DF— We went abroad to London in senior fall, and that was a pretty impactful experience for me. We were going to all these parties that were just so incredibly well run, but also just musically very vast; people exploring genres that we either had never heard of or had been scared to play for other people in the US. London is just so much of a more open space.
I remember I played at a venue called Dalston Den. The ceiling was probably 8 feet high. I was playing all jungle drum and bass, going in on what my knowledge was of that. People came up to the decks and just started banging on the decks — in a good way, taking their shirts off and just going crazy. There was just a different energy there that we really wanted to be able to embrace in like in New York.
We came back full force that spring. We did our first event called Saturday Sessions, and then another one called Open The Garage. That one was really great — it was first one where we were moving away from an audience of mostly college kids. It was just people who found us and thought the event was cool. From there it was like a pretty easy way to start moving ourselves into more exploratory genres, exploratory DJs.
How did Level III Radio come about? How do you view the importance of curation and platforming other DJs?
AR— We had this great space, and we thought, all right, what can we do with this space that adds to the platform that we already have? Dennis and I, for the most part, have a lot of similar musical interests. But we started asking, what are things that I like? What are the things that he likes? And how can we put those together?
We were coming home from our day jobs and just putting DJs on our TV and sitting there and listening and being like, what do you think about this one? Why do you like this DJ? Why is this DJ better than this other DJ? Why should we have this DJ versus that DJ? We began to see the radio as a platform to put together our musical interests when it comes to the DJ scene in New York specifically, and integrate them in a way where the Level III audience gets to see where Ant, Dennis, and anybody else think the sound in the city is going.
And this episode isn't out yet, but there's this Dominican DJ that we brought on called Fried Platano, and he has a really big following within his community. I’m Dominican, and he played some stuff that I personally hadn't heard before. So I reached out, and he came on and did the radio show, and rocked it. It was amazing. I showed him the song he put me on to, and told him, “I owe you for showing me this because you just brought me into a whole different music scene that I hadn't known about. Thank you for that.”
It's something that I hope that people think when they hear Level III Radio. I hope we’re able to contribute to others what he contributed to us.
DF— Halfmoon BK was the platform that I got started on. Originally the show was just me doing mixes and the like. It would play on Saturday afternoons. I wanted a platform for me to be able to showcase my range of sounds across the board, in a more mellow, low-tempo type of space.
But then I thought about all these DJs in the community that I love to go watch and see perform, or who have done shows for us before. I think that being able to showcase their sound in a controlled environment with our audience was something that a lot of people haven't experienced yet, because we had posted sets from the live events that we had done but in live events DJs will come and they'll obviously try to contour their sound in the middle ground between what they like and what the audience may like. So to me, it wasn't as authentic as they could possibly be. I wanted to be able to give them that platform to be able to just do whatever they wanted to do, and every DJ so far has done that. Almost every set that we've had is completely different genre-wise.
The coolest part for me is that both of us are genuine fans of these DJs. They're not necessarily massive touring DJs, but every single person on there, when they start playing, I'm literally gonna stop everything I'm doing to listen because I think they're one of the best DJs that I personally know. There's so many people who are seriously dedicated to their craft.
And we're very young too compared to the majority of the DJs that have been on the show. We're both 23, and the majority of people who are on there are at least 26 or 27, if not older, so we feel very humbled in those settings. These are pros at their game. I'm learning more from them than they are from us, absolutely.