. I don’t know. Like the claw, I get known for the claw, so something that kind of rises out of the ashes, and then just like bites you, kind of after you’ve been in the trance. So that or maybe some kind of snake or something, who knows?

3MiloE:           That’d be cool.

DJ Nightstalker :         Yeah, yeah.

3MiloE:           Awesome, awesome. What are you trying to convey with your music?

DJ Nightstalker :         Really, for me it’s the whole idea of taking people on a journey is a cliché and stuff, but for me it really is … it comes from a spiritual place, so this is where we build community, through music. It’s also a space where we come together, and I kind of want to push the boundaries a little bit, so people almost feel like they’re in a dream and then they break out of that dream. You know what I mean? Instead of just like kind of hitting them hard the whole time, it’s like kind of building them to that sort of breaking point. That’s what I’m doing, yeah.

3MiloE:           Can you describe the feeling you get when you’re on stage?

DJ Nightstalker :         Before you’re on, you’re always like … it’s anxious or, What’s going to happen? Do I have everything? I can’t quite see past maybe the first few tunes or something like that, but then when you’re in it, it’s like you’re just sort of lost almost, like sort of merge with the crowd. And then you get spit out the other side, and you’re like, “Oh, shit. I don’t even really kind of remember what just happened.” It’s kind of weird. I wish I could be more present, but it’s like I’m just so caught up in the music and stuff that yeah, it just kind of flies by like a blur, but it’s almost like an out-of-body experience or something.

3MiloE:           Yeah. Trippy.

DJ Nightstalker :         Yeah, yeah.

3MiloE:           Okay. What moment do you cherish most of all in your career so far?

DJ Nightstalker :         So far? There’s been a lot. I have really sort of pivotal moments more recently, doing a lot of EDCs and the big festivals and stuff, but I would say it being way back to when I was still spinning vinyl, when there was still a vinyl scene, and I got asked to support Goldie in Japan. So I went to Japan, and did like three dates in Japan, two dates with him. But yeah, it was just like all music, and taking me to these crazy places, see different people, different cultures, and like, “It’s 4 a.m., and these people are still here just for me,” kind of thing. It was pretty trippy. It was part of a moment that I still cherish.

3MiloE:           Awesome. What are your major influences?

DJ Nightstalker :         Influences would be … early, classic-era drum and base, like folk-tech, maybe any sort of even like left-field, Electronica, hardcore. I was really heavy into hardcore coming up. But also, I used to go to after-hours, when I didn’t even know genres and it’d be like house music and I was just like, “I don’t know what the hell this is,” but I’m just like lost in the beats all night until the sun comes up kind of thing. But I grew up, my dad had a huge record collection that I’ve inherited now. So we used to listen to Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. He’d put on albums and we’d just sit there and listen to music. I’d say that’s really where it began, just this of love of … He collected everything from funk to Kenny Rogers to soul and all that stuff. So, I’d say that’s kind of where the roots began.

3MiloE:           Where do you see yourself a year from now?

DJ Nightstalker :         A year from now? This is probably a good transition year where I’m finally taking the production seriously so hopefully that’s going to elevate the game. I’m in a really good spot in terms of coming up as a name, or coming back up, because I was an old-school DJ, and sort of faded away for a while and then coming back, kind of resurgence.

But yeah, like Ableton, I’m getting into Ableton and stuff. What people don’t realize is …I’m also like, my other life is, I’m a professor. So I teach.

3MiloE:           Oh, wow. I’m in my master’s program in psychology. Yeah.

DJ Nightstalker :         Nice. So I got a PhD and I teach at University. Sometimes my students find out what my other life is, but that’s really my career, and so I sort of feel like I’m behind in that way, I can’t devote 100% of my time towards making music, because in my free time I have I’m writing, writing articles that that sort of thing.

3MiloE:           May I ask you what you teach?

DJ Nightstalker :         So, Chicano studies and then it’s like rhetoric, and critical thinking kind of thing, and also writing.

3MiloE:           That’s great.

DJ Nightstalker :         Yeah, yeah.

3MiloE:           That’s great, man. Well, thank you for your time.

DJ Nightstalker :         Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

3MiloE:           It’s been a pleasure. We really appreciate this, so thank you.

DJ Nightstalker:          Nice, nice, nice. Yeah. Thank you. Keep doing the good work, man.

3MiloE:           Yeah, man. You too.

 

 

3MiloE’s Escape 2017 Experience!!! Updated Nov. 15, 2017!!!

 

Day one  October 30, 2017. Contemplating in a graveyard because I find myself being featured on the television show called “Now and Then” as I will write down in log my first day recalling escape 2017.

First foremost I would like to thank insomniac for the opportunity to cover this event and interview DJs. It was really the most profound experience I have had yet to date and I will re-iterate by thanking them because they really are the best party thrower’s in the world.My name is 3MiloE and this is my Escape 2017 experience.


Logged October 30th, 2017

The purpose of this project is to really capture the feeling of both the artist and the party goer. I will be updating this project daily posting photos interviews and my personal experience interviewing partygoers as well updating daily as time goes along so you can track my project and the progress of this project from beginning to end . Readers can thoroughly enjoy themselves and go through my story day by day rather than having to wait to finish the entire project. I hope you will re-live my experience, with me as I put it down in this article and capture my own experience throughout this wild weekend which was a esape 2017.

 

9:23 a.m. Tuesday, Halloween, October 31, 2017, my friends back yard,

Please allow me to get sidetracked for a second because the main focus of this work, is to derive meaning from this entire stream of consciousness that I experienced during Escape. Although it’s hard to describe. People think it’s about that music, people think about the drugs, people think it’s about the lights, people think it’s about dressing up. It’s really about what each individual takes away from it.

The first night I spent the night interviewing the DJs but the second night I interviewed the crowd. It was interesting to find out what really makes everything tick. I’ve been part of the crowd before but I have never been behind stage I wanted to ask the artist questions I wanted to know, not necessarily what people wanted to know or the public. I like to call myself a Renaissance man of EDM, I produce, I spin, I promote, I write articles, I go to festivals and, now I interview famous DJs.

Right now it is 9:20 in the morning Halloween October 31, 2017 I have just woken up at my friends house I am having a coffee before he wakes up. I am logging in my daily time thinking about who really is my audience reading this? Should I really bring the hard data? Which I feel to some extent this festival world needs.

I am going to write the story of Escape down in this text, the feelings of the artists, the feelings of myself, feelings of the crowd. With the prime directive of answering this questions, “what did we all take away from this experience.  DJs, medical staff, festival workers, party goers, the producers; all changed in some way by this experience. Did people take home something with them, that had only been discovered at Escape 2017? Do they have the feeling that I have?
The feeling that artists cried when they were on stage, was the feeling that was described by general mission, and party goers and that’s the feeling I got when I was experiencing the story doing the interviews, being in the crowd, but most of all I am wondering what feeling the world or the audience will take away from this text…

Nov 2, 2017

Currently stressed about life. I really have to Now  prioritize, strategize and work the hardest I’ve ever worked in my entire life. I am going to be real with you all . I am a psychology student, in the midst of his first year in my master’s program.

Now let me set the scene…”

I have recently lost my entire hard drive on my computer only a couple weeks before the festival and half way through my first session at school . And that was a Trumatic experience for me. I lost about two years worth of content on my computer including photos and all the music I have produced up until that point and my homework… Songs I had spent hours working on, lost to nothingness, save a few originals on SoundCloud. Here is my November 2nd reflection.

As my mind grows, so does my ambition and curiosity…

I have a lot of work to do, I am really stressed, but I know what I have to do and nothing can stop me from conquering my dragons! I must ride this dragon of psychology and become a master! As well as pursue my passions as an active EDM enthusiast, I feel it is my duty , to push my intellectual capacities and apply them to both my fields of research and study. One being electronic music and the other being psychology. It is my master plan, to blend the two together for my master’s thesis.

Ok Ok! I realized I have just been posting thoughts, so here is some real deal pics to satisfy you guys before I get to the juiciest part of my experience….  THE DJ INTERVIEWS…My associate and I are Dictating the interviews now!!!

Da Tweekaz love TheHardData!  Thanks for reading guys!!!

 

November 3rd 2017,

It is the evening of November 3rd 2017 and I just witnessed a lecture by Fanny Brewster, a renowned psychologist who has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and is a licensed Psychoanalyst. Her lecture was on a female Architype. I feel so connected with women, and that may sound strange coming from a man in 2017… but I truly believe, that women are underrepresented in our society.

Selfie, with Fanny Brewster!

 

I took my mother, as a guest, to this lecture at Pacifica, which is the University I attend for my master’s program in psychology. My time there tonight let me reflect upon how I have been thinking a lot about women lately… and the important role they play in my life. I am reflecting now, upon how important music is to me, and that there are not a lot of females in the industry. For example, I can only name two female headliners at Escape. Rezz, and of course Missk8! I feel that Rezz is channeling female power through anonymity. Rezz captures female form without giving it a physical manifestation of beauty, empowering the ideal of a woman and showing the world that a woman can headline without people acknowledging her physical appearance, the beauty lies underneath the trippy glasses. Thank you Rezz!

Similarly, empowering women is Missk8. Missk8 however, harnesses her power by shocking people with her beauty and applying it to high energy music that expresses emotions like anger and exposes aggression within people. These emotions are not often thought of as beautiful, but when Missk8 blasts her music on stage… you tend to re-evaluate things. Her beauty, and figure, has a shock, or wow factor to it. Because hard style is aggressive and angry in a lot of cases, culturally thought of as negative feelings, misunderstood, misinterpreted or misrepresented feelings, and that is not often thought of as beautiful, but Missk8 embodies the beauty that lies within the music, underneath the surface.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(LATEST UPDATE) November 15, 2017

Affectionately known as my “Office”

I just established my space at Pacifica Graduate Institute. I even tagged it in my social media! I affectionately call it my office. It’s a small room in the library! It’s so perfect and quiet. I recently have been reading this book called, “Addressing Cultural Complexities in Practice Third Edition Assessment Diagnosis, and Therapy, by Pamela A. Hays. I find myself using it as a tool for self-analysis and a way of recognizing biases, within myself, that would potentially prevent me from connecting empathetically with those I seek to form therapeutic relationships with.

The reason I am bringing up this literature… is because, the literature is telling me a lot about my own self-identity. When I go to a massive rave like Escape, I can see every type of person imaginable; even those previously inconceivable.

Everyone’s inhibitions were lowered, acceptance of others was heightened. This lead to a mass exchange of culture, ideas, empathy and feelings! As a result of these socially perceived barriers, that are perceptively stronger outside of a festival setting, were almost demolished, due to the ambiance of the festival. The magnitude and scale of this social exchange goes unparalleled in modern society. It takes years, sometimes lifetimes to tear down the walls of ego and judgement that lie between us and the “other”. At festivals people differ in age, sex, gender, ethnicity, social class, religious beliefs…

A party goer dresses as the pope and Jesus Christ; a strong and symbolic representation of a cultural Archetype,

 

 

economic status, regard for authority, culture, and physical attractiveness. Yet all of us were concentrated in close proximity and feeling some of the most intense feelings that some of us will have had ever experienced in our entire lives.

In life, there is racism, intolerance, prejudice, bias, privilege and misunderstanding. As a psychologist, it is my job to understand these aspects of the human psyche, and therein my own. I must be aware of all these aspects of human life in order to be sensitive and understanding with the people I interact with. And so, with this log I would like to emphasize cultural awareness and sensitivity because we are part of this world. Each culture contributes its unique sounds, adopted by electronic music. The beats, and timing differ from country to country, culture to culture, and person to person… coming from, and spreading to, all over. There are people from all over the world, representing their unique cultures, as individuals, at these festivals. Be aware that we all need to respect and honor each other. That is the premise of the readings I found in Pamela A. Hays’ book, and the theme of this log is to reflect upon your own culture, relative to everyone else’s culture, and bring about a better perspective than the days before that time of great reflection… Happy travels- 3MiloE

 

I never wore color until after Escape 2017