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| Ben Liddle |
Artist Ed Santiago, a third year
Business Management major and DJ.
If you attend the Glow-in-the-Dark Dance
Party this Friday, November 7, you will
likely see him. Ed Santiago could very
well be the party, responsible for the beats
that get you pumped to dance the night
away. For all you frequent clubbers out
there, you may even be seeing him
“raising the roof” of the next club you crash.
The music Santiago mixes, produces,
and plays straight off of his MacBook
Pro is entrancing yet beat-driven,
and definitely something you could move
your body to. “Basically, the type of music
I play could be defined anywhere from
progressive house to trance to break —
stuff you’d hear in a club,” he described.
One of his own favorite mixes is a track
entitled “Take Me Into Your Skin,”
which was particularly challenging for
Santiago to produce. “It was a challenge to
[reinvent] the original...from such a mellow
and chilled out song with a sort of broken beat,
and turn it into something that you would
almost want to hear in a club,”
he explained. It required him to get
creative and play around with a number
of new techniques so it would sound
the way he wanted it to. “It was a lot
of experimenting with that one.”
Of course, remixing tracks can become
a difficult and time-consuming task.
Depending on how much time you spend
working per day, the process could easily
take up to a month or two. “Hours-wise,
I’d probably spend about 24 to 30 hours of
actual work on a track,” stated Santiago.
That doesn’t include the time used in
choosing the tracks, conceptualizing an
idea, and experimenting with them.
When crafting a new release,
Santiago draws inspiration from two of his
favorite artists: BT and Sasha. “[BT is]
one of those classically-trained musicians
[who] does everything from scoring movies
to clubs,” mentioned Santiago. Sasha,
on the other hand, is a well-known DJ
who has been in the business for nearly
20 years. What really sets Sasha apart for
Santiago is that “[Sasha] really pushes
a lot of innovation and technology.”
However, Santiago is more than just a
DJ. He’s also a businessman interested in
helping grow the Rochester and RIT music
scenes. Recently, he founded the Rochester
Entertainment & Music Group (REM Group)
which will serve as a medium to network
with different artists within the area and
possibly score gigs at local venues. “In a
nutshell, [REM Group’s goal] is to eventually
provide the means and the channels for
local Rochester artists to develop their skills
into a paying career…without them going
somewhere like Los Angeles or New York
City.” The REM Group actually had a hand in
producing the Glow-in-the-Dark Dance Party.
Although no dates have been set, Santiago
is working on scheduling an hour-long
set at the Pearl Night Club located on East
Avenue in downtown Rochester where many
RIT students also DJ. “It’s going to be like a
party; nothing real crazy,” said Santiago.
Website myspace.com/EdSantiagoMusic
