Airglo: Storming LA And Beyond

AIRGLO

AIRGLO

“It’s basically the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” describes Mikael Oganes, better known as Airglo, of his namesake. “It’s when you’re in the desert at one of the raves and you look up and see this giant beautiful sky and it’s all glowing and everything. But honestly, its cuz there was a show I was performing, and this chick comes over to me and says, ‘When you perform, the air is glowing around you!’ And I was also thinking about my new project and what I was going to call it and everything, and was like…Airglo, sounds cool. It’s very majestic.”

Airglo has been pumping out a flurry of music in the last new year, from remixing GOT to releasing his own productions. As a classically trained musician, he has a unique lens to look at drum and bass, with a serious passion for the genre and its high production standard.

Oganes has had an epic and storied path to get to Airglo as well. “I’ve always been in music, graduated from universities being a classically trained piano player,” he reveals. “Then transitioned into being a keyboardist/producer and started producing on Ableton as soon as I graduated around age 24. I started continuously started finding more and more inspiration from, and was very hard into the techno world for at least two and a half years. Actually, went to Texas and worked with this band called Seek Irony, and that’s where I kind of going more into electronic rock/metal and everything.”

“I always loved Drum and Bass, it was always in the background,” says Oganes. “Always listened to Dilinja, Roni Size, always, always. I wandered off of techno cuz I wanted something faster, kind of more…. I was always a metalhead and DnB is kind of like the metal/punk of EDM. So distorted bass, distorted riffs with a nice fast beat, it was just a total no brainer getting into producing DnB.

AIRGLO live

AIRGLO live

And a short time later, that’s exactly what happened. “Somehow, I started working with this band and they had this drum and bass track I really, really loved; I kind of made a remix of it, my own drum and bass remix, and remember thinking this is so cool!” explains Oganes. “When I came back to LA after working with that band in Texas, I started going to Respect shows, Xcellerated shows, and getting more and more active in the scene.”

“I released my EP called Spring, not the time of year but the coil spring, because I’ve always felt drum and bass has this spring inside,” conveys Oganes. “People ask what do I like about it and I tell them ‘I like the spring.’ They ask, ‘What do you mean?’ And it’s that every time that drum and bass plays, its like wearing spring shoes…like being elevated.”

Like many artists in the DnB scene, his love for the studio knows no bounds. “The endless possibilities!!” he declares. “Endless possibilities of mixing everything…. genres, sounds, sound design. Basically, for me the most fun part about it is grabbing something that not necessarily would be a drum and bass track and reinventing it as a drum and bass track. Or even as a bass track.”

“You can break ground with drum and bass more than any other genre right now,” Oganes elaborates. “You can do anything. Like with the Urbandawn remix of Come Together, that was crazy the first time I heard it. That’s what I love about production. With all the DAWS’s, the newer tools, and these crazy plugins; when you start going into them, you realize its unlimited. It’s literally a rabbit hole of ‘I can do anything I want.’ You can create a whole track from recording yourself going ‘Aaaah’ and you can create the whole track out of that.”

AIRGLO live

AIRGLO

Yet, he also has an intense love of the dancefloor and the live energy found at shows. “Reading the crowds, getting them to…. cooking them slowly but surely, going with them, taking them on a journey,” he affirms. “Having people go with you, like as an artist performing, and watching them go with you and respond to every little trick that you do. I’ve been through my years in different formats: as a band format, as a classically trained pianist format, there’s different formats and for a while, was even a wedding DJ! But still, when you get people dancing, and moving, and move crowds with your music…. great feeling, it’s the best feeling ever. You feel like we are all in this together and its very tribal, and it’s a very good feeling.”

Throughout rock and dance music history, classical and street music has intermingled to create some highly unusual and entertaining art. Airglo is no exception, “When you’re creating a drum and bass track, it’s more like making a collage than writing a score. You have more leeway, freedom, and movement as you’re the one telling everyone where it’s gonna go. In drum and bass, you have everyone telling you how they want it to be and you have to be, ‘here’s how it is.’

“So, I find myself writing more melodic drum and bass because I have that musical thing,” Oganes explains. “I put little harmonies in, cuz people underestimate harmonies. Harmonies and melodies, they move your soul…they get you to feel that beautiful energy, and then you crush it with a crazy drop, so it’s like a beauty and the beast thing.”

Airglo is fired up and set for a busy year of releases. Having already released the first video Chase My Desire and also recently dropping the second video of his 3-part horror series, “Rings of Saturn” you can look forward to the final installment on September 1st. Make sure to check out his remix of The Grind by Keekz along with his upcoming release on Impossible Records, Bob – O with Armanni Reign “Sick (Airglo Remix).”

In addition to all this, he is trekking cross country to spread DnB to new places as well as furthering its strength back home. You can catch him at Ernie’s Bar in Shreveport, The Green Elephant in Dallas, CAMP TRIP in September, and a Momentive later in the year!

Keep an eye on Airglo, via Soundcloud and his website!
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