Fly Low with DJAO

Whether
at the beach, cruising on a road trip or chilling at home, everyone needs their
perfect summer soundtrack—music to cheer up all those long, hot, lazy days that
comprise the dog days of summer. Included on that track list, should be
something mellow, hazy, and super-duper trippy. DJAO has you covered when it
comes to psychedelic sounds. Their fuzzy, low-fi instrumentation is met with
enchanting, simple vocal melodies, bringing warmth to their arrangements.
Despite their undeniably experimental and chill vibe, DJAO’s tracks maintain a
unique dance-ability. Pulsating beats make a perfect backdrop for DJAO’s
harmonious melodic tracks—a perfect marriage of these elements. He played the
Chupacabra stage at Sasquatch! and we were able to catch up with DJAO,
otherwise known was Alex Osuch, while there. 

When did you start playing music
as DJAO?

It was
sometime in 2009. I was working in a production company in Baltimore. They had
a studio, and they let me use the studio after hours. They had a ton of tools and
access to resources that I could use to practice and learn how to use the
stuff. And that’s where I did my first DJAO beat.

Where are you from originally?

Seattle.
I’ve lived in other places in my life, but I’ve spent the majority of my time
in Seattle.

What artists have influenced your
sound, both growing up and recently?

Growing
up it would be a lot of mainstream rap. Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Mix Master
Mike, DJ QBert, stuff like that. More recently it’s been James Blake, Shlohmo,
Toro y Moi. A lot of the early dub step guys, like Benga’s first album, Diary of an Afro Warrior. Recently it’s
changed, and I have been listening to a lot of jazz and experimental stuff.

Has the cannabis culture influenced
your sound, and if so, how?

Yeah,
definitely. I used to smoke a lot. I haven’t for a really long time, but as
time goes on, I still make kinda stoney music. It’s influenced me a lot,
because a lot of my friends who have influenced me, like the whole Dropping
Gems crew, they all smoke a lot. Everyone’s a smoker, so a lot of the ambient,
a lot of the cassette stuff, a lot of the kind of crusty, stoned, textural
driven beat-driven music, as opposed to being really turned up all the time,
which is like kind of a different deal. But the more living room, bedroom type
of mentality is just kind of what I identify with, and also kind of happens to
overlap with my friends who smoke a lot. It’s been a huge influence on me. The
low-fi element has had an especially big influence on me. When I first started,
I wanted everything to be super clean. It wasn’t until I started kicking it
with the Dropping Gems homies that I sort of shifted gears a little bit. The
analog stuff, and cassette stuff specifically had a big influence.

What types of music did you love
listening to when you smoked cannabis?

I used
to love to do that! When I used cannabis, that’s when I got into appreciating slowing
music down. Slow tunes like Mariah Carey, any kind of gangster rap, 50 Cent,
Guilty Simpson or anything where you would slow it down and it would make the singer’s
voice sound extremely physical, in the room and monstrous. Or even fusion jazz,
like George Duke. One of the craziest songs I’ve ever heard in my life is from
a band called Return to Forever, which came out on the album Romantic Warrior. I remember one time
listening to that song and I thought I was going to completely lose it because I
heard it for the first time right after smoking a shit ton.

www.djaomusic.com