Interview by Alan Ng
Words by Amie Nguyen
Photography by Jenkin Au
justalilhype! went to St. Georges to meet up with Chris Chen & Sam Watkinson, also known as DJ Omniscity and DJ Walko when they get on with their music with on their 1 and 2’s and mixers. Their love of music sparked at a young age and they have been seen here and there. As high school DJ’s, they have took the first step in their dreams with creating videos, spinning for school events, and is about to embark a new adventure in life as they prepare themselves to enter The University of the Arts London representing Vancouver’s young musical talents, upon graduation this year.
DJ Omniscity and DJ Walko, please describe yourself to our readers.
O: We are a duel that started back in Grade 10. We are grade 12 right now so it was started 3 years ago. I got Sam as a roommate and unexpectedly I did not know that he was into music. I discovered that. I was a DJ and he was a producer, that’s how we initially got together to start out.
What’s the origin of your DJ alias? The words you have chosen to represent yourself as a DJ are original yet vague in definition. What’s the meaning behind the names?
W: Walko is more like a family nickname. There’s really not much to it. Actually, there’s no meaning behind it at all.
O: It’s pretty funky, Sam’s pretty Walko. He’s crazy.
For me, there was one day I realized that if I wanted to become a DJ, I would have to come up with a name to establish myself. There was one night where I was trying to create a YouTube account. Basically I sat there thinking of a name and a personal trait of mine is to meet people and learn about things, and I like to look deep inside the surface of everything in life. That’s omniscient. I tried to play with a twist in the word and I guess that’s how it was formed.
A lot of DJ duos today would eventually form a signature group name. Have you considered a name for this team?
W: The thing is that we do a lot of work individually when not working together. 90% of our work is done together but we do solo gigs as well. We kind of casually throw around things, there’s this one term that we used for awhile and it was “Corporate Base”.
O: It was some really stupid things that we made up, but it might stick in the future. You never know.
One of your group’s tag line states “Insanely filthy beats and grinding basslines; what more do you want?” Tell us a bit more about that.
O: That’s a tagline I placed. Even though trance music is our main focal point but at parties, because we don’t usually spin our favorite genres of music. Actually, we never even got a rave gig yet. So for all house parties and high school gigs, electro house is what gets people down and getting crazy. Sam’s a big producer of electro so that’s how we got it.
W: Electro is all about bassline and beats.
What was the story of the formation of the crew? How did you guys bond and what skills does each of you have that helps form the foundation of this partnership?
W: Everything started in Grade 10, I was Chris’s roommate unexpectedly and…
(Omniscity interrupts Walko)
O: What he meant was that I got a phone call at Richmond from my friend who went back to the boarding house, saw the roommate list for the New Year and told me that my roommate was Sam Watkinson. Upon hearing that, I pretty much broke down into tears.
W: There was not a lot of love back then.
O: It was pretty sad.
You guys didn’t like each other at first?
W: I thought Chris was okay but he just hated me.
O: I don’t know about him but obviously as the year progressed, it turned out that Sam’s a pretty good guy.
W: One time I was just messing around with music and he was like: “Oh you are into producing?” and I was like “Hmm, I am a producer”. Then I saw Chris spinning and I got hooked onto it.
Tell us a bit about your music genres that you spin at your gigs.
W: It changes up, there’s a lot of stuff. The thing is that for high school dances, which is where we usually spin. Those kinds of gigs, we spin a lot of Top 40, just popular music. That’s not my personal favorite, but on our own time: electro-house and trance.
The “TenMinMx” competition you’ve gone through, how did that go and do you guys plan on competing in it again?
O: That was a competition a while ago.
W: Oh man, I remember so clearly on what happened. I was at Superstore and Chris called me and told me we won. I was like “No way!”
O: It was pretty random because most of our gigs are usually not planned. For that particular time, that set was for a school performance which I told Sam that we should record it down and we kept it in the closet for awhile. Then we saw the competition, and noticed that we actually had a set to put in for entry. Even though the competition asked for a 10-minute mix, which is 3 minutes longer than what we had. We still submitted it. A few months later, we won.
Did placing 1st place from the DJ Tutor B2B TenMinMx Summer’08 set a good stepping-stone for your crew to peruse DJing as a career?
W: Yea, totally. All of the stuff we do at dances and gigs are totally on the fly but for talent shows we always did like planned out sets and that was what that was. That was successful right? People liked it so I thought in my mind, we should keep this up.
O: It built us a lot of confidence. It looked like we could actually go somewhere out of this.
What exactly got you into DJing itself. Was there any events that sparked your interest with the peruse of music?
O: I think Sam started off because of me. I was his roommate and he saw me spinning and got excited. Vice versa for producing on my side. For me, it was the end of Grade 8, I had a friend at Saints who was also a DJ, and I got interested because he was messing around with his computer producing beats with Virtual DJing. I asked him where he learned this stuff. He gave me a name card and I went there, “Downtown Hastings” and pretty much learned it there for six weeks. Got my own set after and that’s how I started.
What are some of the DJs that you look up to?
W: There’s so many! Everyone likes Deadmau5, but I think musically he is incredibly inspiring. He writes music that is really popular and is also very well in sound which is not the case of a lot of popular music these days. He also has a good mix of genres. He kind of mixes electro, minimal and deep house all into one crazy thing and just does it perfectly.
O: For me, I’ve got 2. First one is Star Killers; they are an electro house group who my tag line was inspired by them because their baseline is just absolutely filthy. On the other side, it’s trance mastermind Tiesto. It might sound a bit cliché but behind his commercial work he is a true genesis, the way he approaches his gigs, his accomplishes, he’s a real role model.
What do you guys plan after graduating from high school? What’s next in your music career?
W: We are both going to London for University. We both got accepted to The University of the Arts London. We are both going to study music; art and design there and hopefully that’ll start up our music career.
O: That’s like the center place for all musicians to go to. Especially electric music, which is hailed from there.
Going to school especially in the music scene. Are you ever afraid of limiting yourself by being fed the certain style of what’s technical correct over creativity?
W: I think learning more never limits your capabilities. It just gives you another point of view on things where you can accept or reject.
O: It’s really interesting because Sam thinks straight outside the box. He never thinks inside the box. It’s really weird but it’s also really good. For me, I tend to think inside the box where I am trying to get out right now because it sounds like everyone else.
Especially with art, even with all the other art forms. When it’s fed to you when it’s taught to you on how it’s supposed to be, people tend to stick to that. It’s really hard for them to break out from that box.
W: I guess the thing with that is that you have to take your own point of view and treat it as the most important one. Learn what you want to learn rather than having people depict the way that you are going to express yourself.
O: When people start saying you are doing something wrong and it sucks then it’s a good sign because you might be the start of something new. You never know.
What is HYPE?
O: HYPE for me is when I am spinning out and I am able to see the crowd in front of me, as any DJ would to see their crowd going absolute mental to your music and they are lost in their moment and that’s just the magical powers of music I guess.
W: HYPE is spinning out at your own song and seeing how the emotions you put into it are reflected on the audience in front of you.