DJ and producer rules music

Lucavanrossem plays the tunes for the crowd. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Lucavanrossem is king of the underworld. He’s a hard techno DJ and producer bringing a dark edge to music in Europe.

The Belgian, whose stage name makes a first name and surname one word, enjoys being able to play his own music as a DJ.

“It's having something to call your own,” he said. “It's really fun to play your own tracks that you haven't released yet in clubs and see the reaction of people on that track. When you see a lot of smiling faces and they're yelling and they like the track, that's when you think I created that and this puts a smile on your face and you're enjoying it. It gives such a good feeling.”

Luca explained why he chose the moniker of King of the Underworld.

“The music I DJ and produce is really dark, hard and eerie,” he said. “Since hard techno was an upcoming underground genre, I thought it would be cool to call myself King of the Underworld as it also gives quite an aura.” 

Luca, 21, savors the interaction with a live audience.

“I absolutely love that,” he said. “You're always really nervous before you start a set, but then as soon as you press play, you feel some collective energy. If people like your set, they hype you up, you hype them back up. You know what's coming and you know they're gonna like it. When you see that reaction, it's  just awesome.”

Luca already has steady gigs despite only starting in music less than two years ago.

“I started producing a year and a half ago,” he said. “It all started after my friend took me to a giant rave. I didn't know what techno was. Things I do now, I didn't know a year and a half ago. Since that rave, I started producing techno. And when I started producing, I didn't even know what DJing was, too. Six months into producing, I discovered that DJing is a thing. And then I started doing that, too.”

Once Luca started making and playing music, he couldn’t stop.

“It was kind of an addiction,” he said. “You started with it and now you can't stop with it.”

Luca’s schedule is tight working by day and making music at night.

“It's a bit hard to combine those things,” he said. “Yesterday, I had to go to Antwerp. It's a two-hour drive after my work just to collaborate with another producer, drive back home, go to sleep, go to work again. It's a busy life.”

Music always was a passion for Luca.

“I used to skate for 10 years, skateboarding,” he said. “It really fucked up my body. My back's hurting every day, my knees, my elbows, everything. I always told myself I'm gonna make something with my life of skateboarding or I'm gonna do something with music.”

Luca started dabbling in other music genres as a teen.

“I was 16 and I started playing guitar and writing my own songs and then eventually developed to try to be a rapper for six months,” he said. “And in that progress that rave came and then I started going full into EDM music.”

Luca said his native land is tied to techno music.

“If you really look at the history, techno is really something from the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany,” he said. “It originally started in Detroit, and then it got over to Germany and then Belgium and Netherlands. I think the Netherlands right now has the most top producers and DJs from techno.”

Luca explained how DJing doesn’t entail lugging around cumbersome equipment anymore.

“Now, it's just a USB stick and a headset is all you need to go DJ somewhere,” he said.

Luca explained why so many DJs produce their own music now.

“It's how fast techno is developing lately,” he said. “Tracks from one year ago sound totally different from tracks now. It's still a very experimental genre. You can almost do anything you want. And if it sounds good, it sounds good. If you just have some creativity and a laptop, you can make music so easily. I've got a whole studio, but only on this laptop. Back in the day, you had to buy a synthesizer, buy this, buy that, spend thousands of dollars just to create one sound. And now you pay 200 bucks for a DAW (digital audio workstation) and you're all set.”

Luca has steady work DJing.

“It's more specifically for clubs and festivals,” he said. “You can do weddings, but I don't think a lot of weddings will want to hire a hard techno DJ. In this genre, it's more specific to go to clubs and festivals and maybe some private parties.”

Luca cited his musical inspirations.

“I got quite a few of my most favorite producers,” he said. “I'll name the top three is ikkhi. ACIDUS is a producer from the U.K. and Micky Hopkins.”

Luca, who speaks English as well, lives in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, which shares elements of the languages spoken in Netherlands and Germany.

“If you just know Dutch, you can understand certain sentences,” he said. “Belgium and Netherlands are almost exactly the same. You can talk to each other without any problem. If you don't know German, then you can understand 30 percent of what they're saying. It's really close to each other.”

Luca explained why DJs dance and move around a lot more than they did decades ago.

“It's something to do to hype up a crowd, obviously, but also to fill time,” he said. “Back in the day, you were DJing vinyl. You got techno tracks that are originally 150 bpm (beats per minute), but then others are 160, 165. And back in the day, you had to listen to it and adjust it on the vinyl records to get it right, but you couldn't see anything. So you're constantly beat matching, putting the kicks on top of each other so they are perfectly aligned and at the same time you need to hear if the BPM is right.”

Luca said playing tunes is much easier with the onset of technology.

“But now it's all digital, so you can see your waveforms from your track,” he said. “You can visually see your track and you can see the bpm. So you can just put it fast on the same bpm and you just press play at that time. Vinyl records were spinning all the time. If you just switch the plates, they were spinning.”

Luca said a DJ now has time to rev up a crowd.

“When a buildup is playing, you can hype up the crowd because you just need to press play when the drop hits,” he said. “That's so much easier to do it now because back in the day you couldn't see anything. You had to feel and hear everything. And now you're just looking at the same bpm. Press play. When that drop hits, mix it in and you're done and you got another two minutes of free time.”

Luca recalled the first musicians to impact him as a youth.

“My favorite at that time, Dimitri Vegas & Like Mike,” he said about the Belgian-Greek duo. “I listened to sets of Tomorrowland and all kinds of things.”

Luca said techno, which started out as instrumental music, has changed over the years.

“Now in techno, 50 percent of the songs do have vocals,” he said.

Luca said it’s not more difficult to add vocals to techno music than traditional song.

“They take one word from the vocal, a good word that's recognizable,” he said. “And they cut a kick out somewhere where they put the vocal really fast so you hear the vocal and then in the buildup, they only use the full vocal with the lead sounds and synthesizers. And then when the drop hits, the vocal disappears and there are synthesizers only with the kick then.”

Although Luca has sung in the past, he wouldn’t do so with his techno.

“I could rap to my techno,” he said. “But really sing? No, I don't think so.”

Luca said producing is the most difficult part of making music.

“Producing is the hardest,” he said. “If you didn't go to a producing school and you didn't know the right videos to watch on YouTube to learn, then you really don't know anything, what you can do with your DAW. I'm still learning tricks every day I can do with my computer.”

Luca wants to rely solely on his music someday for income, but doesn’t need to become famous.

“The goal is to live off it,” he said. “If I can make a lot of money and do worldwide shows and things like that, of course. But that's also why I thought DJing was the best, because you don't have the same celebrity you got when you were rapping feel. You can just walk on the street and if someone recognizes you, it's like, hey, you're a DJ. But it's nothing more. You just want to be able to live your life without people bothering you every four, five steps you take.”

Luca said there are ways for an aspiring DJ to get work.

“Through DJ contests,” he said. “There are a lot of events that they ask you to send in a mix. They listen to it and they pick two or three winners that can play at that event if they like their set. And that's really how you get big.”

Luca got off to a rocky start due to being at a less than ideal venue.

“My first one didn't really go that good,” he said. “I played good, but the environment wasn't really good. It wasn't a music store, but they had DJ equipment and speakers. But the speakers were really quiet. I had to go first. When I started, everybody was outside and even the persons who were judging you, they weren't even listening. They were standing outside smoking cigarettes, smoking weed, and it was just so silent. Nobody heard me.”

Luca said musicians don’t fret as much as other artists when it comes to deciding on piercings and tattoos.

“With actors, I think they don't usually get piercings or tattoos,” he said. “They would think about it more than musicians, because musicians, you're performing your music and you are representing yourself, but you are representing yourself as you are completely. You don't play another character when you're performing your music. Why not make your own body as art?”

Luca stays motivated by doing what he loves.

“Passion plays a big role in it,” he said. “Always in the back of your mind, you gotta know that if you keep working hard, eventually it will pay off. If you're thinking about quitting, I think you shouldn't even be doing it. You should be doing something else that you really love. Because if you're thinking about quitting something you don't really love, you're not really passionate about it.”

Luca offered advice to aspiring producers.

“Just start,” he said. “Watch a lot of future videos and take notes and don't quit. Work hard every day, stay consistent and never give up. That's the motto I live by. Just keep pushing. I mean, what are you else gonna do? Just work 9 to 5 for the rest of your life and go to parties and do drugs every time? Make your story that you're telling your book of your life, that you're writing something interesting.”

Luca said a DJ must have a particular attribute.

“Be patient,” he said. “Also, reach out to people. I got a lot of beginning producers and DJs that are sending me messages or demos of the tracks and they ask what do you think of this? I'm like, it's good. Just watch this video. And then I send a link of a YouTube video to them. Work on this, work on that. If you're already doing something, even if it sounds trash, you're doing something more than someone else is doing. There's always progression. So just start and don't quit and just stick to it.”

Luca’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lucavanrossem/