Ansel Elgort's new career as a DJ was inspired by Skrillex and Avicii.
Ansel Elgort
The 21-year-old actor - who has starred in movies including 'The Fault in our Stars' and 'Divergent' - has signed a deal with Island Records and has been performing under his DJ alter-ego Ansolo.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Ansel said: "I heard some of the really early Avicii stuff and the really early Skrillex remixes before he had released his EP. Just like his remix of La Roux's 'Going in for the Kill'. I thought it was so cool.
"The whole thing... it's more than just writing and performing. It's engineering and producing. It's magical. It's something on your computer you can do all by yourself. It's the same thing as piano and voice, but now you have tracks that are 70 channels. With a piano, everyone's heard what a piano sounds like, but with dance music, every month there's a new track with a sound that everyone's like, 'What is that sound? How did he do it?'"
Ansel also revealed he signed with Island Records because they were interested in his music that other labels weren't.
He said: "I went to a few different labels and was playing everyone my music, and Island was really interested in stuff I didn't think labels would be interested in. I played them some tracks and said, 'These are more poppy. These are more clubby. These are more radio-friendly.' The ones that were more radio-friendly, they were like, 'No, we've heard this before. We want the different ones. We want the special records.'"
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